Cultural Differences On Beauty

canva stock image

A food-and-travel video blogger on YouTube, whom I watch regularly, is putting up a video about his wife going for cosmetic surgery in Thailand. As you know, Thailand and South Korea are the places to go to become more “beautiful” for people living in the vicinity. I really feel…. Well, judging from the videos, I think she, the video blogger’s wife, is a nice girl with a nice face and everything. She doesn’t need cosmetic surgery at all.

It used to be that every village or every town had its own beauty standard, for better or worse, for casual talk or idle fancy. However nowadays everybody is subscribing to one standard. This is why countless Asian women want to go through cosmetic surgery to have double eyelids, bigger eyes, and a higher nose bridge.

This happened long time ago. One day, a friend of mine asked me if I had surgery on my eyelids. I almost kicked him or slapped him, but my politeness prevented me from doing what I wanted to do. He meant no harm, just a casual remark on a popular topic. It had been so common for women to get eyelid surgery that it was a routine topic for conversations.

It is so common nowadays that even women (in the immigrant community) who don’t have much money want to have the eyes or the nose done. I know M, who has to rent out her house to two renters in order to pay for her mortgage. And due to her lack of driving skills, she accumulated a pile of accidents, which have caused a big spike in her insurance. Then finally she saved some money after long hours of working each day, interminable worrying each night, and perpetual spats with her renters.

Guess what did she use her hard-earned hard-saved money on? Could she use the money on her mental health, badly needed vacation, healthy food, relaxing or recuperating? Of course not. If she did that, she would be a normal person who took good care of herself. Unfortunately she was brought up and schooled into a masochist who enjoyed torturing herself to fit into the ridiculous standard the society inflicts on her. So she used the money on cosmetic surgery–double eyelids. And of course they would not let her just do her double eyelids. That would be an insult to the sales department of the medical and cosmetic industry. While in the cosmetic consultation process, she was convinced that her nose and her arms also needed to have some work done, nose to be made higher and arms to be slimmed down. Not being able to afford both, she chose to have her arms done so that she could wear sleeveless shirts during summer to show her youthful looking upper arms.

By the way, many people have suggested to me to get my nose done because I have a typical Mongolian flat nose. People have told me that I would look really cute if my Mongolian nose is gone. Remember there was a Seinfeld episode about a nose of a girl? It is a similar situation, but that girl has a big nose while I have a flat nose.

The problem with that episode is that the girl didn’t defend herself or talk about what she really thought of the issue. She sort of let other people dominate her.

And me too. I pretended that I agreed with other people who suggested a different nose to me, but in reality I love my Mongolian nose. Actually I love everything Mongolian about me. I even love our Mongolian history of being nomadic people (provided that I don’t have to practice to be a nomad and live without modern comfort). I love my Mongolian skin that didn’t need cream or lotion even while I was living in the dry winter of the Mongolian Steppe area. I love my eyes that show single lids sometimes and double lids some other times, which is very common among Mongolians.

I know people will not believe me if I say small eyes and flat nose are beautiful since most people were brought up into believing a beauty standard with a very narrow definition. Although my voice seems weak and my idea seems strange, I will continue to talk about my experience of meeting beautiful people who have small eyes and flat nose. I am not good at convincing people but I will try, and learn many skills of defiance along the way.

(To Be Continued Here)