The (White) Color of Beauty

Being a female and trying to aim for the impossible beauty standard can be daunting, especially when that beauty standard is a different race. Kenji's story in Gender Outlaws resonated with me, as I understood Kenji's frustration with non-Caucasian individuals taking up Caucasian names to appear more attractive.

Many Asian brands hire Caucasian instead of Asian models.

When I recall the portion of my childhood spent in China, I remember seeing beautiful female models promoting a variety of beauty products in TV commercials, magazine covers, and poster advertisements. Most of these female models were Caucasian. They were hired by Asian brands for these advertisements, even though only a tiny proportion of the population in China is Caucasian. If models are supposed to be beautiful, and these Asian brands had gone to such lengths to hire Caucasians over Asians for modeling, then it must have been because Caucasians are more beautiful than Asians. This is what my eight-year-old mind concluded and continued to believe for many years afterwards.

Gluing eyelid to create double lids.

While growing up in China, I learned that females with white skin, double eyelids, blonde/brown hair, and wavy/curly hair were considered attractive, while females with dark skin, mono-eyelids, and straight black hair were considered ugly or plain. Women and young girls in China undergo obsessive lengths to achieve these stereotypical Caucasian features, even though only a minority of Chinese women are born with double eyelids and a very rare minority with brown hair or wavy/curly hair. Females in China use umbrellas to prevent their skin from darkening under sunlight, apply skin-whitening lotion onto their skin multiple times per day, and undergo plastic surgery to obtain double eyelids. Whenever I visited my countless relatives in China, they would either compliment my double eyelids or fuss over the relatively dark color of my skin and offer tips on how to make my skin whiter. Almost all of mainland China’s top celebrities have fair skin, double eyelids, and dyed/curled hair.

One of many Chinese advertisements promoting white skin.

Holding a "sun-brella" while driving.

While spending the other half of my childhood in the USA, I continued to believe that Caucasians were the beauty standard. My fair blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned Caucasian Barbie Dolls and Polly Pockets reinforced this idea. Even in anime imported to the USA from Japan, I noticed that the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned female characters were portrayed as the pretty characters. Similarly, the majority of Hollywood actresses are Caucasian or have conventionally Caucasian physical features. In the movies themselves, the romantic leads, princesses, cheerleaders, popular girls, CEOs, and lawyers would be Caucasian. During the rare times I saw Asian characters on screen, they would be portrayed grotesquely, such as in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Other movies, such as “Memoirs of a Geisha”, suggested to me that Asian females could become beautiful if they wore blue contacts to look more Caucasian.

Ugly portrayal of Asians by Caucasian actor in movie.

According to another movie, blue eyes are prettier.

Although I have heard arguments that China’s beauty standard has nothing to do with wanting to look Caucasian, my interactions with other people have led me to believe otherwise. A friend in China once told me that my friends in the USA must be very pretty because they are Caucasian. She did not believe me when I explained that beauty was subjective (and that only a portion of my friends in the USA were Caucasian). In a separate conversation, a neighbor once told me it was a universal truth that Caucasians are the most beautiful race. In another scenario, a cashier once mistook my grandma for a Caucasian-Asian mix after my grandma revealed she had spent several years living in the USA. The cashier told my grandma that it made sense because my grandma was better-looking than “pure” Asians. Although these stories are only anecdotes, they have shown me that at least some females, if not a frighteningly large number of females, view Caucasians as the beauty standard.