Like so many people these days, I come from a mixed family. Growing up I never really thought much about being Half-Asian, Half-Caucasian. By the time I was old enough to register these things, I had moved to an overwhelmingly white village in England and I guess I thought I was just the same as everyone else. I knew I was mixed on one level, but it wasn't until someone told me how jealous they were of my "oriental eyes and hair" and olive skin that I actually thought of myself as different. It wasn't until I turned 18 and started wearing makeup that I really felt different. I tried to do my makeup like my friends, style my hair like them but it never looked the same. The trends never suited me and I started looking for differences, wondering why I couldn't get my eyes bigger and my stubbornly short lashes longer and curled. I plucked my "too thick" eyebrows into skinny lines and shaved my legs every day. I even went as far as to buy coloured contact lenses.
The beautiful people on television, in magazines and in films didn't look anything like me. As YouTube became a bigger thing, I would look at beauty tutorials and be ultimately disappointed when my finished look was nothing like theirs. My eyes too hooded and small, my hairline too low, my arms and legs covered in too thick hair that grows back within hours. I came across videos of people with similar features, telling me how to cover them up. I could use glue to stick back my eyelids into a more Western look or cut my hair a certain way to hide my hairline and. of course, layer the hell out of it because it was probably too thick. There are vlogs telling me to consider plastic surgery to change all these things because they weren't beautiful. Eyelid tucks, hairline waxing, laser hair removal, lip injections, you name it. Instead of telling me it was okay to have these features, so many people told me how I could get rid of them, and I thought about it. For a long time I toyed with the idea of changing my face and that terrifies me now.
I look at other mixed celebrities who have had work done to make themselves look more palatable for a Western audience, and it scares me. Actresses like Lindsay Price (an Asian/European baby like me) were typecast as the "Asian chick" in shows like Beverly Hills until she had blepharoplasty (eyelid tuck) and chin implants done. Julie Chen, the news anchor, faced a similar situation. By now many people have heard of MAC's lips controversy, where they dared to showcase a model with (beautiful) full African-American lips and the internet had a meltdown. Features like these only get praised if they are on someone who isn't too "other."
I tried to talk about this issue with the people around me, how bad it made me feel to never look quite like the idealised women around me, and I found myself surprised. So many people told me not to worry too much because I don't look 'that Asian' (this issue of passing being a whole other article in itself). Or that if I changed my eyeliner I could easily pass for white. This wasn't and isn't the point. I hate the lack of diversity in the film, media and fashion industry. I don't want makeup tutorials telling me how to tone down my Asian features and play up my Caucasian ones. The message to little kids shouldn't be to change the way they look to fit in or that they have to look a certain way to be considered beautiful. Hairdressers shouldn't tell me my natural hair is too thick and that I should shave me legs more. Makeup counter sales associates shouldn't tell me to avoid glitter eyeshadow because it brings out my hooded eyes. We need more than a handful of celebrities and artists to buck this trend. Real life is diverse, so why can't beauty standards be the same?
