Asian women are undergoing cosmetic surgery to look more Western
Chinese women are going under the knife for a Caucasian look to improve their chances of finding love or a job
Devin Tomb
Jul 06, 2010
From www.scmp.com
He Zen's path to cosmetic surgery was fast and simple. Her mother saw an advert in a Shanghai newspaper and figured that more Caucasian-looking eyes would make it easier for her unmarried 28-year-old daughter to find a husband.
She made an appointment for her daughter the next Saturday morning. When He Zen went to the clinic and saw some examples of the doctor's work, she agreed to have the US$290 operation that afternoon.
Shortly after enduring the twoweek recovery period, she got what she'd been after: not an offer of marriage, but the offer of a coveted internship with the Shanghai office of HSBC (SEHK: 0005, announcements, news) , which later led to a fulltime job.
"A lot of people think it's not very good politics - a kind of scandal - to have these kinds of small procedures," says He, a petite, confident woman who's now an HSBC manager. "I wouldn't tell anybody. Nobody knows."
She is one of thousands of young Chinese women, and an increasing number of men, who are choosing to have eyelid reconstruction, nasal bridge augmentation or breast enlargements in the hope of improving their chances of finding mates, getting better jobs or both.
Young adults in cosmopolitan cities such as Shanghai have grown up surrounded by images of beautiful women with Western features. Train passengers are surrounded by posters of wide-eyed supermodels, and larger-than-life billboards for the Zara and H&M clothing stores line the streets of Shanghai's upscale Pudong district.
In the Shanghai shop that sells Barbie dolls, workers acknowledge that Caucasian Barbies sell well, but dolls with Asian features "just sit on the shelves".
It's no wonder then that by the time mainland women reach their 20s, many are seriously considering cosmetic surgery, and the explosion of wealth in the country has put it within reach of many of them.
Shanghai New Generation cosmetic surgery hospital, whose website advertises procedures such as "abdominal liposuction to end your beer belly" and "mandible angle plastic: farewell to square face malformation", made headlines in February for agreeing to perform surgery on a 21-year-old woman who hoped to get back together with her boyfriend by looking more like American actress Jessica Alba.
Dr Yang Yunxia, the director of New Generation's cosmetic surgery unit and a cosmetic surgeon for 20 years, says her team performs about 40,000 procedures a year, often for women who complained about "disfigurations" such as the inability to open their eyes wide or the lack of a nasal bridge.
"Big eyes and a straight bridge are signs of beauty," Yang says. "Ladies don't like their face to be big and fat, so they want to change their face into a more beautiful shape."
The cost of going under Yang's knife ranges from US$290 for eyelid reconstruction to US$7,300 for breast implants, and the operations aren't without risk. Industry reports say that, over the past decade, at least 200,000 lawsuits have been filed in the mainland for disfiguration after faulty cosmetic procedures, many of which take place in small clinics similar to the one He visited.
He is one of the lucky ones. She had a seamless procedure that could pass for natural beauty, but Yang says that many of the procedures she performed at New Generation are correctional operations after surgeries went wrong.
"It happens a lot of times. Patients come with one big eye and one small eye or uneven breasts," Yang says. "China is a big place with lots of different standards."
No matter how many botched procedures are reported in the mainland, the desire for Westernlooking features such as wide eyes or large breasts continues.
Mattel, the US toy company that makes Barbie dolls, chose Shanghai for its flagship Barbie store in the mainland last year. General manager Dann Murphy, who's from New York and who left a position at Mattel in Los Angeles to come to Shanghai, is candid about the store's marketing strategy.
Murphy says the store sells special Barbies, such as the Shanghai Lynn Barbie, for Chinese holidays. However, he says, these dolls don't sell as well as the Western-looking dolls do.
"Customers like to buy the authentic Barbie that they think is beautiful, and Barbie is known to have blonde hair and blue eyes," Murphy says.
Victoria Wang, a 28-year-old who adopted a Western name, another growing trend in Asia, is a frequent shopper at Sephora, a popular source of Western beauty products in Shanghai.
She says she has bought almost every brand in the store. "I try to imitate the models in magazines," says Wang, who reads Elle and the Japanese fashion magazines Ray and Lee.
Valerie Monroe, the beauty director at O, The Oprah Magazine, says the rising trend in Westernlooking cosmetic procedures is the result of a "growth in global communication" that is exposing women worldwide to American and European beauty ideals.
"Now it's possible for girls in China to see our cultural icons for beauty," Monroe says. "If they're exposed to the Western version of what beauty is supposed to be like, they might want to emulate it.
"If all the media show are very thin, blonde-haired, blue-eyed women, they'll try to emulate that," says Monroe, adding that O's philosophy is to "celebrate your assets" and "not submit to a cultural ideal".
