Lashawn Jefferies
American Born Chinese: Heartbreak and Self-Hate
We live in the age of science. In many ways, that is a blessing. Humans don’t die
as easily now that we have science. Instead we take our medicine for those diseases and
get surgery when an old hip is not so nice anymore. Unfortunately, with the good comes
the bad and science and surgery is also used to remind us all what is wrong with how we
look. But not to worry, there is a quick fix for almost any form of vanity a person may
have. Certain issues are stereotyped to practically every race and each major race has a
“fix it” that is associated with that race or a cosmetic that they are stereotyped for
getting. For Hispanic people it can be butt injections, for black people, specifically
women, it's weaves and skin lighteners, for white people it is Botox and liposuction and
for Asians it is blepharoplasty surgery.
Blepharoplasty surgery is also known as the double eyelid surgery. The Merriam
Webster Dictionary defines blepharoplasty as “a plastic surgery on the eyelid that is used
to remove fatty or excess tissue.” In the book Thomas Procedures in Facial Plastic
Surgery by Ira Papel and Reagan J Thomas, Samuel M Lam M.D claims that the first
documented blepharoplasty took place in 1896 by a Japanese surgeon named Mikamo.
Even though this surgery is has fairly recently started to pick up popularity in the US,
Andrea Louie of the Northwest Asian Weekly says that blepharoplasty “has been popular
amongst Asian women since the 1950s.” This is largely due to the rise of Western
influences in China. The issue that this surgery has over other kinds of surgeries is that
when an Asian woman or man is changing the shape of your eyelids, they have the added
connotation that it is their intention to change the race that they are as. That goes far
deeper than using Botox to get rid of wrinkles.
This is not just a Chinese cosmetic surgery. All different races and ethnicities,
male and female, get this surgery. It is however associated with Asians of all origins. In
fact, according to International Woman South Korea’s Sex Industry: A New Commodity
Frontier, “ America’s ascendancy as a superpower … ushered in a new era of American
dominance in the world.” (p. 508) That dominance extended far beyond the political and
economic sphere of the world. America influences countries it never even colonized
(Korea for example) with ideas of the standards of beauty. As a result, a large number of
Asian women are having surgeries (like blepharoplasty) to make themselves look more
Caucasian. This is a serious problem. Not simply because people are having surgeries to
look like something they are not, but that a single nation can and has become the cultural
authority of what is and isn’t beautiful, is sickening. Even worse, the vast majority of the
world’s population does not fit into that standard of beauty and they are penalized
because of it.
It may seem like this surgeries are a problem of the past but that is not the
case. In Medicalization of Racial Features: Asian American Women and Cosmetic
Surgery by Eugenia Kaw, Kaw reports that Asian women were getting this surgery and
“[mutilating] their bodies to conform to an ethnocentric norm.” (75) This medical journal
was written in 1993, when cosmetic procedures were still relatively low. One can only
imagine the rampant surgical procedures done today with low esteem at an all time high
and images visible 24/7 telling the whole world what is beautiful and what or who isn’t.
In Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese, one of the main
characters, Jin Wang struggles with being one of the few Asian students in his school.
Even when he first starts at his middle school, students and teachers have preconceived
stereotypes about Jin. For example, one student alludes to the fact that he thinks Jin and
his family eat dogs. The story continues showing the other students, specifically the boys,
ostracizing Jin Wang whenever they can. Jin’s distress eventually reaches an all time
high when he goes on a date with Amelia, and her friend Greg asks him not to ask her out
anymore. Greg’s reasoning is that Jin Wang is not “right for her” (Amelia) (180). Just
reading this part of the story might lead someone to believe that Greg is referring to Jin
Wang not being cool enough or something along those lines of unpopularity. However,
from the other instances throughout the story, like when Greg’s friends make “Chink”
jokes about Jin Wang and his two Asian friends, it is evident that the problem Greg and
his friends have with Jin is not that he is uncool, it is him being Asian that is the problem.
