Angela Lin 0:16
Today, we thought we’d lighten things up. We’ve had some heavier topics, the last few episodes. So we wanted to have something a bit lighter, obviously, we’ll still go into some kind of serious implications of these things. But for something fun, we wanted to talk about the concept of beauty and the standards of beauty that are held within both our western world as well as in the eastern sphere that our parents raised us in. Let’s start with why we wanted to talk about standards of beauty. I think one of the big reasons is that the way that we look and the level with which non Asian people think that we are beautiful and attractive is a big thing part of the broader concept of representation. Because previously we talked about media representation and how often or not often Asians are represented there. I think that speaks volumes to how broadly our looks are accepted within Western culture. Because if the most beautiful people within our society the like actors and actresses and models don’t appear frequently in Western culture that says a lot about kind of like how much we are accepted, and also what people think is normal, the more they think our looks are normal, the more we are accepted as normal.
Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)
Jesse Lin 1:39
I would say we’re not seen as abnormal. But if you’re talking about beauty and how it plays into your own self confidence and self image, it’s really hard to feel beautiful when you don’t see yourself in all the places where people are usually glamorized. It’s really Hard to feel beautiful about yourself when you just don’t see yourself. Sometimes we feel like we’re in this Limbo, right? Like, we don’t really fit in here in America fully, because we don’t look a specific way. But we also don’t really fit into Asia either. Like when I go back to Asia, someone can clock that I’m not somebody that lives in Asia like really, really quickly. Like they’re like, oh, you’re a Westerner, even though we look outwardly have the features of Asian people. I think this is really affected how we felt about ourselves growing up. Personally, I kind of just went like in very many different directions. I had like a long phase where I was just like in that whole, like I don’t care how I look at phase just because I felt like everyone else was so much further or cooler or better looking that like it behooved me better to be like on the completely opposite end of it, so that I would stand out more.
Angela Lin 2:48
I definitely always cared about how I look but for me, it was more like I just always wished I was like either a super cute popular blonde, white girl or I was like a stick thin Asian girl because I didn’t really fit in with either of the stereotypes of what beauty or like attractiveness would look like depending on which world I was trying to fit into. So if like within Orange County right we were like surrounded by beautiful rich white people. I didn’t look anything like them. But also when I tried to compare myself to Asian people, I was like, oh my like stomach’s not as exactly flat as theirs and like, how come when I eat less food than they do? I’m like, fatter than them. It fed a lot into my insecurities. Because I didn’t quite into either world.
Jesse Lin 3:38
I echo that and I feel like we just responded to it in very different ways. Like, I was like, oh, I see this, but then I was like, there’s no way I’m gonna get there. So then I basically just went a completely opposite direction. But then I think also like, depending on what other parts of your identity are different communities you belong to some of these standards of beauty is deals can be amplified in even like more negative way. Like as a gay man when I first started like hooking up with people like using apps and stuff, honestly it was flabbergasted how like openly rude people were about who they wanted to sleep with. You would frequently see profiles or play with not interested in fat people are not interested in feminine people, we don’t like Asians, we don’t like black people. You take someone who isn’t represented who already has a difficult time seeing themselves and then you throw them into this like pool where people are like, No, no, no, no, no. And so you further feel like rejected and you don’t even really know yourself yet, so it’s like this double whammy feeling in terms of how those standards of beauty can really amplify negative emotions around your own self worth and how you see yourself.
Angela Lin 4:49
That’s so fascinating because unlike straight dating apps, no one can say those kinds of things because it I mean, it’s still racist and like discriminatory in the gay world, I just I guess I don’t understand why it’s okay to say those things there because in the straight apps like you would get canceled, you know, if you wrote any of those types of things, the like, closest thing that anyone could write is like girls who were obnoxious and would write things like must be over six feet tall to talk to me, or like, you know, those things like that. But they could never write things like explicitly not into certain races.