McClatchy-Tribune
Chinese women are going under the knife for a Caucasian look to improve their chances of finding love or a job
Devin Tomb
Jul 06, 2010
From www.scmp.com
He Zen's path to cosmetic surgery was fast and simple. Her mother saw an advert in a Shanghai newspaper and figured that more Caucasian-looking eyes would make it easier for her unmarried 28-year-old daughter to find a husband.
She made an appointment for her daughter the next Saturday morning. When He Zen went to the clinic and saw some examples of the doctor's work, she agreed to have the US$290 operation that afternoon.
Shortly after enduring the twoweek recovery period, she got what she'd been after: not an offer of marriage, but the offer of a coveted internship with the Shanghai office of HSBC (SEHK: 0005, announcements, news) , which later led to a fulltime job.
"A lot of people think it's not very good politics - a kind of scandal - to have these kinds of small procedures," says He, a petite, confident woman who's now an HSBC manager. "I wouldn't tell anybody. Nobody knows."
She is one of thousands of young Chinese women, and an increasing number of men, who are choosing to have eyelid reconstruction, nasal bridge augmentation or breast enlargements in the hope of improving their chances of finding mates, getting better jobs or both.
Young adults in cosmopolitan cities such as Shanghai have grown up surrounded by images of beautiful women with Western features. Train passengers are surrounded by posters of wide-eyed supermodels, and larger-than-life billboards for the Zara and H&M clothing stores line the streets of Shanghai's upscale Pudong district.
In the Shanghai shop that sells Barbie dolls, workers acknowledge that Caucasian Barbies sell well, but dolls with Asian features "just sit on the shelves".
It's no wonder then that by the time mainland women reach their 20s, many are seriously considering cosmetic surgery, and the explosion of wealth in the country has put it within reach of many of them.
Shanghai New Generation cosmetic surgery hospital, whose website advertises procedures such as "abdominal liposuction to end your beer belly" and "mandible angle plastic: farewell to square face malformation", made headlines in February for agreeing to perform surgery on a 21-year-old woman who hoped to get back together with her boyfriend by looking more like American actress Jessica Alba.
Dr Yang Yunxia, the director of New Generation's cosmetic surgery unit and a cosmetic surgeon for 20 years, says her team performs about 40,000 procedures a year, often for women who complained about "disfigurations" such as the inability to open their eyes wide or the lack of a nasal bridge.
"Big eyes and a straight bridge are signs of beauty," Yang says. "Ladies don't like their face to be big and fat, so they want to change their face into a more beautiful shape."
The cost of going under Yang's knife ranges from US$290 for eyelid reconstruction to US$7,300 for breast implants, and the operations aren't without risk. Industry reports say that, over the past decade, at least 200,000 lawsuits have been filed in the mainland for disfiguration after faulty cosmetic procedures, many of which take place in small clinics similar to the one He visited.
He is one of the lucky ones. She had a seamless procedure that could pass for natural beauty, but Yang says that many of the procedures she performed at New Generation are correctional operations after surgeries went wrong.
"It happens a lot of times. Patients come with one big eye and one small eye or uneven breasts," Yang says. "China is a big place with lots of different standards."
No matter how many botched procedures are reported in the mainland, the desire for Westernlooking features such as wide eyes or large breasts continues.
Mattel, the US toy company that makes Barbie dolls, chose Shanghai for its flagship Barbie store in the mainland last year. General manager Dann Murphy, who's from New York and who left a position at Mattel in Los Angeles to come to Shanghai, is candid about the store's marketing strategy.
Murphy says the store sells special Barbies, such as the Shanghai Lynn Barbie, for Chinese holidays. However, he says, these dolls don't sell as well as the Western-looking dolls do.
"Customers like to buy the authentic Barbie that they think is beautiful, and Barbie is known to have blonde hair and blue eyes," Murphy says.
Victoria Wang, a 28-year-old who adopted a Western name, another growing trend in Asia, is a frequent shopper at Sephora, a popular source of Western beauty products in Shanghai.
She says she has bought almost every brand in the store. "I try to imitate the models in magazines," says Wang, who reads Elle and the Japanese fashion magazines Ray and Lee.
Valerie Monroe, the beauty director at O, The Oprah Magazine, says the rising trend in Westernlooking cosmetic procedures is the result of a "growth in global communication" that is exposing women worldwide to American and European beauty ideals.
"Now it's possible for girls in China to see our cultural icons for beauty," Monroe says. "If they're exposed to the Western version of what beauty is supposed to be like, they might want to emulate it.
"If all the media show are very thin, blonde-haired, blue-eyed women, they'll try to emulate that," says Monroe, adding that O's philosophy is to "celebrate your assets" and "not submit to a cultural ideal".
McClatchy-Tribune
