Li, Jia Ling
12/10/12
ASAM 10
Plastic Surgery

Recent study investigated that the rate of Asian American plastic surgery has been increasing through years. For Asian Americans, the three most common plastic surgeries are nose reshaping, eyelid surgery, and breast augmentation. Even though most of the Asian Americans decided to do plastic surgery based on different reason, their purposes are eventually similar, to look more Caucasian. Especially for American born Asian Americans, they suffer more between Asian culture and American culture. Plastic surgery might be an appropriate procedure for them to assimilate into the American culture. While Asian Americans are relying on plastic surgery to gain their assimilation into the mainstream, Asians in Asia want to look more westernized because of the ideal beauty they are looking for in the ‘white’. Asians are looking for the beauty more in westernized recently. They want to look better; beauty means so much to them. When talking about beauty, obviously it’s referring to female. Gender plays an important role here because according to a research group, 91 percent of plastic surgery patient were women, only nine percent were men. (Plastic Surgery Demographics) When plastic surgery is being mentioned, it is being referred to cosmetic surgery, to look more beautiful. As a result, the focus of this topic will be mainly on analyzing Asian American women’s story behind plastic surgery. Class status is also an important criteria in this topic. Plastic surgery is an expensive spending to make ones look better. Usually, Asian Americans who are in the middle class or above would have the budget for them to take this action. However, lower class Asian Americans would suffer much more if they want to have a plastic surgery. What plastic surgery does is changing one’s appearance. Sometimes the nose, sometimes the eyes, and even the size of the breast matters when come to one’s appearance of beauty. First of all, let’s examine the reason for the popularity of plastic surgery in Asia. I will be targeting the country I heard the most about people going there to do plastic surgery, Korea. Not just there are many non-Koreans go to Korea just for the surgery, but it is also very popular in Korea. A straw poll suggests that nearly 90 percent of Korean women would have plastic surgery to feel better about themselves. Some 82.2 percent said they had gotten plastic surgery to help them get over anxiety about their looks, while 8.9 percent said they wanted their looks to help them find jobs, and 6.7 percent said they wanted appeal to the opposite sex. (90% of Korean Women Would Have Plastic Surgery, Poll Shows; English.chosun.com) According to this information, we can notice that Korean women feel anxiety about their looks. They are not satisfied with their looks; they think they can look better. They don’t feel confident about their looks. Therefore, they have looking forward to their ideal beauty, the westernized faces, which has big eyes, a higher nose, a slender shaped face, and big breast.
Double eyelid surgery is the most popular among Korean women. It seems like single eyelids and small eyes are Korean women’s ethnic feature, but single eyelids are not the feature that had stated in the people’s ideal beauty. Single eyelid or double eyelid really matters for the women in Korea if they have confident or not. There’s a 12 year-old girl who is a ballet dancer. She feels awkward and nervous in front of strangers until the music begins. She lacks of confidence, so her mother encouraged her to undergo a plastic surgery. The girl didn’t ask for the surgery, but her mother suggested it because of her lack of confidence. Her mother was hoping that the surgery would solve the problem her daughter is facing. The girl is also hoping that she will look better after she get the surgery, because she thinks that she she’s not a pretty girl. A few weeks after the surgery, she and her mother emailed the doctor saying that she’s happy with her new look; she sees herself a pretty girl, not someone looks awkward anymore. (Kying Lah) This fact tells us that why early teenage girls get plastic surgery and why they were so supported by their parents. If the surgery is doing something good to their daughter, they would definitely have no doubt of encouraging their daughter to do it.
Looking back to the United States, Asian Americans have a more cultural reason for making the decision of having a plastic surgery. Their desires to change their looks are mostly influenced by the surroundings. “Compared to second generation Chinese youth, they (foreign born youth) are less anxious about being accepted by Americans, less concerned with their inability to “fit in” with the cool crowd, less irritated by their treatment as foreigners, and less distressed by overt discrimination. (pg. 154-155, AAY)” This statement, which is coming from the article “Transnational Cultural Practices of Chinese Immigrant Youth and Parachute Kids”, has mentioned that U.S.-born youths are more concerned about the situation that they cannot fit in to the mainstream group when they identify themselves as American. Compared to the immigrant group of youths, they suffer more. Because foreign born Asian Americans are mostly likely trying to enculturate to their origin culture rather than acculturate the mainstream culture. Since they were not born in the U.S., not just Americans see them as foreigners, they also see themselves as foreigner in this country that is not their origin. They have already accepted the fact and feel much more confortable of enculturating their homeland culture while they have some knowledge about their homeland. However, this is a totally different situation for the U.S.-born Asian Americans. They were born here, and they know their English just as similar to the Americans. They live here since they were born, so they consider themselves as American. However, because of the skin color, and because of different facial feature, they were not automatically accepted as Americans by the ‘real’ Americans. They have no doubt of who they are. They try to fit in, to assimilate with the American culture. Most of them don’t want to enculturate because they are treating the foreign born Asian Americans as foreigner too. “Second, foreign-born youth consciously develop in-group solidarity in order to assuage the negative effects of prejudice discrimination, and rejection from U.S.-born peers.”(pg. 151, AAY) Therefore, when U.S. born Asian Americans are trying really hard to fit in, their feature appearance is what discriminates them from the Americans. A double eyelid surgery would create a crease in a woman’s eye to make her eyes look bigger, whereas nose reshaping makes a flat or big nose to rise up and smaller and look better, and looks more like Caucasian.
