East asian beauty standards are exhausting

From a young age, we are taught that beauty is good. Heroes and heroines are always beautiful; it's the villains that are ugly. Beautiful people seem to have more going for them, and how attractive we are can shape social interactions as well as influence wider aspects of our lives. So it's no wonder that most of us are chasing beauty, in the pursuit of looking beautiful, and beauty standards play a huge role in defining what beauty is.

East Asia, in particular, places a large emphasis on looking a specific way. Let's tackle the first big East Asian beauty standard, which is the idea of having pale skin. Now, a really quick note: in many countries, having pale skin has become a popular ideal because of European imperialism. However, when it comes to East Asia, the idea of having pale skin really stems from a history of aristocracy. For example, traditionally in China, having darker skin was associated with being in a lower class, as farmers usually tanner from working in the fields. In Japan, the white face paint of a geisha is a reminder of the traditional association of fairness with refinement. So having pale skin was often a representation of wealth and privilege, with your skin color being a distinct differentiator for class. This pale skin ideal, being so core to East Asian beauty standards, is very much woven into the culture, and we can see this reflected through sayings and idioms. In Chinese, there is a saying called bai fu gai san cun, which translates to "being pale can hide three floors." There's also a similar saying in Japanese, with the proverb translating to "a pale skin can cover seven floors." Both these sayings have the same idea, though, which is that having fair skin is such a plus that it can compensate for other poor features.

This pale skin ideal has remained a big deal; colorism is still rampant, not just in East Asia but Asia in general. Just take a look at the skin bleaching and whitening industry, which is worth 8.8 billion dollars. Though the association of tan skin with poverty is outdated, the objectification of people with darker skin and the racism and stereotypes they face is still a very real issue today. It's so normalized for relatives or family to call you out if you have darker skin, and I don't mean this in the sense of like going on a holiday and coming back more tanned—although there were definitely people who would pounce on you for that. I mean this in the way of being born with darker skin and hearing the same comment on your skin tone for the rest of your life. This type of attitude, where it's okay to shame someone for not adhering to the pale skin standard, is actually very similar to comments, again from family or relatives, remarking about your weight. And that actually brings me to the next beauty ideal, which is being thin.

Before I talk about the next beauty ideal, though, I'd like to thank Casetify for sponsoring this video. Well, sudden cut… um, it's me because I'm editing the video; my camera died. I just found the conversation with me and my bestie; we were literally talking about Casetify two years ago. The context is we both bought new iPhone 11s, which I still have right now, and she was like, "Are you gonna get a case to buy?" And I said, "I'm getting a case; what's Casetify?" And she was like, "A brand of case," and then she showed me these two pictures and she's like, "It's me and my sisters." And I'm like, "Oh, how nice." Is it online? And she said, "It's super protective, too." And then I was like, "What made you guys get that brand?" And she said, "They're kind of pricey; they're advertised by lots of YouTubers, and they have six-foot drop protection." And I said, "Wow, super interesting. I guess if they're super durable, then that's worth it." I know a lot of ad segments seem really scripted, but this was a genuine conversation from two years ago, and now I'm here doing a sponsored segment from Casetify. So it's super special that they're my first sponsor, and yeah, I just want to say that they're definitely a brand that I can get behind. So now, on to the scripted message, of course. Here's the case that my bestie and her sister chose from the PR package, and that's a reason why Casetify is seriously one of the coolest brands out there. They have more than 2,000 designs, and you can also customize your own phone case, like this one I have right now. I got mine customized; so I would say "lucky" at the bottom, but there are so many different possibilities with customization. Casetify also has so many cute accessories; this phone charm is super cute, and the silver stripe goes with so many of my outfits. Their cases are so sturdy; I can drop my phone, and there's literally no issues. So go check them out; make sure to use my link at casetify.ai/nini for 15% off. Thank you again, Casetify, for sponsoring this video. Now, back to the topic at hand.

Having a thin, slender figure has been a big part of East Asian beauty ideals, and it has stayed rather consistent throughout history. I'm going to raise some examples specific to China because there was actually one dynasty in which being skinny was not the ideal. This dynasty was the Tang Dynasty in China, in which the beauty ideal for women was actually for them to have a more curvy or plump figure. Aside from this era, though, thinness and fragility were considered, at least among the ruling class, to be crucial components of feminine beauty. For example, during the Song period, the emperor was said to favor slender women so much that harems would literally starve themselves to death in order to try and capture his attention. We can also see thinness being glorified through some ancient Chinese beauties like Joffrey Yen, who was an empress during the Han Dynasty. She was known for having a tiny waist and for being so slim that she could dance on her palm. And among the four Great Beauties of Ancient China, only Yang Guifei was known to have a curvier figure, and she was from the Tang Dynasty, which we mentioned earlier because that was the period in which curvier and plumper figures were the beauty ideal. Despite this, though, she was still noted to be teased by later historians as the "fat slave."