I mean, Grindr is like a special microcosm of like nastiness in general. But with all these things, that’s just like the clear representation of how people already acting and even if you didn’t have that, so visible, it’s still how many people feel and like enforce the standard of beauty.
Disclaimer, today we’re going to be talking about standards of beauty. And I think we’re going to make a lot of comments that like might be somewhat offensive, because beauty in and of itself is something that’s super subjective. And also, we’re talking in broad strokes here. So like a lot of what we say is the standard of beauty is like our perception of what that is, we recognize we’re not like catering this necessarily towards all the different minority groups because for sure, I think there’s some nuance so today we are largely talking about white society, because that’s mostly what you see in media. All right, let’s start at the base level. What are some of the traditional standards of beauty from our our motherland so let’s talk about Eastern culture first. What are some of those typical standards of beauty for women? It is really this like super pale as fuck like skinny as fuck girl ideally your quote unquote tall but I think that like range of tallness is different in Asia because everyone’s short there. So like, I remember when I was growing up, my cousin was like, No, five, three, but like, I’m a midget. So I’m super, super short I’m only like five feet tall. So for me like five three was like so tall, right and like, and all my aunts and uncles would reinforce this, like, Oh, your cousin is like super tall and skinny and beautiful. And I was just like, Oh, cool. Let me like continue to feel bad about myself. But in Asia, I think for a girl it’s literally like five, three, up Considered tall. Also the like paleness I think it really does stem from like thousands of years ago in Asia of like, yeah, if you’re pale it means you were rich enough to stay indoors and like under sun sun umbrellas and stuff to like make sure that you weren’t the one working out in the fields doing manual labor. That’s what being tan indicates. So that’s like the origin but obviously that’s like perpetuated and changed into like different reasons nowadays there’s also obviously influence now with like, white people and Western culture wanting to look a bit more like them that’s playing into it. But yeah, for some reason, it’s like continued into today that like tan is not beautiful in Asia. And then the skinniness is interesting because something that’s like continue to bother me forever is just that in Asia, they like don’t care how you were skinny as long as you are skinny. So like most people who are skinny are just skinny fat and they like don’t work out at all they have like no muscle whatsoever. They just like starve themselves so that they like appears skinny on the outside even on if on the inside they’re like super unhealthy, like dying inside because I remember when I was a kid or not a kid like a teenager and I went back to Asia and I was always super jealous of my cousin because she was quote unquote tall five three and skinny and like typical super skinny flat everywhere Asian and I was like, I could never look like this. But anyways, I was already into that phase where I was like really self conscious of how much I was eating and like because I thought it was fat. So when we’d go out i i’d always be like, silently observing how she was eating to like figure out how she was so skinny and literally she would just like not eat all day and then she would take me to a cafe where they had this like the brick toast you know what I mean? Like thick, French toast with like scoops of ice cream and like syrup and shit, like condensed milk and shit everywhere. And that would be all she ate that day technically, but it was like the fattiest most unhealthy food that there was and that’s like, that’s how a lot of Asian girls are skinny fat is like they deprive themselves of most food, but the food they choose to eat is like, so unhealthy and terrible for you. It was also reinforced by my mom, because she’s also super skinny, but like skinny fat for sure. And like, there’s this like, actually, I saw this I think on like Asians Never Die or something recently. Asian parents are constantly telling you you’re fat, like when you gain you know 5 pounds or whatever. Yeah, they’re so in your face about it and like rude but then they’re like, you’re so fat. How’d you get this fat and then dinnertime rolls around and they’re like, here’s all this food. And like, if you don’t eat at all, I’m offended. It’s like, I’m sorry. I don’t understand how you think this is happening.
Jesse Lin 11:01
So from the guys perspective, I think that there are like two paths that people walk. Generally speaking, there’s the very like Kpop like pretty flower boy look. And then on the other side, there’s definitely like a more traditional like, athletic male masculine look. Everybody kind of generally knows what the K pop boy look is like, it’s definitely more quote unquote, feminine. They’re definitely like more conscious or aware of the different things that they’re using. So they’re doing like a lot of makeup. They’re dressing in like very flashy ways. And on the other side, like for like a more traditionally athletic looking man, I think it’s very similar to a Western sense of beauty. You’re looking for someone who’s like very athletic, somewhat built. They look like they could play sports, stuff like that.
