I was at dinner with several friends the other day. One of my friends, a fellow Asian-American woman, pointed at another Asian woman across the restaurant. “That girl is so skinny!” she whispered to me. Her tone of voice indicated that even though she said “skinny,” she actually meant “pretty.”
I have been reflecting about how often I think of someone as “pretty.” When I see someone, I mentally check off boxes for characteristics that I believe qualify someone to be labeled as such. My friend had predetermined “skinny” as one of those characteristics, which was further emphasized by her next sentence.
“I wish I was that skinny.”
Her statements did not surprise me—if anything, I would say that it was a fairly typical conversation. But I couldn’t help but notice that this same friend had said something incredibly similar last week, when she showed me a picture of a very different-looking Asian woman, who is a fitness model, on Instagram.
“I wish I was that curvy.”
A lack of self-esteem and body positivity are prevalent issues among Asian and Asian-American women, especially in comparison to our white counterparts in the same weight range. While it’s hard to determine the precise definition of “Asian” and “Asian-American” in some studies, the recognition of additional external cultural factors may be a reason for the phenomenon I observe daily: my Asian female friends are highly self-critical of their faces and body image.
An inherent conflict exists between many Western and Eastern beauty standards for self-identifying Asian-American females. It becomes challenging for us to hop on the “love yourself” bandwagon because we have two archetypes with which we must grapple.
In the United States, modern western beauty trends have moved in new directions. Being tan is in. Bronzed and contoured makeup looks are staples. We have plus-sized models like Ashley Graham who graced the cover of Sports Illustrated. Corporations like Dove and Aerie sponsor body positivity campaigns for women larger than the average lingerie model. The Kardashians mostly rose to fame due to the sizes of the sisters’ various body parts. Sexy sells, and having a butt really matters these days. This is the American side of us.
But from the other perspective, the Asian side of us is still unable to escape other pressures that arise when we see a whole demographic of people who look more like us, but tend to aspire to dissimilar beauty standards.
On the extreme end, plastic surgery is not uncommon in places like Korea, where people also practically invented the 10 step skincare routine. The desire for whiter skin has deep, historical roots across the continent that have since manifested in a $3 billion modern-day industry. Asian women are stereotypically depicted as small, slender and cute. And the Asian obsession with thinness has largely transferred over to Asian-Americans as well.
Expectations even differ when judging the exact same woman.
Female beauty ideals are difficult enough to deal with as is. But as an Asian-American woman, I feel caught between two opposing standards of beauty. Too often, it feels as if I do not fulfill enough of either ideal to which I am compared. Either way, I feel inadequate.
My friend wants to be both thinner and curvier. But chances are, if she were either as thin as the girl we saw on the restaurant or as curvy as the girl in the Instagram photo, she might wish she were the other way—not because she wouldn’t be grateful, but because there will always be someone telling her the other is more desirable.
I wish the solution to the struggle of body positivity were as easy as to not care. But optics matter in a Duke culture that prioritizes always looking good, whether it’s for sorority recruitment or to post a cute snow profile picture where everyone looks polished—even though it was 20 degrees outside.
Appearances also matter when it comes to educational and professional attainment. Studies show that body image perception and self-esteem are often significant contributing factors to a woman’s “social, educational, and/or occupational success.”
I expect that other ethnic and minority groups experience a similar phenomenon. From my experience, it will never be easy to deem myself “pretty” and leave it at that; it feels as though there are too many divergent targets to hit in order to arrive at this simple characterization.
As Asian-American women, if we want to check some boxes, there will always be other boxes we cannot check. Yet I believe now is as good as a time as ever to re-evaluate the boxes to which we confine ourselves.
My friend is neither Kim Kardashian nor Kim Yuna, but she’s absolutely "pretty"—not to mention pretty intelligent, pretty funny, pretty ambitious and pretty incredible. The word should hold meaning beyond such strict cultural standards. And to me, these characterizations more holistically encompass what a "pretty" Asian-American woman means.
Amy Wang is a Trinity senior. Her column runs on alternate Tuesdays.
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Amy Wang is a Trinity senior. Her column runs on alternate Thursdays.