Identity and Internalized Racism

“The notion of Westernization has sparked some criticism in the Asian American community. Authors Maxine Hong Kingston and David Mura are uncomfortable with the popularity of the surgery, and believe that altering eyes, features by which Asians are so easily identified, is an attempt to conceal or deny Asian heritage and conform to mainstream American beauty ideals.“It’s evidence of internalized racism,” says Mura. “It really indicates something about the way in which Asians in America are indoctrinated by white standards of beauty. They feel less beautiful than those who fit the Caucasian standard of beauty.”

This view is extremely problematic in that it assumes that the Asian “identity” can be reduced to a single element of the body. There is also an underlying assumption that racial identity is purely essentialist and natural and must not be tampered with.

There is a popular rhetoric in society that these ‘ethnic’ women should not tamper with what they are born with. In comparison, there is hardly an equalled amount of criticism held towards the white female population. In the case with ethnic women, any kind of aesthetic surgery is automatically assumed to be some sort of effect of ‘cultural imperialism’ or a desire to become more ‘Westernized’. This kind of view is widely spread in the Anglo-centric world of discourse.

The notion of ‘internalized racism’ however is an interesting one. As in Kaw’s analysis of cosmetic surgery in Asian American women, the individuals interviewed all expressed dissatisfaction with their own distinctive ethnic features- associating them with dullness and passivity. In this case, there is clearly a sense of embodied self hatred, towards the ‘Asian’ feature.

However, remembering that 50% of the Chinese population (although comparitively, only 1/3 of the Korean population) are naturally born with double lids, can this really be seen as ‘racism’ when single-liddedness is not a given feature? Indeed it is a hatred towards the self (for having single lids), but hardly a racist statement towards their own ethnic group. If any, they only wish to resemble their counterparts.

Asian Americans who disagree with Mura’s interpretation often point out that a large percentage of Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese are born with creased eyelids, although they certainly tend to be shaped differently than those of, say, Caucasians. In fact, in some regions, such as in southern China, as many as 70 percent are born with them. In addition, double-eyelid surgery is enormously popular in Asia, and has been considered attractive since well before the infiltration of Western media. Therefore, many argue, Asians seeking double eyelids are simply trying to look like the more attractive members of their own race.

Anglocentric discourses have categorized this specific type of cosmetic surgery to accuse Asians of wanting to become more Westernized, an interesting debate. How has this phenomenon been spun? How has this emerged?