Around The World, Notions Of Beauty Can Be A Real Beast
Chinese-American TV personality Julie Chen reveals she had plastic surgery to make her eyes look less "Asian" to advance her career. Korean women are getting surgeries for permanent smiles. In Venezuela, breast augmentation is so widespread, it's a popular coming-of-age gift for quinceaera, or 15th-birthday celebrations.
What century are we in, anyway? Around the world, women continue to go to extreme measures in pursuit of "beauty."
That women subject themselves to these complicated and bizarre, not to mention dangerous, procedures got me thinking about these notions of physical beauty — and who gets to define them. And what struck me is the irony that what's considered "beautiful" or desirable in one culture is often the exact opposite in another.
The Tyranny Of The Tan
Take skin color, for instance. In the West, women expose their skin to harmful radiation and buy self-tanning products in pursuit of skin that's "sun-kissed" and glowing.
About a million people hit tanning beds each day in the U.S., according to the American Academy of Dermatology, with nearly 70 percent of them women ages 16 to 29. The market for sunless tanning products is big business, too, with one industry report estimating annual revenue in 2011 at $516 million.
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