|
Given the opportunity to freely create sentences, stories, or other English language activities, students time and time again write about beautiful women being the focus of love, and grotesque women being the focus of ridicule. Students make up stories where beautiful women get married and are bought red cars by their businessmen husbands, and ugly women are not even worthy of being bought a pig, much less getting married.
While in Hong Kong, I read in a fashion magazine that more than 50% of women think physical beauty is more important than any other characteristic when it came to getting a job, a raise, a husband, or being generally successful in life. Whether these women are simply being aware of what society deems important or they are continually creating this value themselves is a question for another day. Similarly, a survey of University graduates in 2002 found that 54.3% of all new job seekers "identified physical appearance as the defining factor in securing a position."2 |  Winners of a Chinese national beauty pageant |
In a heavily populated land where job competition is fierce, many women rely on their looks to provide for themselves. There are even special high schools dedicated to grooming pleasant and graceful young women to enter the service industry, where a job as a hostess often pays on a sliding scale according to how attractive you are rated.3
For example, when I moved here and accepted a job teaching at an Engineering college, I was told I would be a successful teacher because I am beautiful. Not because I am educated, friendly or patient, but because the Chinese people found me attractive - or at least unusual-looking enough to attract attention.
Some of these trends are general enough to be true in other Asian countries.
What exactly is considered beautiful?
Korean-American Julia Woo writes, “Beauty means having big eyes, a pale complexion, a sharp and pointed nose, a taller height, and a small chin and mouth. Essentially, South Korean beauty meant looking as ‘white’ or Caucasian as possible.”4 Woo’s assertions are not far off from a generalized look at trends in China as well. Western features and characteristics are highly sought after. Girls with the right ‘exotic’ look land jobs as hostesses and door-greeters, or if they are lucky, have a chance at being local models and talent show hosts for exceedingly popular variety shows.
FangFang is one such pageant model in Xiangtan. Like so many young, pretty girls the world over, she is concerned first and foremost with her look – always meticulously dressed and preened, with modern, trendy clothes which are carefully coordinated with her hair and make-up in the effortlessly tousled, it-took-me-three-hours-to-get-this-bed-head-look which has the power to be alternately cute, or ingratiatingly superficial. She never shared a beer with me, afraid it would make her fat, and was prone to the self-conscious posing I began to see in many of the girls who frequented Xiangtan’s nightlife.
Early on when I met Fang her mother pointed out that we have “the same nose.” At first, I happily took this as a sort of indulgent compliment, a sign of acceptance from her mother and family. The fact that it wasn’t in the slightest bit true actually made it seem even more charming. But after several months of the same polite, preoccupied nonsense, when even the foreigners joined the chorus, it took on the indisputable tones of well-rehearsed desperation. Without fail, every time Fang and I were in the same place the conversation would turn and much time would be spent discussing our tall noses, often digressing through the limits of language to “Hello, you are pretty! Hello, yes, both girls are very beautiful! They have very beautiful dresses on, and look very nice with their strikingly similar tall noses! How are you? I think you are feeling good because you are beautiful like FangFang, and FangFang is beautiful like you! Hello!”
I moved to Xiangtan during winter and, unsure of how long I would be staying or where I would be traveling, I mostly brought utilitarian, warm, conservative clothes. When the Hunan heat started to kick in, I decided I needed to go clothes shopping. Luckily, I could fit decently into average Chinese sizes, but regardless, whatever joy I thought I might have experienced at being able to buy cheap and cute clothes were soon dashed. Not only were the nicer clothes priced comparably to what you might find in the US (not a happy reality when shopping on a Chinese salary), Chinese fashion is excessively feminine – but in an immature, girlie way that left me completely exasperated. There are only so many bells, whistles, and layers of sequined lace an adult woman can take on a daily basis.
Nevertheless, I eventually found girlie clothes that I could deal with – 50’s style A-line dresses with pink polka-dots and lace, denim skirts with miles of extra ruffles, qipao style dresses in modern batik folk prints. These are clothes I would generally be embarrassed to wear in public in the US, unless it was to a themed costume party. The reaction of the Chinese I regularly hung out with surprising, to a girl like me who never paid much attention to fashion, at home or abroad. Suddenly, it was as if I made sense to them, and the increased atmosphere of acceptance was disturbingly tangible. Conversations increasingly turned to how nicely I was dressed, how beautiful I looked, and although it was nice to finally be involved in conversations in such a flattering light, it was unfortunate that it was only in reference to my appearance.
