That guy Ben Goldacre just blew my mind. What is the most popular cosmetic surgery in Asia? Blepharoplasty. Many people want to have the Western “double eyelid”, while I didn’t even know I had a double eyelid until I saw a few comparison pictures! In addition to plastic surgery, people buy cheap plastic gadgets to create a wrinkle, or use ugly do-it-yourself methods with acid and double eyelid tape (yes, there is such a product).
I am rather weirded out. A wrinkle I never even noticed before, or at least took for granted, is apparently a mark of beauty to some people who lack one. That’s just screwed up. Or, more interestingly, it’s an indication of how much attention people pay to the details of eyes.
This has been around for quite sometime- just not as widely known in the “west.” There’s also this story in the NY Times a few years ago:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E3DE1F31F936A35756C0A9649C8B63&scp=1&sq=china+height+increase&st=nyt
Americans aren’t the only ones obsessed with looks to the point of extremism (although we do kinda still come in first place).
Do they also want the Western early bags under the eyes?
Screw double eyelids! I want a nictitating membrane!
And the really sad part is, I think the asian eye is so much sexier.
Of course, they try and make the new eye look sexier by putting on makeup… That’s like the before and after acne photos where one is clearly completely clean-faced and the second has all kinds of make-up on it. I mean, it’s cheating!
The do-it-yourself bit is rather disturbing..
Hmmm Nice to have something other people want for a change.
Can you point me to an article where they envy our manboobs?
I was always troubled that asian anime characters had surreally large ” western” (occidental?) eyes.
Oh well, the other man’s glass is always cleaner…
I know a Korean teenager whose mom had it done on her when she was around twelve. Go figure!
A mark of beauty? I doubt that so much as it marks one as being a Westernophile.
Careful the things you wish for Geoff, they’re rarely what you hope for.
Considering animals are all genetically programed to seek out the eyes of other creatures, I suppose this isn’t entirely surprising. Interesting that the Eastern cultures are desiring the Western look.
But, “double eyelids” just sounds kind of creepy. Plus I prefer Vulcan ears, myself.
Maybe the procedure will work on Coulter and make her look like Godzilla. Sorry Godzy.
Dammit! Beat me to it. I hope you’re a good swimmer.
It seems a rather foolish change to me, since it lays them open to being identified as having become old when that upper eyelid bag sags down over the movable part of the lid. I suspect oriental eyes might otherwise age better in appearance than occidental ones. I can’t think of any obvious examples of potentially inscrutably ageless orientals for which to google for images though. Ghandi and Einstein might do as famous comparison oldies from other parts of the world but Confucius pre-dates photography. Perhaps it would be necessary to compare women rather than men anyway, since that’s the group judged more superficially.
I heard a ‘theory’ that Asian anime characters with the large eyes was in fact the eye envy that Asians have for the Western ocular feature…
It was…the Asian cartoon eye….a form of over compensation for their lack of visible eye area…
Eyes being the window of the soul in many cultures is and are very important to Asians today…and the early Asian cartoon companies were enamoured by the concept of large eyes…apparently a sign of wisdom and beauty!
No idea if that is true…possibly one of those pesky urban myths….but just believable!
Why, oh why would Asian beauties want to ruin my fantasies?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Is it just some liposuction?
I believe the Asian eyelid simply has more fat.
Shouldn’t be too surprising. There’s bound to be a bit of overlap between cultures.
Heh
Interesting. I just had to carefully inspect my (Asian) wife and (Eurasian) baby girl for their eyelid shapes- my wife has double eyelids, while my little girl doesn’t appear to. I guess that would make the single eyelid dominant and double eyelid recessive.
this kind of stuff seems pretty standard, in other aspects too: white women spend ridiculous amounts of money and time on tans to look darker, while dark-skinned women spend ridiculous amounts of time on bleaching their skin;
girls with straight hair get curls, while girls with curls get their hair straightened
etc.
the “other” in this case seems to have the allure of the exotic and is always more beautiful than what you already are.
This is similar to self racism effect. You hate what you are and I think the biggest culprit is the media which defines the beauty in terms which is foreign to most cultures and races. (Even beauty)
Watch this video and you will be shocked.
You know what they say: the eyes are the nipples of the face. http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2008/08/22/house_bunny/
Remember President Sukarno of Indonesia? I was in high school (in the sixties) when it was reported that his wife Dewi had had eye surgery to get that occidental look. I was grossed out by the idea that someone would have knives taken to her eyes for cosmetic rather than health reasons.
But, yes, it’s been around a long time.
But PZ, your heavily lidded eyes are one of your most adorable features! (Frankly, if something has to go..errr. those horns?)
My son has Japanese eyes while he’s sleeping but European while he’s awake. He’s inherited his basic eye shape from me, including I guess his eyelids but he’s got his distinctively Japanese looking eyebrows from his Mother (she plucks hers to a more distinctive line).
As a westerner currently living in central China, I was actually rather shocked by the degree to which being an average white guy made me attractive. It isn’t just double eyelids either, but height, pale skin, brown hair; all of these are idealized to a degree that is rather hard to express to someone who hasn’t lived here.
To an Asian perhaps our eyes seem very exotic, just as we would view their eyes. They are very distinctive. Who doesn’t want to be exotic, especially when you are being told constantly that beauty is the only road to happiness?
I’m a snow-white Canadian, and it seems that so many of us here want to look tanned and therefore “healthy”, even though you can spot the fake tans so easily. When I was in the Philippines, everyone there wants to be whiter — virtually all of their “health and beauty” products contain some kind of skin whiteners. I know people there who are literally worried and obsessed that they will not have light skin and it bothers them a lot. If you look at Philippine celebrities, most of them are light-skinned and have more of a Western look.
Do our attitudes reflect the media or does media reflect our attitudes? Lots of room for debate in that question.
