There's Nothing Wrong With My Eyes

Alyssa Lai grew up thinking she was pretty but noticeably different from most of the blonde, blue-eyed girls native to her San Jose, Calif., neighborhood.

This fact was not lost on her mother, father and grandmother, who had emigrated from China. Five years ago they offered to get her plastic surgery, specifically, blepharoplasty, for her 14th birthday. Commonly known as "Asian eyelid surgery," the procedure entails stitching a permanent crease into the eyelid.

Her parents told her that when her eyes were rounder and more Caucasian-like, her eyes would look even "prettier."

After quite a bit of soul searching, Lai opted to decline the surgery. The pain of the surgery, which can be intense for a few days to over a week, was only a small part of her decision to keep the eyes she was born with.

"To be beautiful you don't have to look beautiful in a Caucasian sense," she said.

With eyelid surgery the fastest-growing type of plastic surgery in the Asian community in California and across the country, numerous other young women are facing the same decision. Approximately 75 percent of all Koreans and 50 percent of all other Asians are born without the double eyelid crease.

At the cost of about $2,000, a rapidly growing number of young girls – both in Asia and the United States – are opting to have the crease surgically added.

U.S. Women Grapple with Ethnic Issue

But unlike their peers in Asia – where blepharoplasty is the No. 1 cosmetic procedure – young Asian-American women who consider the surgery are more likely to grapple with the idea that the procedure will also alter their ethnic identities, according to Dr. Charles Lee, a plastic surgeon in Los Angles who specializes in blepharoplasty.

"There is more resistance to the procedure here than in Asia," he told Women's eNews.

Lee said he has seen an increase in his practice for each of the past eight years. He noted that the surgery has long been popular for Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese women and this year the number of surgeries for Chinese-Americans have increased.

"In Asia, people don't see it as ethnically altering the same way they do here . . . But we believe we are just trying to make them look prettier. Just a prettier Asian eye, not a Western eye."

Lee acknowledges, however, that the surgery's popularity has risen along with the advance of Western culture and fashion.

"The increase is due to more exposure to Western goods, culture and makeup in China. It has been that way a long time in Korea and surgery there has been popular since the 1950s."

Golden State Transformations

In California, groups of all ethnicities have vied to transform themselves into a Caucasian standard of beauty. Jewish women undergo rhinoplasty, or "nose jobs," and African Americans have undergone the same, along with lip reductions and skin lightening.

Despite an era that seems, at least superficially, to celebrate multiculturalism, these procedures suggest that many women still nonetheless experience physical characteristics that indicate ethnicity as negative features. For Asians, ethnically defined by their unique eyes, eyelid surgery is a particularly dramatic example.

The Alexandria, Va.-based American Academy of Facial, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reported that 125,000 blepharoplasty procedures were performed in 2000 in the United States.

The numbers are highest in California, where both the Asian and plastic surgeon populations are growing rapidly. A study by the American Academy of Facial, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery also indicates that facial cosmetic and reconstructive surgery increased exponentially among minorities from 1999 to 2001. It has more than quadrupled among Asian Americans, compared to a just 34 percent increase among Caucasians.