“Your eyes aren’t big enough.”
“Your nose bridge isn’t high enough.”
“You are flat.”
…the phrases repeated to me over and over again growing up in a mostly western-dominated culture.
I grew up in America, spending the majority of my tween and early teen years in a school where the primary ethnicity was Caucasian. When you are a kid, you just want to fit in with all of your friends, something as simple as that. But that is not as easy to achieve as you would think.
I was in third grade when I came to the brutal realisation that I looked, dressed and acted completely differently from every single one of my peers. I had just moved to the US from China. I noticed everyone around me had light-coloured hair, button noses and huge concave eyes.
I hated how my hair colour was so dark, I hated how my eyes weren’t big enough, I hated how my nose wasn’t petite and high enough, I hated how I just simply wasn’t enough.
I remember staring into my bathroom mirror every day hoping that something has changed and that my Asian features had magically transformed into Caucasian ones, though, that never happened, not even in my wildest dreams. I resented my Asian background and how it made me so vastly different from everyone else.
My initial point of action was that if I couldn’t look like those girls, then I could dress, speak and act like them. I tossed away my Asian heritage almost completely, refusing to speak Chinese at home, and put on a façade, hoping that no one would realise that I was different. Western culture and beauty standards started to dominate who I fundamentally was, affecting everything I did, from what I wore to how I presented myself through body language and the way I spoke.
I used to spend hours correcting my accent and trying incredibly hard in an attempt to sound more like the stereotypical “valley girl” presented in the countless teen romcoms I’ve binged. Even though I changed essentially everything about myself that made me Chinese, except for the way I looked, I still never felt satiated.
When I reached middle school, I only affiliated myself with Caucasian people, because a part of me believed that it would make me feel complete, better help me morph into being one with western culture, creating an illusion to everyone around me that I wasn’t all that different compared to everyone else.
Despite my best efforts, I was still perceived as an outsider by my friends, who judged the way I looked and spoke with subtle actions, such as exchanging uncomfortable eye contact or the occasional side glance whenever my accent slipped through. Though these actions were small, overtime they built up and slowly chipped away at my confidence.
I even went as far as to get on both knees and begging my mom to let me get a nose job and double eyelid surgery.
She firmly refused, as she couldn’t comprehend why I so desperately wanted to change my appearance that she called beautiful. But it’s only human nature to want feelings of acceptance and attractiveness.
After spending years feeling ridiculous and isolated, demented in an all-consuming mindset, I realised that I was not the only one who thought this. Looking at Eastern Asian culture today, almost everything is influenced and subjugated by western-beauty standards; whether they be fair skin, double eyelids or a dainty nose, the Asian societal beauty spectrum to embodies them all.
The concept of fair skin has long been popular among the Chinese, Korean and Japanese. A World Health Organisation survey found over 40 percent of women in Asia said that they regularly used skin-whitening cream.
Therein, western colonialism plays an enormous role in the popularity of whitening products.
An Estee Lauder representative has pointed out that the product labeled as whitening cream in Asia are in the US described as “illuminating cream”. Whatever is considered as more Caucasian is portrayed as beautiful. In Japan, the popular practice of skin bleaching is popular among many, in order to achieve a lighter appearance. Despite the many health risks, including liver and nerve damage that can come along with skin bleaching, this goes to show just how extreme some are willing to go to achieve the perceived western phenomenon of fair skin.
And it’s not just whitening creams; plastic surgery is another insanely popular practice adopted by over 20 million people in Asia. South Korea produces some of the highest rates of plastic surgery in the world, with the most sought-after operations being double eyelid surgery and nose jobs. The country performs the most cosmetic surgeries per capita, with 20 plastic procedures per 1,000 people, compared to 13 in the US.
This idolised and warped perception of Caucasian beauty standards has dominated the entire beauty industry, pressurising women to conform to a race-specific, stereotypical beauty that disregards all other forms of natural beauty that should be equally accepted.
After spending half my life in the US, I moved back to China in 2017. The transition back into a culture that I’ve neglected for close to 7 years was a challenge, but it was worth it because all my conformity and the forcefully molding of myself began to dissipate.
I reconnected with a culture that I’ve proudly learned to call my own, with the help of rising Asian influencers, expanding my limited scope that once sheltered but now fights for inclusion.
I remember a few years back discovering an old photo album of my grandma, when she was in her early 20s. I saw how beautifully she smiled with a sense of pride; fierceness that radiated confidence and self-acceptance. I wanted that, I wanted to feel just as proud of myself and my culture as she was.
By things as simple as a photograph and watching YouTube videos of influencers who looked like me, I could now view myself as beautiful. My narrow scope of beauty had been widened.
I am still learning to further embrace my Asian features and myself for who I truly am, but I can feel something within me that has changed from before. I feel a newfound confidence that I’ve rarely experienced and I finally feel comfortable in my own skin. Though society is still very much fixated on Western beauty standards, I now recognise that beauty does not just exist in one form, but hundreds. The time has come for the rest of the world to acknowledge that as well.
As I am growing older and learning how to take control and embrace my Asian heritage which gleams beautiful with culture, I don’t need anyone to validate me. I don’t need to fit in, and I most definitely don’t need to conform to meet standards that do not even apply to me. I am beautiful, I take pride in where I come from, how I act, how I look.
I finally see what I couldn’t before. And that is I am enough; throughout this entire time I am enough. And so are you.