I can’t see ruining a perfectly lovely asian eye – they are beautiful. But, in the before and after pictures, one woman has really, really obstructed eyes, and it might have been necessary for her just in terms of eye health (lashes getting stuck, bacterial growth etc). I don’t think everything is done just to look western. But it’s no occident that these procedures are being done. (sorry)
Perhaps with advancing gene technology we will not have to suffer the affects of aging. Cosmetic surgery is the crude form of self-imposed standards. So, maybe someday we will recognize that wrinkles, fat, blemishes, crooked joints, lost short-term or long-term memory are nothing that need be “suffered.”
We do the best with what we have – read about blood-letting for accepted and recommended treatments.
We are in yet another stage of development – hopefully pain to gain will become substance of the past.
AI @ #22
That is one very disturbing video. A perfect example of a need for consciousness raising.
Cmon, surely you remember Dr. Seuess and the Sneeches??
Too, right, Craig. When I lived in Indonesia, there were ads on TV selling skin-whiteners. I had trouble figuring out what the ads were about, because the subject was just taken for granted. That, and I’m from the American mid-west, the land of the tanning booth. The skin-whiteners were nasty stuff, too, which never got mentioned in the ads. Girls in fairly remote towns were using the stuff on their faces, and looking very scary.
In the depths of Mexico’s Copper Canyon, I once saw a poster featuring “the ideal woman”, who didn’t look a bit like the women of the town. She, too was light and white.
And back here in the USA, where white women date black men, there seem to be a lot of white men fascinated by Asian women. Someone once pointed out that they resemble children in a lot of ways, so there may be some odd motivations underlying some of these ideals.
Good Gravy! How many of these kids are blinded with this stuff
? Especially the do-it-yourself, I shudder and weep.
I want a nictitating membrane for my glasses.
…and utterly fail. Urgh. Just for the record.
Public opinion or published opinion?
I think that beauty ideals have less to do with what is “exotic” and more to do with what shows high social status. Tans (for white people) are desirable because they suggest wealth: one must have some privilege to have the leasure to spend time outside tanning, or one has to have money to take vacations to sunny regions, etc. And, sadly, caucasian features are a mark of high social status.
“Someone once pointed out that they resemble children in a lot of ways”.
Do they resemble children in ways that aren’t over-generalizing and racist?
I’m all for this. I think it’s great that science allows us to look the way we want.
Beware of Rule 34.
Addressing the above posters stating that Anime characters have “western” eyes. I have read that the simplified anime face, big eyes, small chin, no nose, is so far down from the uncanny valley that viewers tend to simply assign it to their “default” race. In other words Westerners see them as western faces, Japanese see them as Japanese, Chinese as Chinese.
Apparently it is convention in Anime to use those standard faces for the core group in the story, then use markers to denote any different persons. So if the Anime is set in Japan, all the Japanese characters will have the standard face and others will be marked (big noses for white Americans, pronounced lips for Black Americans, slanted eyes for Chinese and Korean). Where if the Anime is set in the US, the white Americans are unmarked and the Japanese characters get slightly slanted eyes and straight black hair.
As for anime/manga eyes, it’s pretty well-accepted that Osamu Tezuka, the father of all manga and grandfather of all anime, was heavily influenced by Disney movies, all of which feature characters with quite prominent ocular appendages. But you don’t see anyone running around saying “Look at the bug eyes on Ariel! Those Westerners must wish they had giant googly eyes!”
jeezwheez man!
i have an even better idea, people who’d like to procreate and perpetuate our species should go about doing so with someone completely different to the way they look, so, e.g., the so called “mongoloid” type would go with the so called “caucasoid” type and the so called “negroid” type would go with both the “mongoloid” and the “caucasoid”. Would that resolve our weird obsessions and lack of self-acceptance? :-)
@ Muhamad #42:
I recall there being a prediction that, since world travel has prevented human speciation continuing the way it had been going (with isolation of various groups having distinctive traits), the future would be dominated by “delightfully coffee-coloured people” (from the mixing of traits).
Zar at #36 is on the right track, but not quite. Yes, this is far more about social status than about liking the exotic. But in postcolonial countries, the intensity of self hatred that propels such behavior is of Uncle Ruckusian proportions, and cannot really be considered equivalent to the desire for a tan as a mark of social status in white society, except to some mild extent.
Am I the only white woman on the planet who’s perfectly happy being pale?
Actually, I do wish I had slightly more melanin, but that’s only because sunscreen makes me itch, and I’d like to be able to go out in the summer (and enjoy that nice warm weather) for longer than about five minutes without burning to a crisp. The point is, I don’t want to have darker skin because I think it looks nice.
(Actually, it doesn’t look nice — nobody ever heard of photoaging around here? People with pale skin who tan heavily wind up looking fifty by the time they’re thirty-five. I’m 34 and enjoy still being mistaken for an undergraduate…)
nope, i’m perfectly happy being pale, too. tho in summer that means being slathered from top to bottom in SPF 65
strangest brew @16
Osamu Tezuka, the father of Manga is credited with the big eyes of Manga. He says he got the idea from Betty Boop, Bambi And Micky Mouse. He considered eyes were the most expresive part of the face, so he tried to draw them the biggest posible. Probalby he also was influenced by the uses of the eyes in the No theather.
Actually, I think gluing you eyelids to get that double-lid-look is fairly harmless. Some of us girls glue fake lashes, little gems or the like on, so go ahead.
There is nothing wrong with optimizing yourself as long as it is only optimizing.
But the Do-it-yourself-Thing is really disturbing. That’s self mutilation, pure and simple, and the person who invented that might suffer from body dysmorpic disorder or at least extremely low self-esteem.
What we desire is genetic. Asian women don’t appeal to me. I have no problem with them as people but I find their faces inexpressive and boring. It doesn’t cause me to turn my head. It’s not a logic argument about what is beautiful but I’m attracted to what my ancestor’s were attracted to.
