Columnists

Beauty you can create is so shallow, it's skin-deep

By Joseph Christian (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-12-07 08:09

'Do I look more beautiful?" One of my female students asked me as she excessively batted her eyelashes.

"Umm..." I said, trying to stall. "Well your eyes look a little different," I finally said.

"Yes! I just got double eyelid surgery!" She said in excitement.

"Oh, that's nice," I said trying not to hurt her feelings. It was bad enough she decided to skip a whole week of classes and, truthfully, the double eyelid surgery did nothing to improve her looks.

When I first came to teach in China, most of the time when I heard my Chinese friends and students talking about cosmetic surgery it was accompanied by jokes about female Korean stars.

Now it's so popular that an 18-year-old college student, whose parents are poor farmers, is paying thousands of yuan to beautify herself.

Every year, more than 3 million hopeful Chinese go under the knife to become more beautiful. Most think that cosmetic surgery is fairly risk-free but I don't think you will be hearing such sentiments from the family of Wang Bei.

The story is widespread by now, so let me just summarize. Before her death Wang was better known as a popular contestant in the 2005 singing competition Super Girl. Now, after a failed facial bone-grinding surgery she will only be remembered as "that girl that died trying to look prettier". Ironically, it was her beauty that both brought her fame and drove her into the arms of death.

I'm not against cosmetic surgery. In the case of a burn victim or a woman who has lost one of her breasts to cancer it can be an excellent way to help an individual recover psychologically from the cruel twist of fate that befell them.

However, in the case of an already beautiful woman wanting a two-ton chest or the natural shape of her face to be ground away, it just seems a bit overboard.

Realistically, not everyone can be born a beauty and while you might be able to sculpt yourself into one, there is no way you can stop the assault of time.

Also consider that in China many of the doctors that perform cosmetic surgeries do not have the proper training or qualifications for the procedures they are attempting. It's not a haircut; a wrong cut here or there could kill you.

Wang Bei's death, while not an isolated incident, prompted the Chinese Ministry of Health to call for increased supervision of medical cosmetology. Local health officials will have to verify the credentials of doctors that claim to be licensed and ensure they are properly trained to carry out cosmetic surgery.

While this is an important step in making cosmetic surgery safer in China, there is still something that really bothers me about such surgeries - many are done by people wanting to look more Western.

Double eyelids, higher nose bridges and narrower faces are physical features more common in Caucasian populations than in people of Chinese origin. Just because you don't have them doesn't mean you are ugly and getting them might not make you look any more beautiful.

The other week, I was having a nice dinner with my fiancee when a Chinese couple walked in. The woman wore a skin-tight red dress. The heads of all the men in the restaurant immediately shot up to take a look. It was only after seeing her face that all the commotion died down.

Her high nose bridge looked like a glob of plastic covered in makeup, her face was so stiff from injections that she could barely smile and her double eyelids, which only made her look sleepy, finished off the horrific sight. I was afraid that if the restaurant got any hotter her face might melt off.

In the end, it is your decision as to whether or not you will go under the knife to look more beautiful, but please don't delude yourself about the dangers.

As you might guess, my advice is to completely avoid cosmetic surgery, after all, true human beauty can't be sculpted like a piece of stone.