A Changing Ideal

So what’s in the future for Asian Americans and plastic surgery? Is it only going to get worse? Or is globalization, the rising economic power of Asia, and what some experts are calling the emerging international standard of beauty — one that transcends race, ethnicity and nationality — a sign of the changing times?
After decades of a predominance of a white beauty standard, Dr. Park finds that there is an emerging backlash in Asian cultures — particularly Japanese and Korean — of wanting a return to or rediscovery of what is originally “Japanese” or “Korean.” Asians have for too long tried to apply the white American standard to themselves, she says, and they’re realizing that it just doesn’t work. “I think [self esteem and beauty ideals] reflect the changing structure of the political economy,” she continues. “Now [that countries like Japan and Korea] are developed, they are able to look back and see what’s going on, what we have done to ourselves. … They can’t really apply the [standard] that Euro-American women apply.”
And as an anthropologist, Dr. Park sees this current obsession with Western beauty as just a phase. “Culture is forever changing,” she says. “Aesthetics and our body ideal, fortunately or unfortunately, always undergoes some kind of change, so I would say that the beauty ideal is socially and culturally constructed.” She cites the constant appropriation and borrowing of Asian aesthetics — whether they be Indian, Chinese, Japanese — in American and European art and design. “We are constantly borrowing and learning from each other.”
Indeed, as the world media becomes increasingly globalized with the proliferation of the Internet, the standard of beauty is expected to morph into something more multiracial and complex. But that doesn’t mean we can just passively sit back and wait for that change. Like the “Black is Beautiful” movement that African Americans went through in the 1970s, Dr. Park believes that the Asian American community needs to go through a similar transition. “We really have not had this kind of decolonizing movement … saying yellow is beautiful,” she says. “This may be only about aesthetics, but I think this is important, how we understand our bodies.” The Asian American community needs cultural workers, people in the media, to portray the diaspora of Asian American men as well as women, says Dr. Park, “so that people are able to see — it doesn’t look that bad, or it even looks beautiful.
“For example, I saw the movie Sideways,” she continues. “I don’t think Sandra Oh has double eyelids. I think that will be a really great thing. If she becomes very popular I’m sure it will impact other Asian American women here, [that] one doesn’t have to have a double eyelid.”
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Sure, maybe plastic surgery — and especially Asian blepharoplasty — does have its roots in a desire to conform to some sort of Western beauty standard. After all, the popularity of the procedure seems to have cropped up in history every time an Asian country had some sort of significant Western influence, whether it’s the Korean War or Commodore Perry’s opening of Japan to Western trade in 1868. And maybe Asian Americans, surrounded as we are by the blonde, blue-eyed standard of beauty that is traditionally American, can’t help but see ourselves through the lens of the round eye. But is that really different from what we would face if we were to live in, say, Japan, where a little pooch on a 115-pound body is cause for measures considered culturally taboo? Or if we were living during the Italian Renaissance when that same 115-pound frame would be cause for shame for its lack of rotundity?
What I take comfort in is the increasing desire of more and more Asian American women, if they do decide to undergo plastic surgery for whatever reason, to keep their ethnic identity, to maintain a look that is naturally Asian, whether it’s a more prominent nose or double eyelids or larger breasts. I don’t think there’s any doubt — here in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world — that the Asian face is indeed beautiful. Just look at the popularity of Zhang Ziyi, Lea Salonga, Aishwarya Rai. What is most important, I think, is that we as Asian American women embrace who we are, our ethnic and cultural heritage, and the beauty that may be found therein. Whether we decide to modify our physical appearance with liquid eyeliner, a magic straightening perm, or saline implants, hopefully such decision will be motivated simply by a desire to enhance what we already have, and not by a desire to deny who we are.
In fact, I don’t know about you, but lately I’ve been eyeing, with no small amount of envy, mind you, the long, lean eyes of such beauties as Devon Aoki, Malaysian-born model sisters Ling and Ein (most recently seen in the “I Am Ann Taylor” ad campaigns) and SuChin Pak. To me, the uncluttered and minimalist look of small, angled eyes against pale skin seems very modern, very urban, very much of the future. Hmm … I wonder how much that double eyelid reversal procedure would cost ….