18 June 2008

Asian Beauty

In my last post, I talked about how the Chinese girls are afraid of the sun. Wanting whiter skin leads to a much larger issue that I've noticed in China.

It's a global phenomenon for girls to be dissatisfied with the way they look. Women of every culture use cosmetics, wear jewelry, and want the perfect figure. But I get the feeling that in China, girls are unhappy with looking Asian. It's not just that they want to be prettier; they want to look western.

Ads and models are Caucasian girls with blond hair. The girls want whiter skin. Women have surgeries to change their facial features such as their eye lids. Girls dye their hair brown and blond. They wear colored contacts.

Everyone tells me that I'm so beautiful and that they envy me. I hate it.

Whenever I'm told this, I get so angry inside. I want to scream at the girls and tell them that they're beautiful. Just because I'm from America doesn't make me any better or any prettier than they are. Why can't they believe that Asian features are also beautiful? Sure, maybe they're just giving me a compliment, but I think this is part of their underlying thought pattern.

There are so many gorgeous Chinese girls, but they don't see it. They think western is pretty and Chinese is not.


*Obviously, not all Chinese girls have this attitude. These are generalizations from my personal thoughts and observations from living in China.

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