July 28, 2014
"Why do white people fixate on the 'Westernizing' elements of ethnic plastic surgery?"
"While working on this article, I found that people of all races had principled reservations about and passionate critiques of these practices. But the group that most consistently believed participants were deluding themselves about not trying to look white were, well, white people. Was that a symptom of in-group narcissism — white people assuming everyone wants to look like them? Or is it an issue of salience — white people only paying attention to aesthetics they already understand? Or is white horror at ethnic plastic surgery a cover for something uglier: a xenophobic fear of nonwhites 'passing' as white, dressed up as free-to-be-you-and-me political correctness?"
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68 comments:
Terrible Reading Comprehension Guy says:
Now THIS is getting closer to the subject of Scarlett Johansson. Although Althouse seems rather adverse to using Scarlett's name. Commit, Althouse: commit.
It seems obvious to me that the explanation is rather the reverse: any self-not-respecting liberal today would be sincerely baffled and horrified at the thought that anybody would want to be whiter.
I wasn't aware that I was fixated on this issue. But since I apparently am, I have to note the missing option: non-whites using plastic surgery to look white are in denial about their own motivations.
Most studies of attractiveness show that the more "average" you look the more attractive you are. One took pictures of people and compared them to a composite picture where they combined the features of all of the participants. The composite picture with the evened out features always looked more attractive than the individuals. The larger the number of people used to make the composite the more attractive the result. I thought the results tended more Asian myself.
The whiteness angle here is just another progressive trying to find racism to decry.(cue you know who) Claiming these "average" features for whiteness is xenophobic and it will be progressives doing it.
Likewise the effort to stop plastic surgery from becoming more available to the masses will be from rich progressives who partake in it themselves. I expect Hillary to make sure it isn't covered under the government run health system she employs to keep the masses under control despite her numerous face lifts.
Same recording. Same people. Same motivation. More government. Evil racists shut up. We know what is good for you.
Come on - "white people only paying attention to aesthetics they already understand" is what white people do. It's why "Rap's not music" and "Disco Sucks" and, when slaves ran away, whites said they were "bad" and not intelligent, instead of determined human beings with a strong desire for the ideals the nation set forth.
On the other hand, when whites ran into trouble during slavery, they claimed they saw themselves "turning black," so there's the whole racial mental illness thing to take into account.
Also, and lastly, there's the issue of white violence on blacks - which historians have said was "a ritual art form" that made whites risk "aestheticizing horror" - which, even today, they deny has happened or has had any affect on anyone, much less the nation as a whole, though (it's pretty obvious) blacks see it as clear as day.
As the old saying goes, "Paint It Black"….
Oh please. Is there a record of white people performing plastic surgery to try to look more ethnic? Beyond, of course, the bizarre case of John Howard Griffin and "Black Like Me"?
Because when they tell us over and over again how privileged they think we are, we take them at their word?
Its a melting pot. Quit obsessing about your tribe and jump in.
I suspect that Asian-American plastic surgery and Asian-Asian plastic surgery are aiming at different targets, and that the targets may vary by country and time. In Korea, it used to be that women getting plastic surgery all came out with basically the same face, and it was not particular "White" looking. I think Lee Da-hee is a good sort of middle-of-the-road example of Korean plastic surgery. Obviously, she came out looking beautiful (but also kind of bland).
The range of facial types that can be considered "pretty" in Japan has been a lot wider for a lot longer -- actresses like Inoue Mao or Ono Machiko, for example, while attractive, just don't have that cloned-perfection look that Korean markets demand (I chose these two actresses as examples because, among other things, their faces look super-Japanese to me, even if they might have had a little work done).
My guess is that Asian-Americans probably incline more towards Western aesthetics, because they're living in the West after all. There's plenty of Asian-Asians who dye their hair, for example (often to a reddish hue), but I think a lot more Asian-Americans (on a percentage basis) dye their hair light colours tending towards blonde.
So I think there's a mix -- it's not that there's no movement towards a Whiter appearance. Just that there's a lot less than most Whites seem to think. The rest of us don't actually find the average White look that beautiful (although pretty women are pretty no matter their race).
Presumably the "Westernizing" elements of ethnic plastic surgery do not include eschewing procedures like clitoridectomy and infibulation. Or do they?
Is Race Plastic?
Of course not.
And doctors ... are growing wealthy creasing Asian eyelids, pushing sloped foreheads forward, and pulling prominent mouths back. These are procedures outsiders generally view as deracinating processes, sharpening the stereotypically flat noses of Asians, blacks, and Latinos while flattening the stereotypically sharp noses of Arabs and Jews.