Mostly true, though I have found that there are women from all cultures who I find appealing as individuals, even though I find women from certain cultures to be more appealing in general than from others.
a friend of mine is korean. when she was six years old, her mother had a friend come over to the house to perform the surgery on her eyes to make them westernized. i can’t imagine being a child having such a thing done. my friend says in korea it is an extremely common procedure for children.
“I’m attracted to what my ancestor’s were attracted to”
Me too.
I guess that means my ancestors were attracted to hot latinas, curvaceous scandinavians, athletic africans and pretty asians.
They just didn’t get to meet that many of them in Ireland.
simple occident of birth.
(ahem).
“What we desire is genetic.” What’s your evidence? Does everyone really pick a mate who looks like the corresponding parent? Doesn’t the frequency of cross-racial* relationships undermine your assertion?
And really, does everyone mate and reproduce with someone they find attractive? Historically, especially for women, that’s not exactly been the case.
*Whatever we mean by “race.”
Wow. The premise is wrong, and the conclusion doesn’t follow even from the flawed premise! It’s like answering the question “Why did Napoleon cross the Mississippi?” by “to be closer to God”.
Human speciation had not been going. The so-called races all intergrade geographically: it takes all the way from the Caspian Sea to Mongolia to get from unambiguously European-looking to unambiguously Asian-looking people, and a similar situation exists in and around Ethiopia.
No matter how close we’ll come to panmixia, we won’t reach phenotypic uniformity. Heredity is digital, not analogous. And besides, skin color is determined by no less than six genes and eye color by three, so even the first generation of panmixia wouldn’t be uniform!
Check out what people look like in really mixed places like the Cape Verde islands. You’re in for an enormous surprise — if, that is, you don’t know that heredity is digital.
(Please, SEF, don’t think I’m singling you out. The prediction does of course exist; I’ve encountered it in print several times. It’s just so glaringly… not even wrong.)
Either lots and lots of mutations happen there all the time, or it’s more complicated than that.
But, “double eyelids” just sounds kind of creepy. Plus I prefer Vulcan ears, myself.
Don’t Vulcan’s have a double eyelid? It kept Spock from going blind in that episode with the flying omelets.
I’m so proud I know that. :-(
Huh? You can’t even prove that for gender, much less race. Bet you’d try to make the same claim for body fat? And, does that mean you still desire the 14-year olds you desired in middle school?
Incidentally, I was greatly surprised when my wife said she like American eyes not because they were large, but because they were slanted — downwards.
/
>
—-
I wouldn’t have believed it, but she’s basically right: Japanese eyes (and perhaps other Asians as well) actually do not slant generally — they just go straight to the side. It only looks like a slant because of what we’re used to seeing.
My 5-year old has both the thick epicanthic layer and eyes that “slant” downwards.
I think you can find that double eyelid tape at Staples. It’s between the masking tape and those desktop tape dispensers.
When I was in Thailand last summer, I was shocked to discover how the whole pale-skin, wide-eyed look was heavily promoted, even in remote villages. I was teaching street hockey to boys but had to turn female students away because they kept stopping the game to powder themselves a shade paler! (They’re not allowed to use cosmetics in school but they do it anyways.)
It was amusing at first… But after 3 days, I started confiscating their compacts. I blame their TV’s, mostly. There is a huge bias in favor of starlets who are mixed (Caucasian+Asian).
There was a documentary on Canadian television like 10 years ago, about this. Fascinating and disturbing.
(just looked it up: Western Eyes, directed by Ann Shin — 2000)
Some part of what we desire is genetic – as evidenced by homosexuality. But when it comes to particular traits of a sexual partner whether homo or hetero, social norms play a far stronger role than we realize or acknowledge. A few dismissive comments directed at a particular demographic by our parents, elders, and peers when we are very young could turn us off the entire demographic if we don’t have a strong inclination either way toward that demographic.
an Asian female friend of mine had this surgery, but her eyes were previously mismatched. She had one Western-style, and one with no wrinkle.
@ 45 and 46: I like being pale, too. I have to mix my face powder with baby powder. I’m so pale that my mom, who wore serious glasses, could pick me out of group pictures by looking for the unnatural glow emanating from the group of faces. My grandmother always said my natural pallor and dark hair made me look “like a princess,” so I never minded. My dad used to joke that I had the Hungarian vampire genes of the family. I do actually tan, but it only makes me look normal, so it almost doesn’t count.
Ooh, yes. Our eyes are so much better. I hear older people whine about “crow’s feet” and I think, “I don’t see them as so bad.”
Anyway, they better not be a sign of aging. I’m only 19 and I’ve already had slight crow’s feet for a couple years.
A lot of beauty is status driven. When western peasants were outdoors in the field, the ideal was pale skin. When a tan required leisure and money, and the lower classes started working indoors in factories, the ideal was tanned. Likewise when food was scarcer, being Rubenesque was beautiful. While now when the lower classes eat junk food, being almost skeletal is the ideal.
I think eye surgery is sad, but no sadder than boob jobs and face lifts and nose jobs and all the rest of the western “beauty” surgery.
BTW, we’ve got a major anti-tanning campaign going on in Australia at the moment. See http://www.darksideoftanning.com.au/ Yucky animated melanoma cells burrowing down into your bloodstream. Huge wodges of skin being removed in surgery.
I totally agree with #3 and #4. A nictitating membrane would be fun and Asian guys are kinda hot.
GBM@27: my sister was in China in 1994 or so and one of the people in her group was blonde. Kids wanted to touch her hair. Cute, but still…
My son is Korean; when we were adopting him, I ran across a book from the 50s that talked about adopting from Korea. It assured parents-to-be that they could have surgery performed on the child’s eyelids so that the eyes would be “normal”. I found that pretty horrifying.