Jin Wang is more acutely bothered by him, Suzy and Wei Chen being mistreated by the
other students because of their ethnicities than Suzy and Wei Chen are. After the “Chink”
incident, Jin Wang goes home with the look of Greg’s hair on his mind (97). The next
time we see Jin Wang, he has permed his hair to resemble Greg’s. At this point, the old
herbalists’ words to Jin Wang at the novel's’ beginning, start to take on their meaning.
She tells him “It’s easy to become anything you wish so long as you’re willing to forfeit
your soul.”(29) Soul forfeiting is exactly what has started to happen to Jin Wang at this
point. Jin Wang is so cut down by these boys taunts that he tries to imitate the look of the
boy who is mistreating him. To Jin Wang, the perm his key to fitting in and being
accepted, but it comes at the price of his true identity.
Despite the fact that America tends to be classified as an individualistic society,
fitting in is crucial for youths today. Not fitting in can lead to both internal and external
negative side effects, that usually center around violent acts. Any person with features, an
accent, race or religion that deviates from the standard, is not simply teased anymore.
Those people are bullied, beat-up, hated, pushed, punched, shoved and so much more. In
real life, a person can’t fix the issues of being different by morphing into someone else
like Jin Wang eventually does. Surgery and cosmetics can be the next best option though.
Some Chinese teens decide to deal with their opposition head on, but there are a few who
succumb to the mistreatment and do whatever is possible to fit in. This leads to people
getting surgery to be changed into a more “acceptable” look. For many Asians, the
pressure to look more “American” or “European” falls under the stigma of the way their
eyelids are shaped. Many remedy this by having the blepharoplasty surgery done. This
surgery is done to create a double eyelid effect. Jin Wang didn’t get this surgery but the
implications behind his perming his hair is the same as a person who would go to get this
surgery done. Both imply that the procedures (blepharoplasty and perming) will cause
whoever is getting them to look more like the standard and thus be treated better because
of it.
Jin Wang perming his hair is the first visible crack we see in a series of cracks
that culminate in him morphing into Danny. When Jin Wang perms his hair, the effect
that it has on the American students is the opposite of what he planned. Greg, whose
acceptance seems to be very important to Jin Wang, mocks Jin’s hair even though it is
styled after his own (184). In the same sense, Chinese people can come to loath the shape
of their eyelids after receiving criticism of it from their (usually Caucasian) peers. By
having their eyelids altered, they are typically trying to fit in better like Jin Wang did,
because the shape of their eyes is a major part of what makes Chinese people (and
Orientals in general) different from the American standard of looks. Reading about this
surgery and the amount of people who get it made me sympathize with Jin Wang a lot
more than I originally did. It is each person's right to look how they want to, but the
Western civilization has enforced the young, slim, white, blonde / brown hair, light eyes
standard of beauty on civilizations all over the world and as a result, anyone not fitting
into that extremely narrow definition of beauty that has been set up, fall into the category
of “other” and is cursed with a lifetime of underrepresentation and potential self loathing.
This casting off is a struggle for men and women. Self hate and altering features to mimic
another is often shown as a female issue. Jin Wang shows that the identity issue affects
boys and men as well.
The story of Jin Wang and the blepharoplasty surgery makes you realize just how
far some people are willing to go to feel accepted. Too many young people are made to
feel like looking or being their self is not enough. Our American society practically
forces Chinese people to become like everyone else even if that means losing any
representation of their culture in the process Jin Wang perming his hair can be looked at
as another interesting bit of the story but the reality of the matter is that people have been
transforming into ghosts of their former selves for so many years and almost no one bats
an eye at it or even questions why a person would feel the need to take such extreme
measures to fit in. Losing touch with your identity is not worth fitting in. That is
something both Jin Wang and anyone getting theses surgeries to conform these surgeries
fail to realize. Being you is enough.