Chaekgeori, a genre of late-eighteenth century Korean still-life painting (translated as “books and things"), inspired this large-scale still-life scroll. I created a graphite drawing accented with gold leafing that depicts contemporary beauty products. The jars and bottles of beauty serums, elixirs, concentrates, and precious creams were drawn floating within the composition, alongside or stacked among piles of decorative books. The names of the beauty products exemplify the unrelenting messages that prey on women’s personal insecurities—Drops of Youth; Hope in a Jar—simultaneously inventing flaws in need of correction, while conjuring religious faith as the only panacea for women’s inherent imperfections.