The process I’m referring to is one every Korean child has endured, to varying degrees of pain — one that involves an exfoliating mitt that’s dragged up and down your body after you've soaked in a tub of very hot water, until your skin turns a rosy steamed-lobster red. While Korean spas are now an attraction in every major city across the world (New York City, for one, has dozens), this treatment was a normal weekly ritual in my household. In a Korean mother’s ongoing quest to help her offspring build thick, tough skin (both figuratively and literally), scrubbing, though painful, depleted the body of any dead cells too feeble for the real world, revealing a supple, glowing complexion. Beauty didn’t end with scrubbing, though. Every other day after school, Tiger Mother instructed me to lay on my back while she massaged every last pore on my face with thick layers of foreign creams, primping and pampering every millimeter until I radiated to perfection. Being an overachiever, it didn’t end with face masks. Oh, no! My mother also adhered to a strict daily regimen my sister and I were required to abide by. In the mornings, we’d wash our faces followed by applying three dollops of “essence,” (in the Western world we know them as serums), to open our pores. Then came moisturizer, which we’d pat into our skin until we couldn’t see it on the surface any longer. No morning was complete without painting our faces white with Shiseido SPF 50, the final step in the 15-minute process. My mother would even do a quick rearview mirror check in the car to see if our faces were completely slathered before giving us the okay to leave for school.