Saturday, March 11, 2006

Asian beauty VS beautiful Asians


One of the things I have noticed during my time here in Europe is that the perception of beauty if enormously different depending on where you’re from. Of course there is the shared beauties, such as Angelina Jolie, the girl is a sex symbol where ever you put her.



However, the Asian conception of beauty and what the “non-Asians” consider as beautiful is quite different. I can see this difference when I see the Korean-American actresses on US-telly and compare them with Korean actresses on Korean telly. The biggest names in US telly who are Korean descendants are Sandra Oh, and Margaret Cho. These women have Korean parents who immigrated to Canada and the US and they probably were born and raised in America. Anyways if you see these girls there are some familiarities. Both have smallish eyes with single lidded droppy eyelids and have long oval yet flat faces. They also have small noses and well more importantly very strong tough characteristics with loads of dry humour. Let’s now look at the biggest names in Korean telly. Cause I haven’t watch telly in along time I can’t say who is the biggest name but here are some nominees. Kim Hee Sun, Chon Ji Hyun, Song Hae gyo. These girls all have big eyes with double eye lids, small faces with pointyish chins, small mouths and well pointy noses and their faces are more 3-dimensional, if you know what I'm saying.


The point is… see the differences. The difference is that the actresses that are famous in Korea more or less have the western-Caucasian facial characteristics and the ones famous in America looks more or less like the typical Korean of which you can’t find anymore in Korea. (Everybody has double eye lids with big eyes thanks to our abundant amount of plastics surgeons. Seriously, all my friends from Korea, either have it by birth or “developed them” in their 20s.)
It is such a pity that Asians ourselves do not recognize the beauty of looking Asian – of course here I mean more or less east-Asian. Every girl in Korea gets their eyes done and many are now getting their nose topped up. Faces need to be pointier and well skinny as a stick but that’s another matter. There is a fad in Korea that have started approximately 2~3 years ago with girls trying to take photos of themselves that makes them look like they have eyes that cover half their face, with pale white skin. I thought these made them look like aliens and they looked all the same.. From this you can tell how we hate looking Asian and try to look as western? as possible.
The sad thing is after the more Asian faced models were used in the US and Europe, Korea started using more or less the models with Asian features. It’s like we need others, the western media more or less, to tell us what can be perceived as being pretty and what cannot. We needed them to tell us that looking Asian is ok.
The good thing is I can be considered an “Asian” faced person, or in Korean 된장(dween jjang- which is THE Korean dish and what we call people who look so Korean you cannot deny it) and can get appreciated more so here in Europe. However, I have to admit that even I think someone is crazy when they say I look attractive. I can’t help but tell them “your eyes are completely fucked up” but then again what do I know.