Pencil thin, white pale skin, strikingly huge doll eyes — these are the features that capture the ideal East Asian woman today.
From a very young age, girls are moulded to aspire toward one (idealistic) standard when it comes to physical appearance. Speaking from personal experience, I believe this is mainly attributed to the increasing influence of social media, the rise of Korean/Japanese pop culture, and the general public's growing fixation on cosmetic surgery.
In the past few decades, the cosmetic surgery industry in countries such as South Korea, Japan and Thailand has experienced a significant boom. Teenage girls flock toward the industry's latest scientific breakthroughs by the thousands each year.
In many societies, it has become a socially accepted norm for girls to go under the knife before the age of 25. Want larger, almost Japanese anime-like eyes? Nothing a little double-lid surgery can't fix. Want a more chiseled jawline to match the latest Korean pop sensation? Cue chin augmentation and liposuction.
Clearly, this growing plastic phenomenon has proved to have several dangerous implications, many of which have gone largely ignored by the industry and its devotees. For instance, such implications include the growing issue of body image in young girls and the health risks of engaging in back-channel, unsafe medical procedures.
In July last year, there was news about a Thai female college student from Chiang Mai who consumed and self-injected "skin-whitening" supplements containing glutathione, a chemical that can obstruct cellular exchange, as well as liver and circulatory functions, when consumed in large doses. The student suffered from liver failure, breathing problems and was immediately rushed to the hospital where she died.
This is just one of several recent cases in Thailand of bizarre beauty procedures going devastatingly wrong. As unfortunate as they are, it is unsurprising to see cases like this, considering the number of widespread adverts selling skin-lightening creams (through Instagram and Facebook) with names such as "Wonder White Lotion" and "Speed White Day Cream".
It can be strongly argued that in order to prevent similar cases in the future, there is a need to consider radically changing the cultural concept of beauty. I do not believe we can or should continue to live amidst a culture that inspires young girls to pay such a high price for "beauty".
Extensive cosmetic surgery could also lead to the loss of national and ethnic identity. For the most part, East Asian women naturally have features that are distinctive as national or regional traits.
Consider Thai women for example; northern women tend to have lighter complexions and smaller eyes, while southern women tend to have darker complexions and more protruding features. Yet, Thai popular culture unrealistically promotes a single standard of beauty — pale skin, large eyes, a chiseled nose and chin — which is becoming more influenced by the focus of the media on Korean pop stars.
In recent years, South Korea has been dubbed as the plastic surgery hub of Asia, so it's no surprise that the majority of its celebrities have undergone cosmetic transformations.
Countless young Thai women, celebrities and average office women alike have followed suit with double-eyelid surgery, nose-reshaping Botox, bone-cutting jaw realignments and various other cosmetic surgery procedures.
If this trend continues, the number of East Asian women retaining their ethnically diverse features will be far and few.
According to ABC News, "roughly 7.5 million people have travelled to this plastic surgery mecca [Seoul] to get work done".
This desire to create a new, standardised image of the ideal Asian woman is perfectly captured in 19-year-old Christina Lim's quote to ABC: "I think everyone is trying to delete this Koreanness ... In Korea, you go down the streets, you see this girl. And you walk down the street, and you see that girl again. It actually is a different person."
This type of mentality extends beyond South Korean culture and expresses itself in frightening ways.
In May 2013, a Japanese model known as Vanilla Chamu reportedly spent over $100,000 (3.3 million baht) on plastic surgery to look like a French doll. Her long list of procedures included liposuction, eyelash implants, dimple creation and breast implants. This is a prime example of how East Asian pop culture has created very distorted ideals of beauty, which are interpreted by women on varying degrees of extremity.
It is explicitly clear that East Asian pop culture needs to change its portrayal of beauty standards; they are highly unrealistic, and it is becoming increasingly dangerous to force young women to aspire to one set ideal. Not everyone can look like a member of Girls Generation (a hot-selling South Korean girl band), and not everyone needs to.
Young East Asian women need to learn to embrace their unique features and force cultural norms to redefine what it means to be beautiful. An obsession with youth and beauty has always been deeply rooted in East Asian culture, and although this may be difficult to change, we can transform how we interpret it in modern times.
Arpawan Vejjajiva is studying Political Science and Economics at Columbia University.