Even without these historical examples, we can still see the prevalence of the thin and fragile beauty ideal through what women did in order to conform and meet these expectations of beauty. Both foot binding and waist binding were practiced by women for thousands of years in order to achieve that ideal of having tiny feet and a tiny waist, and these two traits were true of the most important bodily features that defined feminine beauty in ancient China. In modern China, this obsession with being thin still remains. Perhaps one of the most telling beauty challenges that reflects this ideal is the A4 paper challenge, where one passed if they could successfully hide their whole waist behind a single sheet of A4 paper. This challenge originated in China and drew a lot of criticism for how damaging it was to a woman or a girl's view on her own body. This idea of being skinny can be further seen through the popularity of Brandy Melville, better known as BM, in China. Their "one size fits all," or "one size fits small," policy took the young Gen Z customers by storm. The younger consumer realized that if they couldn't afford brands that were being exclusive through their pricing, they could now afford this brand that was being exclusive through their sizing. The brand's association with being skinny can be seen through this fan guide titled "BM Girls Ideal Weight Chart," and these weight ideals are absolutely ridiculous—like 33 kilos or 73 pounds for a 150-centimeter or five-foot girl. That's the weight of a child; it's insane; that is not a good weight; it is a good way to develop an eating disorder. The East Asian ideal to be skinny has long eroded any healthy expectations of weight, and if you look at idols, for example, who are meant to embody all of these ideals, the diets they go on sometimes are crazy. The IU diet, popularized by Korean singer IU, is infamous for how extreme it is, as it consists of only one apple for breakfast, two sweet potatoes for lunch, and a protein shake for dinner. However, on the topic of IU and weight loss, there is a really wholesome moment at her concert, which is rent-free in my mind.

[Laughter] It melts my heart every time I see it, but I think it also goes to show how deeply rooted our fixation with being thin is in society, as well as all the unhealthy expectations that go along with it. So we've talked through some key bodily ideals—through being pale and being slender—but facial features also make a big part of it. In fact, research suggests that in the West, the body is considered more of a focus for attractiveness, whilst in East Asia, facial features are considered more important. So what are the beauty ideals there?

A beauty ideal when it comes to facial features is in looking cute, youthful, and innocent. A key part of this innocent appeal is on large eyes, and studies show that we subconsciously associate large eyes with baby mammals. So it's like a visual cue in making someone appear cuter, because there's this idea of large eyes being more attractive or cuter. Double eyelids became a trait that people wanted because it gives the illusion of your eyes being bigger. As a result, double eyelid surgery is one of the most popular and sought-after procedures in East Asia. A more specific surgery, which I think exemplifies this cute East Asian beauty ideal further, is the aegyo sal surgery, and it's related to this part under your eye. The surgery will make this part look puffier, giving your eyes a more youthful and innocent look. In Japanese, the term kawaii is used to describe something that is cute and almost baby-like in nature, and large eyes are a key part of that appeal. In particular, Japanese machines—really fun photo booths where you can take photos and then add filters and all sorts of decorations—and the end result usually looks something like this, and you can see that large eyes are really emphasized here, which is part of the kawaii appeal. As a side note, this isn't really a physical trait, but a big part of this cuter appeal in East Asia comes from your mannerisms. And I bring this up to really hone in on some of the cultural differences that might exist in our definitions of attractiveness. In Korean, acting in a cute manner is called aegyo, which some of you may have seen before. This is similar to a Chinese term called saiao, and this behavior, in acting cute, is then encompassed in the Japanese language under kawaii. If I translate these terms, particularly with aegyo and saiao, the definitions come out looking a bit different because there is no cultural equivalent in English of intentionally acting cute with a childlike charm.

So East Asia places a lot of emphasis on being pale, being thin, and having a more cute and innocent appearance, but what do these ideals actually do to people?