When the Offspring was little, I used a Korean dry cleaner – the owner’s mother doted on my son, and used to rave about his eyes – which are far more western looking [we suspect strongly that there’s a mix of genes in there – he also has very curly hair] – and compare my son’s to her son’s [the more classic Asian look], with her son losing out.
My mom’s family (aunts and granny) have been trying for YEARS to get me to agree to the eyelid surgery, even offering to pay for it. Me, I kinda think it’s sorta false advertising, genetically speaking.
What this is indicative of is how much cultural brain-washing we’re all subjected to, and how cruel that brain-washing is in regard to women and the way we don’t value ourselves.
@ Interrobang: No, you’re not the only woman who’s proud of her pale skin. I have the skin color I was born with, look about a decade younger than I am, and am free from sickening liver spots. People who look good with brown skin should know that from being born with it. However, many of them don’t.
There are women in African nations who poison themselves with mercury because they think they aren’t good enough with dark skin, and women in the U.S. and Europe who die of skin cancer because they think they’re supposed to have brown skin.
Meanwhile, girls and young women die because they can never be thin enough. And when we are thin, our breast aren’t big enough. No matter what we are or what we do, we can never measure up. And even if we know that, sick unrealistic ideals still infiltrate most of our brains. (I wish I could claim to be an exception, but I’m not, although my skin color is one of the physical attributes that I do accept about myself.)
What can we do? We’re being crippled and murdered partly to keep us in a lesser position in society, but also for profit. But this is done by infiltrating our minds, so we’re made accomplices to our own destruction. We’re fighting for the power over our own minds.
I may be the only one here who isn’t in on that joke. Without googling, I would assume that such an organ would save me a ton of money on cigarettes.
Enjoy.
While taking a walk in the Chinese city of Dalian in 1989, I came across a plastic surgery clinic where the eye surgery was being done. I know this because all the windows were opened and a vast crowd had assembled to watch. They did other work there too, judging from the not-for-the-squeamish posters.
All this outrage over young Asian girls who have had parents that have done this surgery to their eyes seems misplaced when you see young children in the USA with their ears pierced. I can see no difference. Or, if there’s a difference, it’s cultural.
At least Asian parents aren’t reshaping their children’s heads like the Mayas use to do.
Ahh… the good old days. For your further edification:
http://studentwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~l_king/Headshapingtwocultures.htm
At least the Asian parents aren’t reshaping the heads of their children like the Maya use to do. And I’ve seen plenty of young girls with pierced ears in America! I see little difference in this.
The eyelid attraction is due to Asian women perceiving Western features as more attractive. It’s not the only thing they change in themselves though. An older lady gave me this Japanese women’s magazine from the 70’s, which had a plastic surgery pamphlet in it. The pamphlet showed women adding silicone implants to the bridge of their nose, to their cheek bones and chin. Some Asians have broad and flat-looking faces, so they also “saw off” the posterior parts of the mandible in order to make their faces rounder.
I also thought it was ridiculous and weird to artificially change so may features in themselves. Some Asian women are extremely attractive without having to look Western. But Asians also get to watch Western movies that glamorize a specific Western look, so they start desiring those looks. I think that Asian women treat themselves just a tad better nowadays, but they still have ads that feature Western women, and certain fashion magazines tend to barely portray Asian women in their ads.
But I think it’s not only an Asian phenomena, it’s also Western. Notice there’s a Hollywood cookie-cutter look that’s considered more attractive, such as looking incredibly thin, having straight hair, and youthful features. Women generally want to emulate this look to the degree that they can (botox, dieting and exercise).
Personally, I feel more comfortable watching European movies and television because they are more willing to portray women who are heavier set or have higher noses. There’s no such thing as perfection, why push it?
The eyelid attraction is due to Asian women perceiving Western features as more attractive. It’s not the only thing they change in themselves though. An older lady gave me this Japanese women’s magazine from the 70’s, which had a plastic surgery pamphlet in it. The pamphlet showed women adding silicone implants to the bridge of their nose, to their cheek bones and chin. Some Asians have broad and flat-looking faces, so they also “saw off” the posterior parts of the mandible in order to make their faces rounder.
I also thought it was ridiculous and weird to artificially change so may features in themselves. Some Asian women are extremely attractive without having to look Western. But Asians also get to watch Western movies that glamorize a specific Western look, so they start desiring those looks. I think that Asian women treat themselves just a tad better nowadays, but they still have ads that feature Western women, and certain fashion magazines tend to barely portray Asian women in their ads.
But I think it’s not only an Asian phenomena, it’s also Western. Notice there’s a Hollywood cookie-cutter look that’s considered more attractive, such as looking incredibly thin, having straight hair, and youthful features. Women generally want to emulate this look to the degree that they can (botox, dieting and exercise).
Personally, I feel more comfortable watching European movies and television because they are more willing to portray women who are heavier set or have higher noses. There’s no such thing as perfection, why push it?
69: Add me to the list of Those Who Avoid the Sun. My sister, who is 4 years younger than I, spent most of her youth tanning and is now spending a great deal of $$$ on laser peels, glycolic acid peels, etc. in order to repair the leather her skin became. People usually peg me as the younger sibling; I attribute that to lesser skin damage.
Funny how aesthetics change – back in the 18th/19th centuries, toxic skin-whiteners resulted in arsenic and mercury poisoning. Nowadays, we have skin cancers and other damage from overexposure to sun/tanning beds. I wonder what will afflict the 22nd century folk. Or whether there will be any 22nd century folk…
69: Add me to the list of Those Who Avoid the Sun. My sister, who is 4 years younger than I, spent most of her youth tanning and is now spending a great deal of $$$ on laser peels, glycolic acid peels, etc. in order to repair the leather her skin became. People usually peg me as the younger sibling; I attribute that to lesser skin damage.