As a result, plastic surgery has gain so popular among Asian Americans within U.S. Of course, this is not the only reason; but being a minority group within this society, their desire to fit in means a lot to them. Some people think that because there are more people with double eyelid rather than single eyelid, and they don’t want to look different than those people are. They think they are the one that are being awkward and different. So they want to change their look and appear just like the majority. There are also reasons such as, want to look better simply without considering any outside influences.
The characteristic of beauty is not only predominated by westernized faces in Asia, but also in the U.S. Undergoing a knife also means reducing one’s ethnic identity, same as trying to fit in the main stream culture. The women who reduced their ethnic traits claimed that they just wanted to look more “normal”. In the media of United States, the lack of Asian Americans has great influence in people’s decision of having the surgery. “Society and the media have also alienated Asian Americans because their physical traits do not fit conform to the beauty norm and many feel pressure to alter their appearance to fit the standard. (Reconstructing women’s identities…, Okopny)” For many Asian Americans, their beauty standard is a predominately European standard of beauty. The reason for this is because there are virtually only a few Asian people appear in American media. It is hard to develop a sense of self when you are denied to see people who look like you. No matter the TV, movie, and magazines are lack of Asian faces. This has a big influences on how Asian Americans see what is normal, who the mainstream in this society. When discussing about beauty, and the fact that many Asian Americans have beauty standard as the European beauty standard, the act of having plastic surgery also reclaims Asian women’s femininity. I am not saying that Asian women are not pretty. But for Asian who thinks that Caucasian features actually look better and think that they don’t look as good or attractive to the opposite sex. They would try to reclaim their femininity by changing their look. The negative stereotypes associated with Asian facial features has helped to sustain the beauty standard, and one woman noted that she do not want to be referred to as an “oriental bookworm” or less fun. (Reconstructing women’s identities…, Okopny) Moreover, in the research, Asian Americans women said without the double-eyelid, their eyes looked tired, sleepy, dull, and that having the surgery would make their eyes look more alert and pretty. (Reconstructing women’s identities…, Okopny) They don’t want their appearance to fit the stereotype among Asian women. Therefore, they would like to have a more Caucasian look. Eyelid surgery is certainly one way. Even people who don’t have the money to do an eyelid surgery or they don’t want to undergo the knife, they would have the eyelid tape to make a double eyelid to make their eyes look bigger and prettier. Or they would also put mascaras and eyeliners to make their eyes bigger. In my observation, even if they don’t put a full makeup on their face, they would at least put the eye make up on. This fact shows how much Asians care if they have big eyes or small eye, or the way their eyes look. They are doing whatever they can to follow the society’s ideal beauty. Eyelid surgery is just one and the most popular way for them to do so. With Asian American women’s reason of wanting or having a plastic surgery, society’s norm of beauty and the attitude of the society towards Asian American are affecting their decision. Asian Americans may not be considered as American by Caucasians. And they suffer from their desire to fit in to the American culture. They want to fit in, but they are not easily accepted. Their appearance matters so much to them when they first try to fit in, because the most obvious differences are facial features and skin color. And the beauty standard here is also motivating Asian Americans to change their outlook. I can’t really judge on other people’s decision of changing themselves and reduce their origin ethnic features, but I think beauty and acceptance or one’s culture is subjective. We don’t have to change our facial features to follow the majority. Just be ourselves, and be proud of our race and ethnic.

Reference
Cara L. Okopny, Reconstructing women’s identities: The phenomenon of cosmetic surgery in the united states. 2005.
Plastic Surgery Portal. Plastic Surgery Demographics. Retrieved from http://www.plasticsurgeryportal.com/articles/plastic-surgery-demographics/87
90% of Korean Women Would Have Plastic Surgery, Poll Shows. The Chosunilbo. 2009. Retrieved from http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/10/26/2009102600798.html
Kyung Lah. Plastic surgery boom as Asians seek ‘western’ look. 2011. CNN World