Asian Beauty

One day I was in the subway with my two Chinese friends, Karen and Willow.  I was standing close to Willow, listening to her tell a story when I noticed that she had a strip of flesh colored plastic on each of her eyelids. 

         Me: What is that on your eye? 

Both Willow and Karen looked at me like I was crazy. 

Karen: You’ve never seen this before?

Me: No, what is it?

Karen: Uh..you know that your eye has two layers, but mine has only one. So this helps make two layers.

Willow had put a product called, double eyelid tape, onto her eyes to create more depth and give them a look that is decidedly more Western…and I pretended it was normal but I was totally weirded out.
What's ever odder is that I've now noticed that Willow wears this tape everyday.  Even when she doesn't where foundation, or any other makeup those plastic strips are the one thing she doesn't leave the house without.

I’ve spent exactly no time thinking about the shape and depth of my eyelids, but since I came to China I’ve heard people talk about my “double eyelids” with much seriousness.  
And to tell you the truth it makes me a little uncomfortable when Chinese people make comments about my big American eyes, or my "curly hair". But it's clear that lots of Chinese people have ideas about Western attractiveness.    
For example, in my Chinese lesson last week I learned that the word for America in Chinese is Meiguo which literally means "beauty country".  

 







Once, in a discussion with Karen about how we both played with Barbie dolls when we were little  I found out that Karen has never seen an Asian doll in China. Ever.  WHAT?!  I over reacted a little bit in horror. How is it possible that in a country of 1.4 billion Asian people all of the dolls have blonde hair and blue eyes?

Me: Karen! You’d better make sure that your daughter has Asian dolls to play with!

She looked at me blankly.  “Why?”

Me: Because, if she is always being given dolls that are foreign and told that they are pretty then she’ll grow up thinking that there is something wrong with the way she looks!

Karen: I don’t think so, she is too young to know the difference.

Me: Not now, but it gets into your head! Why do you think all the makeup in the stores in China has whitening chemicals!

She tilted her head and looked at me like she had no idea what I was talking about and in that moment I could feel our culture gap widening into a chasm, so I dropped it.

For all the importance that is placed on appearance in American culture, I think that there is just as much education about developing a healthy self image, celebrating cultural differences, the psychology of raising children with high self-esteem, etc.       

Appearances mean a lot in China.  I have heard stories about parents wanting to switch their children into a different class because the teachers are prettier.  And when I discuss other people with my Chinese friends, invariably there is always a comment about how they look.
Once, Ben and I were having a discussion about a new manager that was training at our center and observing classes to practicing her feedback skills. The poor woman was way in over her head and during the feedback sessions she was giving us really inconsistent comments.  I asked Ben’s Chinese teaching partner what she thought of her and her assessment was, 
“Maybe she does not know about the classes, but you know I think she is pretty.”
And I hear this kind of thing all the time, lots of things that people do are condemned and then qualified with comment about how they look.