Funny how aesthetics change – back in the 18th/19th centuries, toxic skin-whiteners resulted in arsenic and mercury poisoning. Those ladies would have fled in terror at the thought of a tanning booth. I wonder what will afflict the 22nd century folk. Or whether there will be any 22nd century folk…
The eyelid attraction is due to Asian women perceiving Western features as more attractive. It’s not the only thing they change in themselves though. An older lady gave me this Japanese women’s magazine from the 70’s, which had a plastic surgery pamphlet in it. The pamphlet showed women adding silicone implants to the bridge of their nose, to their cheek bones and chin. Some Asians have broad and flat-looking faces, so they also “saw off” the posterior parts of the mandible in order to make their faces rounder.
I also thought it was ridiculous and weird to artificially change so may features in themselves. Some Asian women are extremely attractive without having to look Western. But Asians also get to watch Western movies that glamorize a specific Western look, so they start desiring those looks. I think that Asian women treat themselves just a tad better nowadays, but they still have ads that feature Western women, and certain fashion magazines tend to barely portray Asian women in their ads.
But I think it’s not only an Asian phenomena, it’s also Western. Notice there’s a Hollywood cookie-cutter look that’s considered more attractive, such as looking incredibly thin, having straight hair, and youthful features. Women generally want to emulate this look to the degree that they can (botox, dieting and exercise).
Personally, I feel more comfortable watching European movies and television because they are more willing to portray women who are heavier set or have higher noses. There’s no such thing as perfection, why push it?
Crap. Sorry about the repeat posts. I kept getting error messages for replying. :(
Bah! Ridiculous!
Clearly, those flying eggs were fried, not scrambled.
FWIW, I married a woman who perfectly matches a written description of my mother, whom I never met, and about whom I knew exactly nothing until I was 45 years old. Oddly, my wife isn’t really my physical “type”, according to my dating history. Go figure. (I realize this proves nothing, but it’s kinda cool.)
As for our “genetic” attractions, I can see some evolutionary benefit to being attracted to people who are similar, but not identical, to ones self. This basic tendency expresses itself over the wide range of appearance that occurs in humanity.
You have eyes, PZ?
I thought those were just slits that emitted anti-creationist rays.
Kung Fu superstar Jackie Chan is said to have had blepharoplasty done in the 70’s. It sure does look that way and who knows it, it might actually have helped his career.
Now, is there a reverse procedure? I wonder how it would look on me.
79: So did I – it told me that it couldn’t post my comment, but posted it twice.
I think you should try a good monster etc movie make-up department rather than risk surgery. Or you could go down the even cheaper and safer photo-manipulation route.
Betty Boop eh? But she wasn’t Asian. The manga characters are how the Japanese perceive themselves, as not Asian. It’s pathetic and judging by the comments here, I seem to be the only Asian commenting. The eye thing is cultural cringe at its worst.
Tim, a nictating membrane is a third, transparent eyelid that can sometimes be seen in cats.
I have no problems with someone who undergoes minor inconvenience to have hair straightened or curled, but I find it sad when people take more drastic measures, especially to disguise their background. This includes taking a knife to eyelids and using skin lighteners, which are illegal in southern Africa because they can cause serious problems including very disfiguring blotchy skin.
Obviously part of the reason for trying to change appearance is status but I’m not sure it is only that. My understanding is that large eyes have been valued in Chinese culture for a long time. A (very) black 10-year-old told me she wished she had lighter skin but it seemed it was just because it would give more scope for using make-up.
#49
Ridiculous. Only an oppressed male would say something like that? HEALTHY single males desire whatever it is we haven’t had, and preferably different from whatever we had last, sexually speaking, of course.
Once you run out of energy, then you settle down into rational behavior.
I generally regard people changing the way they look such that they’re clearly trying to change their “race” to be pretty disturbing. I just wish people would be more comfortable with who they are.
I am a very pale guy, and whenever we see this one friend of my Asian wife, she laughs at me and tells me I need to work on my tan. It actually pisses me off. She didn’t do it the last time I saw her, but I’m saving up my lecture for when it inevitably does.
I think our kids are adorable. One’s 11, one’s 14, and they’re both so cute… And I can’t tell they’re half-Chinese. They even burn like I do. But these kids get so wrapped up in their looks. I’m sincere when I tell my daughter she’s gorgeous, but she doesn’t see herself that way.
I’d be horrified if I came home and found them performing procedures on each other, but since they both have “Western” eyes, I don’t expect they will.
For the record, when I “work on my tan”, I just get redder and redder. There’s just no combination of MikeM and “Healthy Tan” in this particular universe. I’m pale, and if this causes people a problem, the problem is theirs, not mine. I just don’t want to get cancer — period.
I hike, I cycle, I ski, I’m outside a lot… And I manage to maintain my own healthy hue — pale. Which ain’t easy to do when you live in Northern California. Mondo opportunities every day to turn tomato red.
Maybe there are genetic sources for attraction – which might make sense, considering there seems to be a mix of people who desire ‘people who look like thems’ and ‘people who look nothing like them’. IAMNA evolutionary biologist, but that strikes me as being a reasonable kind of variation.
It’s a bit of both for me. I seem to be attracted to women of my mother’s (and my own) stature (average height, small-boned) but not facial features and/or hair. Especially hair; my family all have curly hair, which I find repellent – both on me and on others. Dead-straight is, to me, far more appealing.
I hate to blow your minds away, Westerners, but it really has nothing to do with your Western eyes.
Why are blondes more prized than brunettes? Why are red-heads more prized than blondes? It’s the scarcity!
When 3.5 billion folk have single-lidded eyes, it’s the double-lidded ones that stand out.
I’m Chinese and have double-lidded eyes – my eyes have been commented on since birth by stooped old chinese old men and women who’d spit on a foreigner, not prize their looks.
I’m sure scarcity is a factor, resigned idealist, but it can’t be the only factor, right?
I mean, a cleft lip is scarce (occuring in around 1 in 600-800 births) but people aren’t going to plastic surgeons to get them.
@91 LOL Lowell… you got me there.
