BY MEAGAN HU and LINDA HUANG

In print | February 9, 2006

On a steamy afternoon this past summer, Meagan and an Asian-American friend of the same age and gender, seated in the Taipei metro, found themselves in a sticky situation. Across from them was a leathery Taiwanese man, advanced in years, who would not stop staring at them. The girls avoided eye contact and attempted to engage in fervent conversation until finally the leathery man interrupted: “You girls aren’t from Taiwan, are you?” Hesitating to answer, the girls confirmed his posit that they indeed were not. The man responded, “I could tell; your skin is darker than most girls here. But that’s okay.” After mild revelry in his accuracy, he continued to observe, “Whaa, and your eyes are so big! So beautiful!” At this, the girls neither knew what to say nor were willing to respond. But luckily, at this moment, the subway car slowed into the girls’ destination, and they were able to avoid any more glib comments.

As we recall this incident of seven months ago, we’re able to look past the irksome sketchiness of it all and realize just how relevant skin color and eye shape are to many Asian people. Chances are, you have an Asian friend with a monolid, single eyelid, no eyelid, whatever you call it. In fact, 75 percent of Koreans and half of other East Asians are born without that permanent crease between brow and lash that characterizes large, round, Caucasian/Black/Hispanic eyes. Despite the widespread presence of single eyelids among Asians, many are still willing to fork out $2000 to have the crease surgically added, believing bigger equals better equals more beautiful. Blepharoplasty, as it is referred to in medical terms, is generally used to reduce signs of aging. It is also now the most popular surgical request in Asia. In Korea, sometimes proud parents will give their daughters double eyelid surgery as a graduation present. Heck, even Jackie Chan has had it done. (Withheld: comment on said Kung Fu professional as paradigm of Asian male beauty.)

The trend to get artificially bigger eyes is stirring up much fuss among older Asian-American generations who accuse their younger counterparts of meddling with their heritage to fit into Western ideals of beauty. But as long as there are constant influxes of Western movies and ads in Asia, it’ll always be easy to cast blame in this way and dub any expression of appearance alteration as internal racism. An even stronger argument for this comes from some criticism on the widespread use of whitening cream among Asian women. Walk into any pharmacy or cosmetic store in East Asia and you will be bombarded with skin-whitening agents of all sorts. An attempt to look more white? Maybe. Or how about just the perpetuation of a trend in Asia stretching far into ancient Chinese and Japanese history to a time when lightness of skin was an indicator that you didn’t have to go work the fields, therefore bestowing upon you a degree of wealth and status, and to a time when geisha assumed literally chalk white visages on the job? (Withheld: our opinion of the recent “Memoirs of a…”).

Overlooking for now the health/monetary concerns of these two procedures, what concerns us most is the social criticism surrounding these cosmetic alterations, the most obvious one being that Asian people are merely trying to look more “white.” This viewpoint disregards so many other cultural and historical factors that drive Asian men and women to prize these traits that may not necessarily concern influence from the West. Are we being too insensitive? Because we’d like to ask that for once, could those old fogies who constantly freak out about younger generations “denying their roots” please open their eyes to see the bigger picture? And by bigger, we mean they should look for the answer within their own societies. Asians who are flocking to whiten their skin and widen their eyes are following social cues they receive from their environment (and we’re not saying that’s a good thing either), which includes both Western and Asian media.

So, smarminess aside, that leathery man Meagan encountered was merely commenting on what, from the perspective of his Eastern society, is considered beautiful. But really, it was sketchy.

Linda and Meagan are sophomores. You can reach them at lhuang1@swarthmore.edu and mhu1@swarthmore.edu.

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