After watching Anna Choy’s documentary on “deracialisation” cosmetic surgery, Change My Race, I dodged social media for days afterwards because the torrent of pity and fascination from non-Asians was just too much.  The documentary took us along with three women as they underwent double eyelid surgery, breast enlargement, nose and chin reshaping, and also examined skin lightening creams, eyelid tape and other cosmetic practices. It was brave and generous of the participants to talk about their choices, but seeing their stories made me feel like all my bodily neuroses were exposed.  While there are many films, books and studies on colourism and African-American hair, the collision of east Asian faces with eurocentric beauty standards is seldom researched or publicly discussed. In a way, that silence protects me, because I worry that airing these issues enables a smug knowingness, a devouring curiosity: “Did you hear about all those self-hating slit-eyed chinks? So sad!” People love to consume the trauma of others, and I couldn’t handle the thought of strangers on the train dissecting my face right after the documentary screened.  As Jackie Wykes writes, there’s no such thing as a “natural” body – everything we do alters our bodies in some way. Body modification in line with social and cultural norms is considered natural or “reconstructive”, while bodies that diverge from the norm are seen as unnatural.  Take the US journalist Julie Chen, whose former boss at an Ohio news station claimed her “Asian eyes” made her look “disinterested and bored”. Later, a big-time agent refused to represent her unless she had surgery to make her eyes bigger. After she underwent the surgery, her career took off.  Was Chen’s surgery strictly “deracialisation”? There’s no simple answer, but it’s clear that there’s also no strict opposition between an authentic, unaltered body – the before shot – and a beautiful, socially privileged after shot. After all, the pressures on female TV presenters to modify their bodies are well known. This isn’t to apologise for eurocentric beauty standards, which have a lot of power, but to acknowledge that racialised body modification is a little more complicated than just trying to “look white”.  Whiteness has a huge impact globally but we need to consider non-western beauty cultures in terms of their own aesthetics, politics and history. Double eyelids are preferred in Korea, China and Japan, where about half the population is born with this characteristic, and surgery is quite common in these countries. However, most people would consider a good surgical result to be one that replicates a “natural” East Asian double eyelid, while one that mimics European features is seen as “fake” (and cheap).  That’s not to say that there isn’t a racialised element to the preference for double eyelids, but neither is it accurate to represent it solely as wanting to look white. Chemical hair straightening, a practice growing in popularity in Asia, is arguably about emphasising a uniquely Asian feature. It might be more astute to understand both these practices as expressions of class, as visual markers of wealth and contemporary, cosmopolitan tastes.  Sometimes it seems the label of “deracialisation” is used to stigmatise the beauty practices of women of colour, while normalising the practices of white women. Lash curlers, false lashes and even eyelash implants – all mainstream in western culture – are not seen as reinforcing a white racial norm, even though short straight eyelashes are also an Asian feature.  On the other hand, step into any Asian beauty store and you’ll find papercut lashes, rainbow lashes, feather lashes, jewelled lashes and a huge assortment of patterned and coloured contact lenses, as well as ones that try to look “natural”. Eyelid tape is part of a whole host of Asian beauty products, technologies and trends that the West hasn’t yet caught on to, though products like BB cream have become popular.  Do any of these beauty practices correspond neatly to a uniform idea of “natural beauty”? Perhaps not; yet commentary on a Japanese subcultural trend for crooked or vampire-like teeth segues too easily into the question of why Japanese women want to “look more western”. This is the kind of eurocentrism that finds eurocentrism everywhere it’s not, that imagines Asians are always trying to look white, even when Asian beauty trends make no reference to whiteness at all.  The beauty industry is premised not only on the idea that your unaltered body is ugly and undesirable, but also that the practice of alteration is luxurious, sophisticated, creative and pleasurable. And, you know, it can be transformative. Painting my eyebrows into bold stripes makes me feel instantly tougher. Bleaching copper streaks in my fringe helps me imagine I’m K-pop boy band material.  Looking only at deracialisation as a tragedy, a forced departure from an idealised natural body, ignores aesthetics, innovation and self-expression. And when beauty standards limit our opportunities, self-esteem isn’t the only issue. A trans-positive, fat-positive, anti-racist, decolonial feminism should realise this about cosmetic surgeries and beauty practices. Sure, we need to critique eurocentrism, but the response can’t begin and end with being told to love yourself, honey.
Juliana Qian: Deracialisation cosmetic surgery troubles our ideas about the ‘natural’ unaltered body. It also points to a eurocentrism that sees the desire to look white everywhere