I'm a girl, and with that comes the desire to be beautiful.
Beauty is such a strange concept to me. It is ever-changing and hard to grasp. In America, you do what you can to keep up with the changing tides of fashion and beauty. For example, throughout my whole life the order of the day has been that an ideal beauty is glowing or sun-kissed. You know, tan. For those of us who have been given the curse in life to be eternally pale, we get used to the remarks.
Wow, you are so white!
Have you ever gone tanning?
I know a really great tanning salon.
Honestly, I don't blame them for their remarks. I know I'm not the stereotypical American beauty. That's been shown to be a tall, curvy, tan girl. Perhaps it would be what a real-life Barbie doll would look like. And, let's be real, that's just not me.
When I was eight year's old, I was given a special Mulan barbie doll. This doll was dressed in a silky white and pink kimono and had long dark hair. This wasn't what made her special though. It was her face. If you took a warm, wet cloth to it, a bright white face would appear with big dark eyes and a bright red smiling mouth. And as we know from the film, no longer was Mulan just a typical girl, she was a rare and porcelain beauty when dressed in this way.
The idea of a "porcelain beauty" confused me as I grew older. It went against everything I thought I knew about beauty. How could something considered "sickly" in America be considered something "stunning" somewhere else? And then...I moved to China.
China is a beautiful place. It is filled with vibrant people, rich history, and a lot of good food. But one thing it is not filled with is white people. I am stared at whenever I am not in my apartment. Men, women, and children, they all stare. Not a creepy kind of stare like I often experienced in the Middle East - a curious, awed stare. Sometimes, I think they simply cannot believe that someone can look like me. It is not uncommon for me to be asked by random strangers to take pictures with them, as if I were some sort of celebrity. I am most frequently called beautiful, or...get this...barbie.
Barbie? Are they serious? How could I look like barbie? My American views of beauty scoffed at the idea. By the time I was called barbie for maybe the twentieth time, I realized perhaps their barbies were made differently than ours. Perhaps their barbies reflect their own sense of beauty - the "porcelain beauty."
Ironically, I soon learned China is the birthplace of porcelain-making. I also learned that porcelain is not something that just is -- it is something crafted. It is crafted by meticulously heating materials to a temperature of about 1,200 °C. The strength and translucence of the porcelain arises from the formation of glass at these high temperatures.
Clearly it takes a great deal of work to achieve beautiful porcelain. And, sadly, this is something I have seen true of the Chinese version of beauty. I have had students ask me how to become thinner. I have heard students say they will never find a husband because they are so tall. I have heard students say their mothers tell them not to eat when they are becoming too heavy. It is this constant desire to perfect themselves into an ideal beauty. And they are ever afraid of failing.
Western influence has even become a part of this image. Those who have money take drastic steps. For the Chinese, South Korea is often viewed as the land of plastic surgery. They can have the crease put into their eyelids to look more Western. Not only that, but also have the bridge of their nose heightened and their foreheads enlarged all to imitate their idea of true beauty. The stores of Beijing are stocked with whitening soaps and lotions that claim they can take skin and make it beautifully white.
I am reminded once again of the oppressiveness of my own culture. It's ability to creep into every culture honestly scares me. A people that is so beautiful is literally altering their bodies to become more like me. All the while, I have been altering myself to look more like some other form of ideal beauty. What a sick cycle.
It is time to wake up. It is time to see that we were created beautifully. There is no possible way to meet the "world's standard" because the world does not have a standard. Each one of us has been through fire in our lives. Maybe it was a death of a close friend or family member, a hard break-up, or cruel words. It is time to see that these heartaches have made us stronger and even more beautiful. We are the precious porcelain on the other side of the fire and are the very definition of beautiful because of that.
You know, with that in mind, I'm proud to be a porcelain beauty.
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