ObserAsian #5 Eye Envy

For better or worse, she wants bigger eyes. Most Asians inherently do for no good reason whatsoever and have quite the case of eye envy.

What do Pikachu, Sailor Moon, Hello Kitty and the cast of characters from Final Fantasy all have in common with one another? Well aside from being the subject of young Asian fantasies, they all share one connecting bond; they all have abnormally over sized eyes. Much like height challenged males who drive Ford F-350 pickup trucks or the ego challenged driving Porsche, Asians are constantly made aware of their ocular shortcomings and choose to overcompensate by endowing their creative forays with disproportionately large eyes.

Asians are obsessed with many things but among the most touchy subject for Asians are their eyes. Asides from you know, the color of their skin, the one physical attribute that most easily identifies Asians are their distinct eyes. Through the vigors of childhood nursery rhyme clapping games, even young children are crudely adept at determining who is either Chinese, Japanese or an Indian Chief. Since there is no Asian equivalent to "sticks and stones my break your bones, but words may never hurt you," Asians have taken these eye taunts to heart and have grown increasingly self conscious of their eyes.

Many Asians lack a "double fold" in their eyelids which creates the slant like appearance of Asian eyes that have become commonplace in the caricatures of Asians and the mockery of Asians by Disney youth celebrities (That would be you Miley Cyrus). It is this lack of a double fold that creates the illusion that Asians have smaller eyes than others and more importantly gives my blog its title. Asians, and especially Asian women, have allowed this eye obsession to create mass insecurities and have led many Asians to take upon many options to try and increase the size of their eyes or accentuate what eye shape they already have.

Much like the western beauty standard that Asians want to adapt, Asians have also adopted the western way of achieving this standard; surgery! Asian women often travel outside the country to receive fat injections in their eyelids to create the ever elusive double eye fold. The other oft used method for eye accentuation is the much less drastic but equally excessive technique of creating the much coveted "smoky Asian eye look." The theory behind the smoky eye is very similar to the vertical or horizontal stripe theory which tells fat people to wear vertical stripes to bring out their height. The smoky eye theory basically means to surround your eye with as much dark make up as possible so that it looks like your eye whites are taking up a lot more space than they actually are. As a side benefit, the smoky eye makeup also allows Asian women to look extra exotic for good measure.

You may think that the Asian envy of the western standard of eye beauty may be a bit overdone, and in that regard, you are indeed correct. What compounds the perplexity of this entire scenario is how Asians choose to tackle this self esteem issue. Even though Asians make up a third of the world, they still choose to use western beauty standards for their women and their children. Why else would their children be idolizing their Anime comic book heroes with their over sized glassy blue eyes? Even their yellow rats that can shoot lightning out of their rosy red cheeks have these mega sized eyes. So for every young American girl who plays with their Barbie doll who might one day get a boob job, every Asian girl playing with her Sailor Moon doll may one day get a double eye lift surgery while wearing a school girl uniform.

Peek a Boo.