Asian American Plastic Surgery Research Paper

The Los Angeles Sentinel reported in 2002 that Asian American cosmetic surgery consumption had increased by 300% between 1999 and 2001. The most common procedures are “double-eyelid” surgery and nose job. Asian American women have gone through plastic surgery for several reasons—leaving their negative stereotypes, improving their social status, and archiving western beauty standard. Western beauty standard created by the dominant culture in the United States and by Western culture effects on body images of Asian American women, and they come to be self-loathing as expressed by separation in society and a denial of the body produced by unequal power or colonial relationships. It signifies that colonial relationships still linger on and effects …show more content…
Chandra Mohanty, in “Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses”, pointed out that western women are characterized as “educated, as modern, as having control over their bodies and sexualities, and [exercising] the freedom to make their own decisions”(Mohanty 1991, 56). In the contrast, average third world woman leads an incomplete life base on her sexually constrained feminine gender and her being the Other such as ignorant, poor, educated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, and so on. Thus, as Eugenia Kaw says in “Medicalization of Racial Features: Asian American Women and Cosmetic Surgery”, Asian American women’s decision to undergo cosmetic surgery is an attempt to escape persisting racial prejudice that correlates their stereotyped genetic physical features(“small, slanty” eyes and a “flat” nose) with negative behavioral characteristics, such as passivity, dullness, and a lack of sociability(Kaw 1993, 75). Since the dominant culture portrays Asian American women as perpetual foreigners with those false consumptions, they are striving to blend in the dominant community by altering their …show more content…
According to Oxford Dictionary, colorism is prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. Whereas lighter skin is related to pure, darker skin is associated with poor, slavery, and evil. As historians and other scholars have referred, European colonization of non-white countries in Africa, Asia, and Central/South America lifted up European history and culture, including the physical appearance of whites as a racial group. As their culture spread, frequently by means of physical conquest, racially-based standards of beauty came to include light-colored hair and eyes and, most importantly, light skin. These European-based images of beauty eventually melded into a general white-based standard of beauty. Recent observations by mainstream media outlets, bloggers, and social media sites confirm that the preference for light skin is alive and well in many Asian countries. Skin-lightening creams and lotions are as mainstream as lipstick and mascara. Asian American women are striving to look more white, not black. For instance, bleaching or whitening cream is popular among Asian women. In Japan, there is saying that “white skin hides even the seven faults”. Thus, Japanese women try to look white by putting whitening cream on their bodies or carrying umbrellas for avoiding sun

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Asian American Plastic Surgery Research Paper

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