Yes, I'm currently watching Dr. Phil. And it's an interesting topic about people who want to alter their appearance...and how that may be a way of "erasing" their ethnicity. They addressed Asians and Asian Americans who undergo surgery to remove their epicanthal folds in order to have more "Western" looking eyes. I can understand not being happy with how you look, but the interesting, and likely the most difficult question is can you honestly say that it really doesn't have anything to do comparing yourself to some standard of beauty that deems the Caucasian blond as standard...what is your standard of beauty, and living in a society where the Caucasian blond woman is the traditional standard, how can you NOT use that as a guide to compare yourself to, when that's what surrounds you? It's a challenging topic because of how complicated the reasons are for wanting this type of surgery. The flip side is that if we want to stop pointing out the differences between all races, maybe we shouldn't criticize someone for wanting to change their appearance, even if it alters a feature that's supposedly unique to their ethnic background. But I think that's a horrible over simplification and would be really naive to think that just ignoring race all together somehow fixes everyone's issues. But in terms of my thoughts on this, different and all mixed up and jumbled is beautiful! I love what I refer to as my Benetton Colors---my friends: I love that everyone's different. It's perfection. So I guess my idea of beauty is possibly different than mainstream America, but if I had the traditional "Asian" eyes, there's no way I would get that surgery. Maybe that's easy for me to say because I don't have them, but as someone who may look a little different than most, I am definitely at a point in my life where I am glad I'm the way I am!
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