Angela Lin 11:49
So speaking of the Kpop look, I think one thing that’s interesting is kind of the bleed over between like this more effeminate look. Because they borrow certain things from like Asian women culture, I guess in terms of the the look and the products they use and whatnot and in women, I’m not sure if this like translates over to all the Kpop pretty boy looks too, but in Asian culture, the double eyelids is something that’s like, really important. I desperately wanted double eyelid surgery when I was like 13. And this is like a very common surgery. There are a couple of reasons why Asian women like to do it. One is that we constantly have the stereotype that like Asians have really tiny eyes, right? And that’s both perpetuated within Western culture and also an Asian culture. Also, double eyelids as a feature is something that I think is more associated with Western culture because Asian or non white people are the ones that have single eyelids. So it was just like again, you’re trying to kind of like check off these things that will make you more like westernized and fit into those traditional standards of beauty. So I don’t know if that’s the thing was on Kpop or like the pretty boy look, but I wouldn’t be surprised I guess if that’s like super popular in Asian women culture. But you learn some interesting things about the, like acceptance or lack thereof of this kind of ascetic, right recently?
Jesse Lin 13:28
Yes, Yes, for sure. So when we’re talking about like, standards of beauty, a lot of times we think that like, these are like organic things that like surface society, and like kind of spreads out. But when we look at Asia, like you can actually see some of it is like directed. When you look at China and a lot of the aesthetic kind of bleeds from Korea. The government actually very recently kicked up their propaganda machine to try and exert some control over what a real man should look like. And if you look at the old communist propaganda you see these like very atypical looking Asian men in terms of how you would think of Asian men from a Western perspective. Like they look kind of like footballers, they have like very chiseled jaws. They’re usually dark skinned. There was even one in the article that I was looking at the dude was like shirtless and like he wasn’t jacked, but he was like, pretty built. And so it’s interesting because the government there is trying to like direct people away from this more like feminine aesthetic because they feel like it doesn’t fit into, you know, how a man should appear. And a lot of those things kind of dovetail with social things that are happening in the space. So I think originally when there were all these feminine men coming into the picture, it was okay. But then you start to get more movements like LGBTQ people becoming more visible and they also look like that and quickly you have like connection between those two things and then becomes not okay. So then a lot of these things are kind of like public pushback against what you perceive as like outsider group that has some kind of negative association with it. And they want to move to the other side where it’s like more masculine man. So you’re not like as connected to that.
Angela Lin 15:12
Right, because when we had Tong on last week, she talked about how China obviously is like, still super homophobic and like, you just don’t talk about it anyway, if you are. But it’s funny because you you said like, in your research, that it’s not considered something gay.
Jesse Lin 15:31
Well, specifically the Kpop stars, what I read was that they don’t think of these things as a gay thing. Like they think of putting on makeup, having really nice hair or having really nice clothes as a way to present the best version or your best self to the people that you care about. And those people perceive that as an effort, you know, to look nice, and they appreciate that the culture is also slightly different, where a lot of the socialization for guys is between guys, so you’re like you have a much closer male relationship to your friends then I feel like you have here where it might be perceived as like gay. So I think we should talk about probably the other side of the puzzle which are the standards of beauty here in the wild, wild west. I think we both agree that the aesthetic is still very much like WASP or Baywatch like you have you’re tall muscle man and you’re like beautiful buxom ladies and everyone is blond hair and blue eyed and you know, they look like they came off the cover of like a Men’s Health or like Shape magazine or something like that.