That reminds me of your "look how racist everyone was in 1906" semi-recent post about the ideal face, and how horrible it was that Europeans liked their own faces.
...and even the term “ethnic plastic surgery” confuses most accepted distinctions between ethnicity, which is tied to culture and language, and race, which includes physical appearance.
ethnic or ethnical
— adj
1. relating to or characteristic of a human group having racial, religious, linguistic, and certain other traits in common
2. relating to the classification of mankind into groups, esp on the basis of racial characteristics
This one:
"'The Ideal Head': Bizarre Racial Teachings From a 1906 Textbook."
Achilles' comment reminded me of this:
A collection of "face averages" from around the world
I wonder how white people seeking suntanned skin factors in here.
Beauty standards are all about what is hard to achieve or is genetically rare in a society.
You forgot the "Crack-Bait" tag on this post.
People can spend their money in whatever foolish ways they like. Their motivations are their own. So long as they don't try to limit my options, I promise not to give a tinker's damn about theirs.
I cannot think of reasons to care. Can you?
There are also great fortunes made by black entrepreneurs who sold/sell hair products. Because.
Or is white horror at ethnic plastic surgery ...
No evidence of any "horror".
Achilles said...
The whiteness angle here is just another progressive trying to find racism to decry.
Yup, and it appears to be the usual psychological projection, since the author admits she treats people differently based on their race:
"...it may be worth noting that I’m a lot brattier about the subject when I’m talking to white people."
By "fixated" the NYM writer means "answered my stupid question about looking'white'." Let's see, if you poll a random sample most places in NYC you get more white people than others on average. Therefore I'll conclude white people are fucked up. That's how I interpret this usurprising result.
"Does this nose make look too white?"
And what about that fake-face sameness among Hollywood types where ALL the women who indulge in "work " end up eerily alike? Are they just ethnocentric nabobs who hate Crack Emcee too?
"Michael Jackson, he did the right thing."
-Everyone's White in My Eyes
The Acoustinauts
...though it may be worth noting that I’m a lot brattier about the subject when I’m talking to white people.
That line pretty much sums it up.
Beauty is always an interesting topic. The pursuit of beauty is an interesting topic. The influence of ideals, native or alien, on the pursuit of beauty is an interesting topic. Another Angry Studies hack trying to milk another whine about whitey out of these topics is not interesting.
So why won’t outsiders take them at their word?
Why can't we make other people stop thinking what we don't want them to think?
(Btw, Miss Bratty, since you've established that how "people of color" choose to modify their bodies has nothing to do with white people, how 'bout we stop blaming whitey's malign influence for all those skin-bleaching creams sold in India and elsewhere?)
The "white" phenomenon, including: "acting white", "looking white", is not related to whites. The effort to create and maintain a perception divorced from the harshness of reality is common to all people, in all places, in all times. The notable change is that white people, that is to say people with a light complexion, arose as a world political, military, and economic power, which raised the ante of acting and looking "white".
Apologies in advance.
Also, and lastly, there's the issue of white violence on blacks - which historians have said was "a ritual art form" that made whites risk "aestheticizing horror"
You're lying again. The only place google finds the phrases you quoted is Michael Taussig's "post-modern" drivel about torture, which has no mention of anyone's race:
http://www.tuckersharon.info/article/%E2%80%9Cculture-terror%E2%80%94space-death-0
Ethnic features, birth defects or injury caused facial appearances are surgeons territory.
The "plastic" aspect in filling out lips and butts with silicone filler is good too, but seems also to be funny to us fixated white people. So what.
Fernandinande,
"That reminds me of your "look how racist everyone was in 1906" semi-recent post about the ideal face, and how horrible it was that Europeans liked their own faces."
Did they really just "like" their own faces, or did they declare them "perfect" and use that insane proposition to violently discriminate against others?
I love whites how whites, today, use these light, pastel euphemisms to describe the horror:
It gives the country, and it's history, that "funhouse mirror" effect,...
Isn't a simpler explanation that white people notice or value those characteristics of other ethnic groups that are most different from their own, and thus notice changes that diminish those differenes? Not that someone is trying to "pass for white" (which, really?) but by changing those things that whites noticed as different or unique to be less different from what whites see every day, whites conclude the overall change is less desirable.
So, if you're Asian and have an epicanthic fold a white person notices that because most of the people they see are white and don't have that feature. When you change the feature now you look more like the majority of people the white person sees, and are less "special."
Maybe white people wish they had more distinguishing traits that are valued, and seeing somoene voluntarily remove one such trait from themselves strikes whites as a bad choice.
Or, yeah, you know, maybe it's just racists whites being racist. Typical white people.
