Lately, the blogosphere in Asia has gone crazy over one topic: Dawn Yang. She is the 21-year-old Singaporean student who apparently underwent plastic surgery, according to many critics, in order to look more "Western." And the result is a stunningly beautiful super-woman. See before and after photos above.
Moreover, Ms. Yang is not alone in Asia. Over the last five years, plastic surgery has become so popular among Asian men and women that it is hard to tell which body parts on people you meet are the real McCoy.
Therein lies the controversy. On its face, pun fully intended, plastic surgery is a personal choice, and no one except the patient him-/herself should make the call. However, there is a larger, more global issue at hand.
When I was an undergraduate (so many years ago), I read an article written by a Japanese-American who felt so pressured to fit into his mainly white community that he underwent surgery to look "more white." Years later, he saw the light and regretted it. The point of the article was that societal racism had informed him that only Anglo-Saxon features were considered good-looking, and sadly enough, he internalized that racism. The evidence to support this contention is pervasive. Look at the popular media: Virtually, every person advertised as good-looking is white. (Yes, media inclusiveness has improved significantly over the last 15 years in the United States, but there's still a long way to go.)
Hence, in this connection, Ms. Yang's decision to undergo surgery becomes a broader question than just a rich girl's fancy. What is her epistomology about the concept of beauty? How well-rounded is her understanding of beauty?
If the answers to the questions above are not copasetic, then Ms. Yang might be another victim of societal racism. And if that's the case, chances are the thousands of plastic surgery cases that have taken place in Asia over the last few years are not personally informed choices either.
2 comments:
Hi,
I take it that you r supposed to be a professional writer n not 1 of those voyueristic bloggers out there. I'm thus angry n disturbed by the fact tht u have chosen to use the worst photos of my friend Dawn to represent her during her younger days. This makes you no different frm the other opportunistic ppl out there eager to capitalize on the "differences" while ignoring her much better photos that were taken during the same time period. She definitely did not look like what's potrayed in those 2 very bad shots. What biasness, not a very "fair report" I'd say.
-Li
Well written. And I agree
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