[Music] Let me set the scene where we kind of take a look at all these beauty standards in general first before we dive more specifically into East Asia. I remember seeing this one TikTok that talked about how we were never meant to see so many attractive people in our lifetime, and this exposure has just totally warped our perception and idea of what an average person looks like. We may have gotten used to seeing beautiful people all the time, but there are some consequences to this. The social comparison theory states that our basic instinct is to compare ourselves with other people and evaluate their abilities against our own, especially if we think they're better than us, more attractive than us, etc. So naturally, if we're seeing all these really attractive people on social media pages, we're either subconsciously or consciously going to compare ourselves to them. And the impact of social media sites like Instagram on the mental health of young girls has been well documented, with empiric anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, and body dissatisfaction being linked to Instagram usage. And I just want to hone in on this finding of young girls specifically being more at risk. The reason why is that society has taught girls and women that their self-worth is predominantly based on their appearance, and this is something key to keep in mind. This goes hand in hand with how many social and cultural theories argue that body dissatisfaction is best understood as a consequence of social and societal pressures. One such theory is the objectification theory, in which experiences with media sexualizing women actually leads to self-objectification, where women will evaluate their own bodies from the perspective of an outsider. And in Asia, women are more likely to objectify themselves as well because of stereotypical gender expectations. The objectification of our looks is also evident on social media, and this goes back to that link of Instagram usage and the deteriorating mental health of young girls because we often commodify and trade in pictures of ourselves for likes, follows, and comments. And another term that I want to introduce here, related to the idea of self-objectification, is the idea of body surveillance. Body surveillance happens when we're continuously monitoring how we look, and it's theorized to promote feelings of shame when we catch our reflection and find that we fall short to the unrealistic beauty standards that we have internalized. Now that we have all these ideas introduced, we can take a look at the impact of all these East Asian beauty ideals on people in greater detail.

[Music] As we saw earlier, East Asian beauty standards are notorious for being rather unachievable, like that Brandy Melville size guide, as well as being pervasive, like that A4 waist challenge, which swept across the internet and was literally almost like a pass-fail thing to see whether you fit in with beauty standards or not. But we can get a more concrete idea of how important looking beautiful is if we take a look at total spending and the beauty category as a percentage of total GDP. Four of the top five countries here are from Asia, and three are from East Asia. An environment like this can lead to an obsession with one's physical appearance, and this can result in the normalized usage of filters, Photoshop, and even plastic surgery for one to permanently alter their appearance. I wanted to take a look at beauty editing apps specifically because editing apps like Meitu and Snow are really the biggest reinforces of cultural beauty standards. They are the tools by which one would use to modify their appearance to fit in, and if we take a look at the exemplar pictures and the layout of the app, it's quite clear what demographic they're targeting. 89% of Meitu's users are women, and in 2021, they exceeded over 7 billion monthly images generated by the app. Like, isn't that the amount of people we have on this Earth? If that doesn't demonstrate the prevalence of photo retouching and editing in China and how normalized it is, I don't know what will. Like, that absolutely blows my mind. Some of the most popular features in the app are the slim face feature, the small head feature, where you literally shrink the size of your head compared to the size of your body, as well as the skin smoothening feature. Meitu is literally so popular and so widely used, and new vocabulary has sprung up to keep up with these changes. The term "peabo" is short for "photoshoppable" and stands for how well a photo can be retouched in an app like Meitu. Therefore, often when women go through photos they've just taken, they don't judge it based on how it looks on their phone, but rather on how they think it will look after it's gone through a photo editing app like Meitu. And much like the articles that came out a few years ago on Snapchat dysmorphia, a term coined to reflect the myriad of body and self-esteem issues which arose after using Snapchat filters, these photo editing apps are doing the same thing. In fact, the use of photo editing apps and filters is probably doing more damage to our self-esteem than through influences of traditional media, like seeing a beautiful celebrity on TV. And the reason why is that we aren't comparing to someone else; instead, we are now comparing to this hyper-idealized image of ourselves. So the use of filters and editing apps really only further perpetuates this idea that we aren't enough because we aren't these idealized versions of ourselves that are meeting these beauty standards. Now, instead of wishing I'd look like Jisoo from Blackpink, I suddenly have a much more attainable beauty ideal to compare myself to, which is just me, but 30% prettier because of filters or apps like Meitu. No, Instagram, Snapchat have shown me what that would be like. In fact, I would say that filters don't really show us a version of ourselves that's 30% prettier; instead, they tell us that we're 30% uglier than what we could be. I don't know anyone who takes off their filter and thinks, "Wow, that was a really pleasant experience." Instead, it's always, "Oh my God, that's what I look like when I take this off." So yeah, I don't know if this is a topic of debate, but I'm on team "30% uglier."