Angela Lin 16:40
What I find interesting is that the continued trend of what is like most popularly seen as beautiful still kind of falls into this like Aryan world, which I think it’s kind of fucked up because obviously that came from like, Nazi world but it is still like you said, like blonde is still preferred over brunette, blue eyes or green eyes, right? Like the more like lighter colored eyes are more interesting and more coveted and Jewish people aren’t like super represented.
Jesse Lin 17:14
Yeah. And there’s some like specific characteristics that we kind of already drew out. But like, you know, for a guy, it’s like you’re muscular. You’re really tall. Your skin tone is darker. It’s better than if it’s paler, but obviously not if you’re dark enough to be a minority. That’s a no no. From the face standpoint, like I feel like a lot of what’s more coveted is like the strong jawline and like very well defined features. And then I think two more like guys kind of situation is like the ability to grow facial hair seems to be a big thing. Like you want to be able to do that because that’s seen as a, like oh, manly, like grow a full beard. And then the last thing which I find the most amusing is like a comparison of basically like penis size. And obviously, as with everything America, the bigger the better. What about for ladies?
Angela Lin 18:00
Definitely like big boobs are ideal in the in the Western world, big ass as well somehow if you have both even better flat stomach, which the thinness of Western versus Eastern, I think has this distinction here because even though both worlds want you to be thin, I think in America, fitness is very important. So they don’t want you to be skinny fat per se, they want you to be like, fit so you want to be lean, but you also can’t be like, then muscular like you don’t want to like threaten the masculinity of male counterpart. There’s just like so much of I want you to be this but not to that extent.
Jesse Lin 18:48
I mean, we kind of talked about how we don’t feel represented as minorities in basically everywhere, but is that completely true? Like I think there are some standards of beauty that are like slowly changing and being like, absorbed into like the popular zeitgeist, but it is not like fully accepted yet. For example, like, let’s look at like some pretty common supermodel Naomi Campbell and like Beyonce and Tyra Banks, like in general, they have like features that are more similar to like white people features. Yeah. And so it’s like easier for people to accept their beauty into the ideal standards of beauty.
Angela Lin 19:32
Yes, they look like white people, but with dark skin, like, I don’t know if you watch this movie in the 90s, but early 2000s I don’t remember but Tyra Banks was in a movie with Lindsay Lohan child Lindsay Lohan called Supersize Me.
I remember, but she’s so beautiful. And looks so anglicised that she is basically black Barbie like she played a Barbie doll in that movie that came to life
Jesse Lin 20:08
There’s definitely now this kind of like moving towards the middle like I guess I’m merging of the two looks where darker skinned people are moving to be lighter skinned and some lighter skin people are moving to be darker skin like Ariana Grande. I feel like a lot of people forget that she is an Italian white girl – she looks very dark. She pulls off a really good like you think that she might be like Latina but she’s not. So there are definitely I feel like there’s this like weird middle space where they’re trying. They’re trying to move into this space is just kind of like a weird, amorphous like, you may not be the like race that you may be but that’s somehow beautiful for you.
Angela Lin 20:55
But okay, so yes, there is this kind of merging of People are trying to like kind of wanting to be what they are not. But I think on the like more uplifting side of it, there is a different trend where we’re like progressing into, especially in the world of like fashion and also in Hollywood. There’s this like newer embrace of wanting to represent minorities in more of like the way that they actually look in terms of like some of the features that are more traditionally ethnic. So like, for example, I feel like now with black people, like there’s this big embrace of showing off your like natural look in terms of your hair. Because I think up until this point, everyone felt like if you wanted to be accepted in western standards of beauty you had to have weaves in and like straighten your hair so that you would look more white because those are the hair styles that white people have. And, again, I do think that plays into why like Beyonce and Tyra Banks were like super popular was because they they always had hair where they looked like super luscious, like, you know, the curls and like the hair that emulated white women. But now there’s this embrace, like just letting your actual natural hair show, which oftentimes is like curlier. And like, you know, there’s like, fro’ sometimes, but like, just letting that beautiful natural hair texture like shine and welcome that as something that is beautiful in its own right, outside of these, like more traditional standards of beauty that have been enforced over and over again over many decades.
