western idea of beauty

i heard of this blog about Julie in Japan from a friend, and rather enjoy reading it as she seems to really like japan a lot. i mean, i often blog about the things that annoy me, but she focuses more on the things that interest her, and also writes on a range of issues and subjects.

at the moment, there’s an interesting post about whether japanese people aspire towards the western idea of beauty, which supposedly means a curvy figure, big eyes, sharp nose, double eyelids and curly/wavy hair – do take a look at the comments to that post too.

what interests me the most are the comments by Kris and Anonymous #2.

i do wish i had wavy hair instead of my poker-straight hair, and that i had bigger boobs. but that has nothing to do with those being “western notions of beauty”!

wavy hair is gorgeous. it appears styled, it cascades down your shoulders and it looks sexy. i remember the times in jc when i stood during morning assembly admiring L’s wavy hair, but i certainly didnt go, “wow, her wavy hair is so nice because she looks western”. instead, it was just a “wow, she has pretty hair in a way that i can never achieve even if i used a hair curler”.

and the thing about boobs.. come on, boobs are womanly, they make you able to fill out your clothes in an attractive manner and it’s definitely nice to be able to not have extra space in your bra and have something worthy of being called a cleavage. what has that got to do with being western at all?

im not saying that there arent asian people or people of asian decent who wish they had western features like bigger eyes and so on. but what i’m saying is that most of the time, asian girls arent just sitting down there wishing they were western, or wanting a particular feature because westerners have them, because i’ve never associated those traits as being exclusively western ones. believe it or not, there are asians with big eyes, boobs and curly hair too, you know?

this discussion reminds me of another that i’ve once had, about the japanese obsession with being fair. some of my caucasian friends thought that this was to to with wanting to emulate white-caucasians, when in fact fairness is something that has been valued for eternity in east asia, because fairness was associated with being upper-class and well-to-do. nothing to do with white people at all. (and by the way, there are quite a lot of girls in singapore who value being tanned, because that makes you look sporty and outdoorsy. not every asian wants to be fair!)

i’ve also received comments on how straight my hair is and how amazing that is and how they wish they had straight hair like mine on several separate occasions, one of which involved my JTE walking all the way over and asking if she could touch my hair and exclaiming that it was beautiful (yes, i know i’m showing off here. heh. but i was sooo flattered :D).

so no, i dont think japanese or asians in general are jealous of western features or have bought into the western notion of beauty.