But seriously, 43 years ago as a child, I was constantly told that it was because so few people had that look… that I was blessed.
I’m actually surprised that there was no tie-in with fortune because everything else considered “beautiful” were also considered to be “bring in fortune.” Fat palms, fat earlobes, fat cheeks all were considered to be beautiful (by the old men and women) because well, they were all indications of good luck as well. (Guess this ties in with the social status mentioned in #65 and elsewhere)
Resigned idealist: A lot of Asians have double-lidded eyes, especially in the Southeastern part of the continent (us Thai, Lao, Burmese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Pinoy, Malay, Indonesian people… y’know). It really isn’t that scarce… unless you were only referring to China, which I admit I know nothing about.
Test
Test
THIS guy has the weird eyes!
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/mirroreyes.html
THIS guy has the weird eyes!
Spookfish
I lived and worked in Asia 9 (South Korea specifically) for just under 3 years. These procedures and devices are extremely common place though most women who’ve had it done won’t discuss it openly. There is a very large subculture devoted to plastic surgery in general. Some of it is… strangely intersting and disturbing.
Ok well that was strange, getting odd errors when trying to post and they didn’t show up.
Now…
they are there.
sorry for the spaz out
And the crazy thing is, here in the west so many men worship Asian women.
I’m not convinced “worship” is the right word. I’d heard that at least some of it was in expectation that they might still behave more like domestic/sex slaves than those uppity western women will. I.e. the “liberated” females who are somewhat like uppity atheists in not knowing their supposed place in the imaginary hierarchy any more.
There seems to be an awful lot of double posts in this thread.
While there’s no doubt a cultural imitation aspect to the procedure, the extra fold is rather important for makeup. It lets the upper lid show when the eyes are open, so that it can be contrasted with the color under the brow to allow for a greater variety of styles than the Asian eye can have. So the looks that the wrinkle allows are the mark of beauty, not the wrinkle itself.
There seems to be an awful lot of double posts in this thread.
I’ve lived most of my life in Japan, so have seen and heard much on the topic.
The shocked discussions of “inferiority complexes” and “Asians wanting to look like Caucasians” often get something backward, IMHO. Those people in Asia who opt for the eyelid surgery etc. aren’t thinking “I want to look Caucasian; give me whatever features that implies”. Rather, they’re looking at certain desired features and asking for that – and if those features happen to be seen as more common in Caucasians, then inevitably words like “Caucasian” or “Western” will be used to describe the feature.
It may seem a subtle point to some, but there it is: the goal is certain features (which may get labeled “Western”), not “Western” per se. Although the labels invariably become “Caucasian vs Asian eyelids”, those getting the surgery just want bigger eyes. Not because big eyes are “Western”, but because humans (for some reason) like big eyes.
Note that obesity is also a very common “Caucasian” trait in modern times, yet no one in Asia is going to the surgeon saying “ooh, give me that!” Again, whatever the labels that get attached to the discussions, what people really want is certain idealized features, not simply “Caucasian”.
(Meanwhile, over in “the West”, Caucasians who think they need it are asking surgeons for the same things some Asians ask for: bigger eyes, bigger boobs, better cheekbones, whatever. So much for inexplicable differences!)
Finally, on cartoons from Japan: Explanations that the big-eyed characters are meant to look “Western” seem nonsensical to me – simply because the hyper-stylized characters *don’t* look “Western”. Or “Eastern”, or like beings from any other arbitrarily-named direction. They look like cartoon characters. Period. Nothing funny going on that I can see.
In short: In the absence of proof otherwise, I’ll champion simple explanations over convoluted “inferiority complex” suppositions.
Homejapan, nice post.
Its rather amusing reading the previous posts that said much more about the prejudices of the commenters than any actual hard evidence of the matter at hand. Why are people talking about ‘caucasian’ or ‘western’ idealism? Only a minority of people who have this particular eye feature happen to be caucasian. I tend to agree with those who say the idea behind the operation is that it is a way to produce bigger eyes – a feature that almost all cultures view as more attractive compared to smaller eyes.
“Betty Boop eh? But she wasn’t Asian.” Nor was she even human in her first on-screen appearance!
@ #90 resignedidealist
I think his comment has some merit. It’s more likely that an inferiority complex is a Western ethnocentric idea. The fact that a trait is scarce and therefore more attractive, probably makes more sense for Asians. I spoke about Hollywood movies due to personal experience however. In Mexico, it seems men go crazy about blondes. There are blondes in Mexico, but it’s rather rare. Therefore, it’s really exotic. I still feel that the attractive depiction of caucasian women in movies and TV in Mexico, makes them more attractive in the minds of some Mexicans. Maybe.
I don’t really buy the fact that “people are attracted to what they inherited genetically.” I get the impression that that is an old idea based on old racial prejudices (not absolutely, but somewhat). I think some men get infatuated with genetic traits in women that they don’t poses. And this is not only on a “race”-basis, but also (for example) white blonde men toward white women with red or dark hair or darker skin. I’ve also known caucasian men who grew up around Asian women, and seem to prefer them exclusively, probably just out of exposure.
I don’t know if anyone has explored this, but if genetic variation favors better immune systems, wouldn’t people be attracted to others with obvious genetic differences in a higher degree? It’s a research I would like to hear done. But maybe it’s inconsequential to individual preferences.
What we desire is genetic.
I don’t know if that’s all of it. Some of it is cultural. I used to not find Asian men attractive, but, after a steady diet of Asian films and TV shows, I find them all over the place now, and it’s created some amusing incidents in real life. Some of the local Japanese college students are brazen little devils!
I don’t think that’s a male thing only. Believe me. ;)
Yeah, and white people get tans because they feel inferior to blacks. LOL. A black girl on my block actually told me that, after several other racist comments.
I very much doubt it has anything to do with white envy.