Jesse Lin 22:36
Yeah, I think that’s great. I mean, we’re also seeing a lot more representation in terms of different gender expressions and body types. So like trans, like I’ve definitely seen more trans people visible in advertising campaigns and like people that are not like skinny, skinny like or traditionally like you would appear on a photo campaign.
Angela Lin 22:56
Now that we’ve talked about the two different standards of beauty between east and west, I think one thing we wanted to discuss was why there’s this kind of taboo within Western society where it feels like if you want to put in more effort into your appearance, whether that’s as little as like, styling your hair, or it’s as much as like, veering into trying makeup and like more androgynous types of clothing and whatnot, like, there’s this, like, people kind of poo-poo it for some reason as like when you try to like take extra care of yourself and like present yourself better. Like why do we think that is?
Jesse Lin 23:39
I want to say it’s because these looks are sometimes associated, like I mentioned before with the LGBTQ community, or they’re associated with some other marginalized group where people are like, we don’t like we don’t want to see that. And so like when they see people veering, towards that direction. They’re like, oh, no, like, you don’t want to be like a part of that. That’s like the weird outside thing that you don’t want to be connected to. I think also part of the reason is that the guys here don’t have very close male friendships with other men like in terms of talking through their feelings and stuff. And I think part of that also goes to like, how much caring you’re taught to show for yourself, right? So I’m now watching queer, thanks for the recommendation. But one thing that I felt was so striking is that a lot of the times when they’re one on one with the person that they’re working with, they don’t seem to personally have an issue with any of the tips or things that they’re being asked to do. And in fact, when they’re confronted with this idea of it is okay to care for yourself and doing these things as an act of caring for yourself. It’s like a different orientation. Like they understand that this is for me, and like it’s for me to feel better and it suddenly is not a you know, somehow it’s not a gay thing even though most of the for me tips has been given by like quote unquote the gayest is why all the Fab Five. Like you have a super gay man telling you to take care of yourself with things that you would traditionally think are gay but you don’t take it that way once you understand it’s not that it’s just about taking care of your appearance and how you want to present to other people. So a big part of it is really just feel like people have the wrong perception of wearing moisturizer and doing your hair nice. Like these are not things that make a person gay. These are things that make it seem like you care about how you appear to other people. And that in and of itself is not a bad thing.
Angela Lin 25:49
Yeah, it’s so funny because earlier you were asking like who decides what is like okay and not okay, right. And like, I feel like there was this unspoken decision a long time ago that in order to be a masculine man, you had to like not care at all about what you look like. The less you cared about what you look like, the more manly you were. So like you could be sloppy and like look like shit and just throw on the dirty shirt you have on the floor and like that’s manly as opposed to like putting in a bit of effort into how you’re presenting yourself. Because somehow then that again kind of like attacks your level of masculinity that you are giving off to everyone else which is kind of crazy because that’s not at all how it is in in Asia or Europe because even those those like you talked about in Asia, there’s like the pretty boy K-pop people and also the like athletic more traditionally like manly people, but even the ones that fall into the like athletic manly side, they care more about how they look and present themselves then in the in Western culture because they still like make sure they have like the cool haircuts and like they’re like wearing like cool brands, like they still care about those things, even if it’s like presenting a more like sporty or like athletic look. So that’s always been super interesting to me. And then also Europe for sure. Like, I definitely remember in college, there was someone that I met who was from Europe who’s from like Belgium, or whatever, and something came up or someone was brought up something they liked. And he said he liked it too. And they’re like, oh, really, usually only girls like that kind of stuff. And he was like, I’m sorry, I’m European, like, I’m comfortable enough in my masculinity that I don’t feel threatened, like liking something that is more traditionally feminine. And that always stuck with me because it’s like, yeah, why isn’t that the case that like, I guess if you like something here and you’re a straight man in the in Western culture that like if you happen to like something that falls outside of the definition of like, traditionally masculine and that means you were like, your masculinity is being threatened.