The normalization of filters has also led to some interesting developments in Korea. It's super common for your ID photo to be retouched by the same studio, with face slimming and skin brightening being some of the common adjustments that are made. And in China, Alipay has recently integrated beauty filters into their face scan payments. According to Alipay, their research showed that previous versions of their face scan payments weren't popular with Chinese women because they were afraid that they would look ugly when using the unfiltered face scan camera. Though this update of integrating filters now was made to soothe the anxiety women felt about their appearance, it's paradoxical in nature because you've now cemented the fact that there is something undesirable, that there is something wrong about their original appearance. Maybe it's a lose-lose situation where it's damned if you do and damned if you don't. But Alipay is the most widely used payment app in China, and them integrating filters results in women and the general public conforming to beauty standards by default. Doing so also turns face scan payments into a technologically enhanced process of self-monitoring.

The last idea I wanted to introduce in our discussion is the idea of self-construals, which refers to the degree of how oneself feels connected or separate from others. If you have an independent self, you feel distinct from others, and if you have an interdependent self, you feel more connected with others. People from the West are more likely to describe themselves as independent, whilst people from the East are more likely to describe themselves as interdependent. This influences our behavior in several ways. For example, people who are more interdependent, typical of the East, are less likely to complain about a product or service. But how does this relate to our topic of beauty standards? Well, studies show that the motivation to adhere to them is stronger for interdependence than independence. To boil it down, this argument is really on where you get your sense of self-worth. Interdependents, or commonly Easterners, feel satisfaction from belonging in a group, whilst Independents don't really feel the same way. An interesting study was done to test exactly this, and they looked at the impact of culture on conforming to beauty standards. In this study, they recruited women from both China and Canada to assess their attitudes on a hypothetical beauty product. The researchers made sure that the hypothetical beauty product didn't have any callouts that would represent any culture-specific ideals, like it wasn't a skin-brightening cream or anything. Instead, this facial cream was just meant to assist with more even-toned skin. Both Chinese and Canadian respondents were asked questions to measure how they felt about this product, how much they were willing to pay for this product, and most importantly, questions to measure the level of independent self-construct. Respondents would therefore receive questions like, "My happiness is dependent on the happiness of those around me," or "I will sacrifice my self-interest for the benefit of the group," and "It is important to me to respect the decisions made by the group." The results were intriguing; it showed that participants from China had a stronger interdependent self-construal, as well as showing more favorable attitudes about the product compared to their Canadian counterparts, who showed a weaker interdependent self-construal. Participants from China were also willing to pay more for this product compared to their Canadian counterparts. The researchers set up two more studies afterward, testing this theory and concluded that there does seem to be a link between the level of self-construals and conformity to beauty ideals. And that's so interesting to think about. Something else interesting to me, though, are your comments. I'll just be going through one today, but essentially, I posted this TikTok covering exactly what we mentioned earlier on how women have been taught that their self-worth is tied to their appearance, leading to the female obsession with beauty. And the comment I wanted to talk to was this one by Proth, who said, "I agree, and I think it has broad consequences such as the gender pay gap." And I know, in part, they're saying the gender pay gap is perhaps the result of this fixation with beauty, but I'm going to dive into this a little bit more.

Because I think there's a closer relationship between the two, we have seen throughout history the evolution of body image issues being accompanied by social economic growth. Take a look at South Korea, for example. South Korea's economy has rapidly developed over the last 40 years, and alongside these economic changes came huge societal ones too. This was spearheaded by a lot of women's movements which allowed for greater political, social, and economical powers for South Korean women.

What's interesting though, is that these changes were almost immediately accompanied by increases in body dissatisfaction as well as eating disorders. And this could be explained through another social cultural Theory which states that any movement towards gender equality which threatens the patriarchy will inevitably be followed by a heightened emphasis on unrealistic beauty standards, as well as increased pressure to meet these standards. Looking at Beauty through a social economic perspective is always interesting, so I'm glad I was able to slip that part in.

Finally, to wrap this video up, two concluding Thoughts From Me: first, East Asian beauty ideals have stayed rather consistent throughout time and have also been here for a long time. Second, the need to feel beautiful is only increasing, and this pressure is really being intensified by technology.

If you've made it all the way to the end, thank you so much for watching, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. To be honest, I'm still in shock over that Brandy Melville size chart. This video is scheduled for boxing day, so I would have already missed Christmas, but I hope you all have a wonderful New Year celebration. I hope 2033 is everything you guys want and more. Thank you all so much for being here; it's been a crazy end to this year, and I appreciate all of you so much. If you haven't subscribed, make sure to subscribe so I can see you again. Once again, happy New Year everyone, and I'll see you all in 2023. Bye