An increasingly popular phenomenon among both Asians as well as Asian Americans is having plastic surgery in order to create a “double eyelid.” The medical term for eyelid surgery is blepharoplasty. A medical paper from 2009 by Nguyen, Hsu and Dinh reports that, “approximately 50% of Asians do not have an upper eyelid crease.” Blepharoplasty is more common among Asians than among Asian Americans. The same paper reports that blepharoplasty is the most commonly requested procedure in Asia and the third most requested procedure by Asian Americans. Blepharoplasty is most common among wealthy Asians.
This phenomenon is usually explained by the pressures and desire to conform to western ideals of beauty. In a 2011 interview by CNN with Dr. Kim Byung-gun, a prominent plastic surgeon in Seoul, South Korea, he expresses his experience with the motives of his patients: “‘The Chinese and Korean patients tell me that they want to have faces like Americans. The idea of beauty is more westernized recently. That means the Asian people want to have a little less Asian, more westernized appearance.’” This motivation for the surgery is problematic and brings up the issue of assimilation versus acculturation. The changing of one’s physical appearance to look like the dominant culture is a form of assimilation because that person is try to shed their ties to their Asian heritage instead of acculturation in which they would not totally to replace one culture with the other. We must ask ourselves, what kinds of messages we are sending to young women in the media. Because the majority of the ones we are sending now promote changing oneself to look like an ideal of feminine beauty instead of embracing who you are and where you and/or your ancestors have come from.
Because of the popularity of the procedure among Asians and Asian Americans, plastic surgeons will often specialize in “Asian blepharoplasty” or advertise to target Asians and/or Asian Americans. And advertise the fact that they can create a “natural looking result.” These patients want the result to look like that is how they were born. Other plastic surgeons often promote the procedure by pointing out the “disadvantages” of the single eyelid. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons explains blepharoplasty as a surgery that “improves the appearance of the upper eyelids, lower eyelids, or both.” This of course is not specifically speaking about Asians or Asian Americans, however when this definition is thought of in the case of this specific group we begin to see that it is problematic. They are “improving the appearance of their eyelids.” But who says that the “single eyelid” needs to be improved?
photo: http://asianeyelid.com/beforeafterphotos.html
Marilyn, Nguyen. “Asian Blepharoplasty.” Seminars In Plastic Surgery 23.3 (2009): 185-197. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 July 2013.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/19/korea.beauty/index.html
http://www.plasticsurgery.org/cosmetic-procedures/eyelid-surgery.html
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