Jesse Lin 28:02
I think it just goes to show that standards of beauty are strange and often contradictory, right? Like we we talked about how there are these like perceptions of beauty for both men and women and from the man side that ideal look requires a lot of work and effort, but then you look in like real life and people are like, oh, no, like we don’t want to necessarily be associated with doing these specific things that would lead you to that ideal look. So I guess at the end the day like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And then you know, we have these standards, but they’re really sometimes there, they’re really sometimes not there
Angela Lin 28:45
Welcome back to our fortune cookie closing section because we always like to end on a sweet treat. And the sweet treat today should be really fun for you guys because it is at our expense. Today, we’re going to talk about fails in fashion and beauty of trying to become white essentially through our lives and one of the big things that Jesse and I both partook in when we were in our teens was trying real hard to become emo kids. Well, we did succeed and become an emo kid. Yeah, but aesthetically, I think we were trying really hard to copy that like typical white scene emo kid look of like the angular hair and like choppy layers and like wearing all black and like, for guys is like wearing for some reason, women’s skinny jeans, and all this shit. And I think we succeeded and nailing that look. But something that we realized which was fucking hilarious was like, when we adopted this look, and you took us outside of the context of the US and you put us like side by side with just like Asian people in Asia. We’re like, do we look more Asian for some reason now then like before, because a lot of the more angular and like super layered hair styling was already happening in Asia like way before the emo scene. Yeah, so like take away the of course like dark eyeliner and like wearing all black or whatever but like the hair alone and us being Asian, we’re like fuck, we’ve somehow like became more Asian even though we were trying to become white,
Jesse Lin 30:23
The hair was intense. And the hair was the thing for me in high school like basically as I mentioned, like I didn’t really quite care all that much about what I was wearing, but my hair was like the point of expression. I had periods where I had Justin Bieber hair. What I wanted was like this way the surfer dude hair but obviously Asian hair just grows straight. So you know, did with it what you could and then for a period I had a fauxhawk for a while. Yeah, that was, that was real as well.
Angela Lin 30:53
Super fail. So we went through our emo phase and then a different phase we went through was the kind of preppy phase where we were also super into Hollister and Abercrombie. At least for me, I was obsessed with the show Laguna Beach. So I definitely was like, I need to buy more Hollister like these beautiful white girls on Laguna Beach, but like it kind of backfired. And for me at least, it made me feel worse about myself because for anyone who’s ever tried on anything at Hollister and Abercrombie, they’re made for anorexic people like they make triple xs as a size because people are so skinny that wear these clothes. So whenever I wore it, I always felt like fucking obese because the clothes would be like kind of tight, right? And like, I’d have to buy like, I don’t know, medium instead of triple extra small. Yeah, it totally backfired because at the time, I was like, why is this so expensive? It was like $50 or $60 for like a shirt or whatever. And I’m like, I have to save up all my money to buy this shit and then also buy really expensive stuff that somehow still makes me feel bad. I don’t know.
Jesse Lin 31:56
And then they went bankrupt. I guess that people started feeling like I don’t want to feel bad anymore. I’m not going to shop here.
Angela Lin 32:02
Or maybe they got sick of smelling the fuckin perfume cologne they pumped through the air.
Jesse Lin 32:09
Alright guys, if you enjoy this episode or you have some fun stories of hashtag failing at being white to share with us or if you just have any other opinions about the standards of beauty we discussed in the episode please let us know you can write us at telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com that’s Y-O-U-R-E and of course you can hit us up on all the socials.
Angela Lin 32:33
Yes, and also we already said this but if you’re in Asia or you lived in Asia before or you have exposure to especially like Korean and this like pretty boy culture. We’re very interested in hearing more about that because we don’t have like firsthand experience. So email us we want to hear about it and also come back to us next week because as always, we will have a fresh new episode for you the following week.