@111Yeah, and white people get tans because they feel inferior to blacks
And some of us never tan, we are collectively known as the Irish. :}
What does all this have to do with Ben Goldacre?
I’m not sure whether this is more insulting to me or my Japanese girlfriend who obviously isn’t physically attractive enough to get a guy without also being a completely submissive domestic servant who does what she’s told.
I’ve heard very similar statements many times from western women and it always reminds me of white guys grasping for reasons why they see all those white women dating black guys. There has to be some sort of explanation!
My girlfriend IS liberated – she’s also smart, she’s funny, she’s sweet and she’s beautiful. The submissive sex slave stuff is just a bonus.
Ironically, I have been told by her, her friends and my female co-workers here in Tokyo that one of the reasons that Japanese girls are attracted to western guys is because we have a reputation for respecting them and treating them much better than typical Japanese men.
What you are describing sounds more like “Why do some western men get mail order brides from Asia?” than “Why are white guys attracted to Asian women?”.
I echo “Homeinjapan” above: saying that they’re theying to “emulate” western-looking eyes is nonsense. Have a read of Laura Miller’s Beauty Up, starting from page 115, for the details.
And to quote what someone on BoingBoing said when this self-congratulatory ethnocentrism stuff came up there:
In “Beauty Up” Laura Miller cites that according to recent data, most Japanese people already have a double epicanthic fold, so eyelid-glue creasing as a beauty practice actually emulates Japanese conventions of beauty, NOT Western conventions. The double-eyelid widens the eye, making it “more expressive” in the views of many young Japanese (she cites the influence of manga & anime: think how big anime/manga eyes are). This is just another example of ethnocentrism on our parts. I cannot quote her word for word, but she basically says something to effect of, “Japanese youth are not thinking of Britney Spears when creasing their eyelids, they are thinking of Ayumi Hamasaki.”
I think you missed the phrasing, “some of” in what you quoted, and how qualifying it that way doesn’t mean it says anything about all Anglo-Asian relationships, or even a majority of them.
Unfortunately, there are some men who value submission from women above traits like intelligence, kindness, wittiness, exuberance, etc. American men who value it might find American women too “uppity” for their tastes (even Southern conservative Christian women and convent-raised girls), and European women too urbane (can’t have ’em bein’ smarter ‘n’ ya!).
Do all men fall into this paradigm? Of course not! But it would be foolish to deny that a percentage of men have this inordinate need for submission from females. Since the average man who thinks that nonsense is usually extremely ignorant, he knows only what he “hears,” not facts, so he’s “heard” that Asian women are submissive. He doesn’t know it.
@#116 Aquaria
There’s this excellent episode of “Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends” where he interviews British men who are interested in finding Thai wives. Their reasons were their impression that Thai women are more submissive and “lady-like” than independent Western women. I was looking for the segment where that quote is, but I think BBC made a channel on youtube and had those segments taken out. Now unfortunately, there’s only a portion of the episode:
@115 Calton Bolick
Thanks for the link for the book. That’s excellent.
Not that I don’t think that it is ethnocentric and even *egocentric* to believe that Asians want to emulate Western aesthetics, but I wonder if maybe that tendency *used* to exist in previous generations. Such as post-WWII. I say this because in my own (Latino) culture there was this huge perceived influence, that media and status influences what people saw as desirable. It may be no longer true or it was just an inflated myth.
@#114 Shaun
I can corroborate that Western men are more egalitarian and respectful. It does make them more attractive; at least to me personally. :/
I find it rather unfortunate that so many people will go under the knife for the sake of vanity. The procedure I find particularly off-putting is breast augmentation. Those things really look like they hurt.
As for attraction to Asians, I grew up in southeast Asia, so Asia has never been exotic to me. To me, Asians look like my neighbors and the kids I went to school with. As a kid, I really didn’t think of Asians as being a different race. I spoke Chinese, I went to a Chinese school in Singapore, and the kids I was around were middle-class, just like my family.
I recall one Japanese-American woman I dated several years ago telling me that she appreciated the fact that I don’t have the “Asian fetish”. Her take on the fetish was “Oh, great. That makes me interchangeable with how many billion other women?”
-jcr
Neither. You’re making the mistake of going from a slight trend in general to taking it personally – just like Steven Pinker’s 80% baldness, for which he’s evidently in the 20% non-bald subset! It simply doesn’t work that way round.
I’ve heard that too (and don’t regard it as ironic). But it wasn’t the direction of things which the originally posted comment (#100) was addressing (and hence to which I was replying). That’s the female’s opinion of the male not the male’s opinion of the female. It might even have some truth to it (eg from those uppity western females succeeding in at least partially civilising the males in their culture).
However, it’s interesting that it potentially amplifies the situation by making such an alliance look like a win-win (even if the reality experienced by individuals is not the same as the general expectation). With both of those opinions being in general currency, one should see more asian female to western male alliances than western female to asian male ones. Anyone got any stats?
When I lived in Indonesia, there were ads on TV selling skin-whiteners.
I lived in Indonesia in the early 1970s, and the ads I recall from that time were mostly for Aji-no-Moto (a popular japanese brand of monosodium glutamate), Honda scooters, and some cologne endorsed by Charles Bronson.
I really should visit the country again sometime and see how it’s changed.
-jcr
At least the Asian parents aren’t reshaping the heads of their children like the Maya use to do.
Not sure if it’s still going on, but that wasn’t unheard of in Asia in the 70s. I heard stories about it happening in parts of Malaysia and Indonesia.
-jcr
The comparison pictures are using the usual trick – the pictures with the “Asian” eyes are pictures of the people without make up, their hair slightly dishevelled and they might or might not have been asked not to smile. Of course in the second pictures, there’s always make up, tidy hair and maybe a slight smile below the cropping.
Yes, yes, I know you all know this already, but I think that under equal conditions, the Asian eyes would have looked prettier. Japanese eyes require a different make up than European ones, but really… it’s so very pretty on them. As my girlfriend said: “We always want what we don’t have.”