“You’ve got some nice Caucasian features,” Dr. Edmund Kwan says ...
and kah-boom, she blames it on ... wait for it ... WHITE PEOPLE.
Dr's name: Kwan.
But the problem is WHITE PEOPLE.
right. LOL. Self-awareness quotient? negative 17.
From the article:
"These are procedures outsiders generally view as deracinating processes, sharpening the stereotypically flat noses of Asians, blacks, and Latinos while flattening the stereotypically sharp noses of Arabs and Jews."
The author does not notice when she puts 'white' looks in moderate center between extremes explicitly identified with other races.
Contrast this
If you ask to touch my hair, I'm not going to assume you're part of the KKK. But I am going to assume that you don't know that black women are just now starting to wear their hair natural again after centuries of treating it to make it look more white...
with this:
Was that a symptom of in-group narcissism — white people assuming everyone wants to look like them?
To sum up: If you don't realize that minorities are changing their appearance to look more white, you're a racist, but if you believe that minorities are changing their appearance to look more white, your're a racist.
I didn't read the article. I was under the impression that breast enhancement was the most common form of plastic surgery. I never thought of this as trying to look white but as trying to look sexier. Also, it is claimed that of all forms of plastic surgery, this delivers the most customer satisfaction......There's nothing wrong with trying to look better, but most people would get better results in a gym than in a plastic surgeon's office.......Rich white women who have had too much plastic surgery have a look that no sane person would want to emulate.
Fernandinande,
"You're lying again."
You're reaching again.
"The only place google finds the phrases you quoted is Michael Taussig's "post-modern" drivel about torture, which has no mention of anyone's race"
Whites tortured blacks, you moron. That's the point - did I say the historian was writing on race, specifically, or did you assume that? Putting your white assumptions before reality is a constant problem with you. But, I am glad you linked to that article so I could see this:
"he emphasizes the need for a poetics that engages violence dialectically, without trivializing it."
Didn't I just call you on that, too?
You're fucked UP,….
The whiteness angle here is just another progressive trying to find racism to decry.
Really? I wonder how he feels about Blacks straightening their hair? Why is straight hair "good hair"? How does he explain the fact that light skinned Blacks have higher status than dark skinned Blacks in the Black community?
Asians' ideals are not all western based. Some existed well before Western influence.
We sell plenty of sunless tanning products to white people while also selling skin lighteners to Asians.
Lighter is better has been around for centuries in Asia.
Stuff White People Like: White People's Fixations
Wow. Balfegor kind of nailed it.
Perhaps it's only the Asian-Americans who are obsessed with looking "white." While he mentions Latinos and nose jobs, I am completely unaware of any of my compatriots having rhinoplasty. My spouse said my cute nose was the first thing he noticed about me (he's got a very German nose).
And it's not that I don't know Latinas who have had plastic surgery---but it's all lipo and butt implants (a very Latino procedure).
I like Tyra Banks.
Possibly the personality type of those most likely to seek such transformations contains a stronger element of ego than possessed by most people, which would make such a demeaning admission less acceptable.
A little bit of narcisssm. Definitely not fear of people passing as white
What is most likely is as whites have absorbed the message that they have massive privilege and rule the world, and that other races suffer all this psychic pain from being minorities or subaltern we are afraid that we
BROKE
non-white people, and that their psyches are beyond fixing. And that causes guilt.
I don't think the author is necessarily oblivious to the fact that some Asians also view the plastic surgery process as Westernising. I think she is right, though, that there is an extremely vocal corps of Whites who view all Asian plastic surgery as an effort to look more White (and seem to experience the usual pleasurable frisson of White guilt over it).
I've always been repelled by cosmetic plastic surgery, along with tattoos, nose rings and suntan booths.
I prefer to remain as God made me.
"Of course," you say, "not everybody is as good looking as you are, Tyrone!" and I really can't argue with that.
How is this different from being transgendered? Just a white woman born into an Asian woman's body.
If I got cosmetic surgery to look like an Asian man, then I could credibly claim I've got a big dick.
I had completely forgotten to think about this for the last few decades. Thanks for the reminder.
Because white people know better what everyone else should want.
What is the source of your data? Is it "reliable and valid" and "with a high level of confidence"?
For what it's worth, female racial beauty features that have not passed through a racial cross breeding are inferior in beauty and in strength.
Koreans, Japanese and Han Chinese may stay purer in their generations of arranged marriages, but the inter bred Asian/ European/American beauties outshine them.
Genghis Khan's Mongolian Golden Horde caused its share of cross breeding beauty enhancements.