Without realizing it at first, I started to play up to this more and more, and as I did people suddenly remembered to bring me a glass when sharing a pitcher of beer. I was more often included in offers of cigarettes or betel nuts, small but important gestures of respect in China. It didn’t bother me that being complimented on my appearance was really the only conversational exchange, because I was involved, I was accepted. Until one day I visited Mr. Liu’s teahouse.
I was sick with one of the unnamed and innumerable illnesses which periodically strike you in cities such as Xiangtan, but not so ill as to cancel my invitation to dinner. As I jumped on the bus, watching the little yellow receipt for my fare flutter to the muddy floor, I started to shiver with the familiar hot-cold of a low-grade fever. Suddenly, the idea of eating fried eels and chili peppers, or a bowl of fried pig fat and rice, seemed like traveling the bumpy road to a biblical hell of nausea. It was too late to cancel, I told myself, and I was nearly there, so I continued despite my misgivings.
I was full in the arms of a fever and a pounding headache by the time I had reached the teahouse, after crossing streets which convulsed with the piercing sound and nearly hallucinogenic movement of locomotive fry cook vendors, peasants with produce-laden shoulder poles, or old couples taking a stroll down the middle of the street with a shoe-shine lady, in addition to the regular flow of buses, suicidal taxis, motorbikes, and bicycles precariously overloaded with cardboard or chickens.
“Are you OK? You look pale,” asked a few other foreign teachers once I was safely inside the teahouse. We agreed I would use a separate pair of chopsticks for moving food to my plate than eating in case I had something contagious, although unless they were serving tofu brain soup, I couldn’t imagine eating anything at all. I was starting to dread the pressure to consume copious amounts of beer, betel nuts, and cigarettes, which play an integral part of any Chinese meal and are enough on their own to make one feel dead on the healthiest of fresh spring days.
I was spared… and I might dare say, for all the wrong reasons.
Early on in the meal our host noticed I had been much quieter than normal. “You are very still today, Jessy,” Mr. Liu started, already a bit drunk, “and very pale and quiet. It is very beautiful.” I raised my eyebrows. Mr. Liu continued, expounding upon how I was more beautiful than he had ever seen me, repeatedly drawing special attention to how quiet and pale I was, how little I had moved or eaten.
It was then I decided there was no longer an option to remaining in China for another semester or year. Among other things, I would no longer play to these desires of becoming a pale, quiet, restrainedly ornamental girl in childish ribbons and lace in order to be socially accepted and respected. It may have gotten me acceptance, but at the cost of a sort of personal vitality I had grown up believing was my right.
Playing quiet and pretty is fine – now and then. If, for example, someone would only speak to me through my boyfriend, asking in clear English, “Hello, William, how does Jessica like the soup? Did Jessica have a nice week?” then I could be precluded from tedious and repetitive conversations.
|
“You are from Texas!”
“Yes, I am from Texas. You should visit Texas some day.” “You are a cowboy! And I am a cowboy too!” “Yes, we are both cowboys.” “I am a Chinese cowboy, and you are an American cowboy!” “…er, yes.” “Cowboys! Handsome cowboys!” (and so on, day after day…) |
Yes! I am a handsome cowboy! |
I can understand how a Chinese girl might happily decide that being a beautiful ornament was her way to success, and embracing it. In China especially, such a decision contains a certain business sense, and for little girls for whom the importance of beauty has been emphasized since birth, it is only natural.
But I have other options, and after all, only took a job teaching in China on whim. I informed my school I would not be renewing my contract, and began making plans to return to Texas, where I could again be a proper cowboy. I suppose this is what a Korean girlfriend meant when she told me moving to Asia would teach me how to behave like a proper woman, but after my crash course in womanhood, I can happily leave my place to girls like Fang: beautiful, heartbreakingly thin, and wholly content with aspirations of being pale and quiet.
1. “China goes under the knife,” Asia Times Online
2. "Plastic surgery and attitudes of beauty and success," That's Shanghai! by Bridget Lee, 5 July 2004.
3. “Plastic Surgery Changing Faces” TIMEasia magazine
4. Culture Shock! “Beauty: The Korean Way”