One of the things that has struck me since having arrived in China are the number of beautiful young women …yeah I get it – that may be a strange observation but there you are.
They are very slender, taller than I had expected, wonderful clothes horses really and they certainly know how to dress…short shorts and skirts, flowing fine cotton long jackets, dresses that are 2 layered …a short dress with a longer see through overlay. Spiky high heels, really chunky wedge sandals or cute little flat ballet slippers.
Hair – mainly black but with blond, brown or maybe pink – long, short and every thing in-between.
Really beautiful faces – and no they do not all look alike!
I was surprised one morning when one of my students arrived to class with what appeared to be stitches in her eyelids… she explained to me that her parents had thought it would improve her looks and make her look more western as she was going to study in the West.
I was a wee bit shocked…so I started to be a bit more observant, asked a few discrete questions and did some online research and found the result really quite disturbing.
As recently as 3 years ago cosmetic surgery made huge inroads into the Chinese culture – so much so in-fact that it was tied second with Brazil for the most procedures conducted that year. .
Boring ..Yawn Yawn
I guess that is true but what interesting is the way in which the industry has fine tuned its market penetration strategy for China.
So there are global trends like breast augmentation and liposuction…
but now we are seeing ethnic trends based on perceived beauty!
WTF…
Yep you heard me…cosmetic surgery based on perceived beauty which is different in different ethnic groups!!!
So back to China and the beautiful China Doll…
Chinese girls need to be beautiful to get a good job and/or a good husband and no stone is unturned by the parents to achieve this goal …plastic surgery is now one of the options available to parents to help enhance their daughter’s prospects.
In China the girls are told that white is beautiful – so there are a range of skin products that helps lighten their skin and as for sun protection – they are completely covered when outside in the sun, including their faces and generally have umbrellas to hide under.
You certainly don’t see Chinese girls playing sport out in the sun or sun baking!
Chinese girls are encouraged to enhance the size of their eyes by wearing contact lenses which are bigger than necessary and make the wearer keep their eyes open more thus making the eyes look bigger…apparently not so comfortable but …all in name of beauty!
They are encouraged to have blepharoplasty, or eyelid surgery, which makes the eyes look rounder. (This is what my student had had done )
The procedure is extremely popular in South Korea and trends in Korea find their way to China.
Rhinoplasty is on the rise with straight western noses perceived to be more beautiful.
and the list goes on …..breast augmentation is growing in popularity as are botox and fillers.
A woman who undergoes a Chinese version of an extreme makeover has her jaw slimed, eyes and nose sculpted and her breasts enlarged and lifted.
I guess you can say that this a choice that all female consumers make – and western women have resisting pressure to take the plunge for decades really.
That is true but it is particularly reprehensible in a country that has only recently entered our consumer world and really have not had years to understand the art of advertising and the hard sell and so they are particularly vulnerable.
Secondly the majority of Chinese do not earn a huge salary and the surgery is very expensive as a percentage of salary, so families are exploited to help feed an ever growing industry and the young Chinese girls are growing up believing that they are not beautiful because they are not white western women with wide eyes and big noses!
It is the way of the world but it makes me sad.
Happy Bumbering!
It makes me sad as well – the western world really has lost the plot about what is important and seems rest of world is following….
Yes it is really sad – but big business is making money – what can be done – you cant tell the girls that they are beautiful – they don’t believe you because they have been brought up to believe something different!