But the group that most consistently believed participants were deluding themselves about not trying to look white were, well, white people
The only non-white person I regularly heard white people say was trying to "look white" was Michael Jackson.
Eventually that faded and was replaced with "we give up, we don't know WHAT the hell he's trying to look like".
Gahrie,
"How does he explain the fact that light skinned Blacks have higher status than dark skinned Blacks in the Black community?"
I don't know - the whites, in charge of who progresses here, telling blacks our skin was dirty, filthy, etc. for 400 years, couldn't have something to do with it, could it? Or the fact whites gave better jobs and living arrangements to light skinned blacks?
Oh, I get it - you're a fool:
YOU THINK 400 YEARS OF WHITE'S MASSIVE CONDITIONING TO WHITE STANDARDS HAS HAD NO EFFECT.
Damn, Gahrie, you're stupid - what the fuck do you think reparations are for?
Making us hate ourselves is only one of the issues whites have to tangle with their role in.
You're still claiming "Rap's not music" right?
You'll be paying for THAT, too,...
mccullough,
"How is this different from being transgendered? Just a white woman born into an Asian woman's body."
Now, you see, that's thinking.
The rest of you guys are such pikers,...
Defend the white race! Defend the white race!
It's all you know - when there is no defense.
Your racist ancestors should've clued you in before releasing you to the wild,...
It would be wonderful if women stopped doing that horrible thing to their bodies. Of course that will never happen. God damn it.
Peter
Can't get much whiter than this....
If I went to a tanning salon believing I'd be black after a few months it would be fair to call me deluded. Of course I look better with a tan and mosquitoes don't like when my skin is darker so I can provide a reasonable justification for tanning that isn't deluded.
Sorry. Didn't read the article. Got to the third paragraph and it was either stop or slit my wrists.
Ummmmmmm, because the lefties hate being white?
tradguy - Hitler and the eugenecists would lurve you.
There is such a desire to prove that beauty is a construct of an age and not about body type or facial features that it seems that we a blinded to particular fact. Most of the world is populated by people with varying shades of brown skin and black hair and eyes and then there is one group of people in technicolor. Pink skin, hair in gold and red, eyes in blue and green. Its unavoidable. Color is beautiful.
"there's the issue of white violence on blacks -"
Crack, take a walk on the south side of Chicago after dark. I used to live there. Something happened since then, I wonder what it was ?
George Clinton thought disco sucks. You fail once again Crack.
Lemondog wrote:
"Can't get much whiter than this...."
But of course neither Queen Elizabeth I (nor the actress who plays her) are typical of white people. Maybe it's because I live in Hawaii, but white people do not seem 'normal' to me. Everybody is different. Stop thinking of white people as the people you see the most of on TV. These people are heavily made up and their looks are deliberately chosen after much thought and care. A lot of them are ethnic Jews, but I suppose that is considered white. If you are a white person, do the people you see on TV look normal to you?
The Maureen O'Connor who wrote the article may think that people are trying to look white when they are really trying to look like movie stars.
Don Cornelius also didn't like disco and rap. Go ahead and name him Tom. Pigment supersedes independent thought!
My nose is shapely
Yours is much too fat
Others have hooked ones
Or noses that are flat
Plastic surgery would cut yours down to size
And everyone's white in my eyes
As a white person I'm totally fixated on this. Whenever I see an Asian person, I make sure to point out to them that the sooner they get their eyes rounded, the sooner they can enjoy some of that awesome white privilege.
What percentage of people undergo elective plastic surgery at all, and also what percentage of people undergo elective plastic surgery repeatedly, is my question.
I wish I could get myself in good with those 'whites who are here.' I'm white. Where's my 40 acres?
whitney: Most of the world is populated by people with varying shades of brown skin and black hair and eyes and then there is one group of people in technicolor. Pink skin, hair in gold and red, eyes in blue and green. Its unavoidable. Color is beautiful.
White people - the original People of Color.
Michael K,
"Crack, take a walk on the south side of Chicago after dark. I used to live there. Something happened since then, I wonder what it was ?"
Is that an admission you have no clue what's going on?
mishu,
"George Clinton thought disco sucks. You fail once again Crack."
Man, you guys will say anything to beat off to - what does George Clinton's opinion on anything, but Doo-Wop and Funk, have to do with anything? You find one black guy - ONE OUT OF 30 MILLION - and think you've accomplished something?
I am so glad I'm not white so I'll never have to be that desperate,...
Listen to you defending disco. As if that's relevant anymore. Did it ever occur to you the reason why you can't get work at clubs anymore is because you're old? You may want to get involved in a church. You won't get paid but at least you can express yourself musically.
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