Looking Western seems to be an ideal of beauty for some Chinese women, according to an article in the Daily Mail. They are getting cosmetic surgery on their faces to remove their Chinese features – making their eyes bigger, sharpening their noses and reshaping their faces to seem longer.  Is looking Chinese really so awful for these women that they feel they have to destroy their own faces to look more Western and therefore in their minds more beautiful?

Looking at the photos in the article, I am reminded of depictions of women in anime comics, which originated in Japan – with large saucer like eyes and heart shaped faces, mapping Western features onto Eastern female faces. The skin tones also seem to have been altered to look paler and pinker. There, too, in those comic books, Western features are idolized.

Bound Feet Blues explores why women in ancient China were prepared to do violence to themselves and their daughters in the context of footbinding, which mutilated a girl’s feet beyond repair. That brutal cultural practice died out about 70 years ago. But it looks like it has returned but in another form.

The underlying message of both bound feet and this Westernizing cosmetic surgery seems to me to be that Continue reading →