How very odd. My wife teaches English to foreign students here in the UK, among them many Koreans. She was told that _not_ having the wrinkle was a mark of beauty – yet it seems to many it is the opposite way around.
Phil @85: If it’s down to perception, then why do ukiyo-e pictures not have big manga-like eyes? Have perceptions changed that much in Japan in so short a time?
Pat @ 96, 97: That link is awesome!!
#121 – It wasn’t un-heard of in Asia from at least the 50s – as attested by a scene from 1957’s “Sayonara”. Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki both won supporting actor Oscars for playing a husband (American serviceman) and wife, and he is outraged when he discovers she’s carrying an advertisement for such surgery.
#121 – It wasn’t un-heard of in Asia from at least the 50s – as attested by a scene from 1957’s “Sayonara”. Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki both won supporting actor Oscars for playing a husband (American serviceman) and wife, and he is outraged when he discovers she’s carrying an advertisement for such surgery.
You think that’s bad. I knew, without having to look it up, that the name of that episode is “Operation: Annihilate!” (complete with punctuation).
Sad.
Then I’d better say in public that I’ve never seen a lid shadow that was an improvement.
Nice to see you cyber-here, BTW.
As an artist, you’d think I would have noticed eye lid differences. Well, back to the sketch book for me.
I had never known about this until my lab-mate (who is from Japan) told it to me. I was shocked. I always thought that the single lid was part of what made Asian people seem to look more youthful (that double lid sags!) even in the woman’s “golden years.”
To No. 3, regarding nictitating membrane; that is precious!
#20
Wouldn’t the fact that both you and your wife have double eyelids, but are able to have a child with single eyelids mean the double eyelid trait is the dominant one.
I’m Korean, and while it’s true that eyelid surgeries are performed mostly for beauty purposes, there are other reasons for them as well. Single eyelids sag with age just like double eyelids, and both my father and uncle had the surgery done when they were in their 60’s because their droopy eyelids were interfering with their vision. Former Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun had the surgery performed on his eyelids for the same reason while he was in office.
“How very odd. My wife teaches English to foreign students here in the UK, among them many Koreans. She was told that _not_ having the wrinkle was a mark of beauty – yet it seems to many it is the opposite way around.”
I think that’s a more recent trend of the younger generation of Korean kids trying to rediscover and reassert their Korean-ness in the globalized world. (Maybe it’s comparable to how African Americans stopped trying to use nasty chemicals to straighten their hair and began sporting afros during the ’60’s.) For example, Korean singer Rain (most of you might know of him because of Stephen Colbert) once said in an interview that he believes his best advantage in trying to make it in the American entertainment market is the fact that he DOESN’T have double eyelids.
P.A.T. @#100
>And the crazy thing is, here in the west so many men worship Asian women.
But you can also see that it’s partly because they look _exotic_. You know, how it is: things are better when they come from far away, whether it’s Miss Zhang Ziyi (sorry, now billed as Ziyi Zhang, which draws a nailfile across my nerves) in the West or John Smith in the East. As long as they’re _reasonably_ attractive by an objective standard, the MORE different they look, the better.
This may also explain why the bloke who got the most action in my Manchester university was a short plump little bloke with an archtypical Chinese look.
From Canada
Old story that asians see the eye lid thing as a negative.
in fact its a comon joke that Asian girls in the media always effect a surprise look because it eliminates the eyelid look a little. Just observe.
Its simply and rightly seen as less attractive. I also suspect Asians want to look more European because its a more prestiges look. They are pretty white and think they might pass themselves off as Austrians.
Interesting point for creationism/evolution is that the eyelid and the hair of the asian are both indicative of a quick adaptation to a biting wind thay faced soon after leaving the tower of babel and going far east. The hair is stiff to keep it in place and the eyelid for protection from stuff in the wind.
No evolution but instant adaptation from innate triggers.
The racist Schizo ruining Canada’s image said;
**facepalm**
**double facepalm** with a hint of **WTF?**
Actually that wasn’t too bad, until you got to the tower of babel part.
**facepalm**
When I was living in Japan I noticed that Japanese seemed much more concerned with eye shape while Americans seemed concerned with mouths and teeth. Lots of Americans straightened their teeth, lots of Japanese altered their eyelids. Most had the excuse that it was for health reasons, eye lashes were scratching their eyes, or they had some jaw pain that was due to teeth misalignment. Also American cartoons tend to have enormous mouths while Japanese have large eyes.
As for the article itself, it was interesting to learn there was a difference in eyelids. I will now consider it in my artwork as I have been looking for ways to differentiate racial variety in simplified style.
As for the big eyed anime girls, the standard anime female face is a simplified caricature. The eyes are double sized and extra expressive while the nose and mouth are just barely hinted at.
An interesting thing about this simplified structure is that anime females with such a simplified face won’t be drawn with lipstick as the contrasting color would clearly outline the shape of the mouth. This leads to a painted mouth that is tiny, or a normal sized pair of lips that look over-inflated compared to the rest of the face. This is mostly seen in fan-art as artists try to put makeup on the characters.
By contrast, anime females designed with drawn or painted lips(as opposed to a mere line suggesting a mouth) will have smaller eyes and a more realistically shaped face.
…such simplifications aren’t limited to anime/manga, just look at Liz from the Garfield comics lately. Her face is basically just eyes and lips, but that’s an end result of the proportions given to Jon’s face.
No doubt double eyelids are natural to Western peoples. But in Asia people are not concern with the shape of mouse or eyelids etc.
But here a craze having whitish complexion is exist and most of the people keen of being white. This is the reason for the huge cosmetics products are imported to Asia.
Where as general skin condition situation is more satisfactory in Aisa. Un like USA and here the ratio of certain skin conditions like psoriasis, vitiligo ( http://www.antivitiligo.com/vitiligo/ )are quite low.
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