I’m sure many of us went through that (jumpscare) 2012-2016 James Charles boxy eyebrow phase. That amber shimmer on the eyelids, knife-like eyeliner and bushy fake lashes.
To be fair, that look is still a hit today, but on a twelve-year old Korean-Canadian girl, it was unsettling.
I’ve always been a bit devious when it comes to getting what I want, especially when what I wanted was to feel grown up. I introduced my mom to the idea of allowing me to wear makeup for a Halloween costume when I was 12 or 13. My friend and I were dressing up as a white and fallen angel, and it was necessary for the black-winged angel that I’d embody that night to have thick, winged eyeliner.
My mom thought it was just for the one occasion, but I slowly phased it into an everyday thing. Wearing eyeliner everyday made that little girl feel secure. Her eyes were larger, wider, even seductive. They were sassy, not to be messed with. People would say, “eyeliner on fleek,” and ask her how she got it to look so clean.
When I look back at the way I lobbed on a thick layer of eyeliner, I remember the YouTube tutorials of mostly white women with the eyes that I wanted, explaining to me just how easy it was to look as flawless as them.
I never gravitated towards makeup tutorials with faces like mine — these videos were never popular, and even if they were popular, the comment sections were filled with languages I recognized but never understood.
Often in these successful Asian beauty tutorials, the women in the videos had even gotten plastic surgery to have the features of a white woman. Plastic surgery is a rite of passage once you turn 18, which will confuse me forever.
In some ways, I’m glad my disconnect from my Korean heritage caused me to grow up in a culture that doesn’t hold such strict beauty standards. Western standards still have a problematic emphasis on which types of bodies and skin colours are deemed beautiful, but the harsher standards of East Asia would’ve eaten me alive, despite already being quite fair and skinny for my build.
Being called ‘white-washed’ was such a highly sought after compliment.
Your eyes are so pretty. You have big eyes for an Asian. Are you half?
If I looked “super Asian,” like I was straight out of a K-pop girl group or a K-drama, I was treated like a child. The innocent, pure, clean, dewy, sweet, passive beauty. One that could be a perfect, easily manipulated girlfriend who won’t talk back. However, if I look “white-washed,” I’m hot. I’m strong. I’m mature.
For a long time, I wanted to look like my friend who dressed as the white angel, the half white, half Japanese girl I met when I was twelve. She had what all my other friends used to consider the best of both worlds. Beautiful double eyelids with lush lashes, a petite body and a flat nose.
Today, I still can’t say that I’ve completely let go of those desires. I want to look my age. I want to be okay with doing glamorous looks, while still being equally content without them. I want to embrace and enhance my features, not erase them.
But how do I do that?
How do I build a tougher foundation that doesn’t conceal who I am?