the Monolid Rebellion pt 2

Among Asian-American women, it seems the debate regarding cosmetic surgery will always be prominent and endless.

So, my parents are in town from Korea for month and they’re staying with my relatives up in Portland, OR, at this moment. I went up to see them the other day and, because I made absolute sure to look and dress nicely for my mom, I earned me a compliment on my dress, shoes and hair. Of course, I knew the compliments would end there. After all, I’ve gained 10 pounds since I saw her last.

The first thing my aunt said once we sat down was, “Why did you make your eyes look smaller? You should be wearing makeup to make them look bigger!”

-_-; Well, this, I didn’t expect to hear.

Then my mom piped, ”They got smaller because she gained all that weight. Look how much weight she’s gained!”

-__-; This, I sorta expected to hear.

They my aunt said, ”Get your eyelids done. You need double-lids if you want to get married.”

-___-; Guess I was totally expecting this… but from my mother.

My mother agreed.

-____________-; Totally expected that.

So, it appears that Korean mothers everywhere are pressuring their mono-lidded daughters to get cosmetic surgery done. Since they’re all doing it, there’s nothing wrong with it anymore. That’s how democracy works in Korea. It’s good and it’s right if the majority agrees it is.

At one point, my mother had also relentlessly been trying to force me into getting my recessive chin restructured as well, and kept going on and on until her friend’s daughter, an M.D., told her about the dangers of cosmetic surgery around the jaw area. Apparently, the likelihood of being paralyzed neck-down as a result of botched surgery is pretty high. It’s also supposed to be the most painful.

So, my mom let it go with the jaws. However, as a member of the general Korean audience who’s been exposed to years and years of Korean television media – as well as to the developing trends of Korean standards of beauty and fashion everywhere – she has now come to believe, as many Korean mothers have, that eyes have to be irregularly huge and well-creased to be beautiful. In short, natural = bad. She is now convinced that her own daughter’s eyes are in the ’ugly’ category. Furthermore, she’s actually trying to convince me that I’m wrong to be happy with my eyes being the way they are.

At what point does a difference in cultural values become a clash between the ethically good and bad? And, is there even much of a difference?

In Korea, it’s wrong to ever be happy with yourself because you should always be humble and you should always believe you have room for improvement. In America, they teach you to love yourself for who you are, but this comes with hushed double standards that are still in your face – you see morbidly obese Americans all over the place who still insist on wearing halter tops as their expression of self-contentment, but at the same time, standards of beauty here are just as warped as Korea’s. In either culture, the ones who supposedly look best in high fashion clothes are the waifs with French doll faces.

So, what is it we’re arguing for when we try to denounce surgical alteration of our faces? What is it about our faces and their association with our identities that make it important for some of us to preserve it? Perhaps, deep in our subconscious minds, we feel that cosmetic alteration is the equivalent of fabricating our very identities. Or perhaps some of us feel that it’s a sin or lack of appreciation to nature to artificially change what was God/nature-given.

Also, what happens to our ego, our self-esteem, our sense of self-worth and self-value when we decide to be the good daughters and undergo surgery to appease our mothers?

How many of you guys have had your own mothers tell you you needed to change something that you didn’t want to? I’d love to hear what you guys have to say.

http://www.asianbeautyblog.com/viewtopic/20050/to_be_or_not_to_be_and_oh_so_many_questions

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