It is one thing to slap on a full face of makeup and fake eyelashes, but it’s a completely different ballgame altogether when you feel the need to sculpt your nose with putty and tape your cheeks – to give the illusion of a taller and slimmer nose and higher cheekbones respectively – in an effort to appease unattainable, and very worrying, beauty standards.
That is exactly what many Chinese women are facing as a new makeup transformation craze sweeps the nation, with videos swarming social media platforms of women removing their makeup, prosthetic noses and sculpted V-shape chins, leaving them totally unrecognisable once everything is removed.
These women aren’t just highlighting their current features to enhance their looks, they are going as far as to create new ones. For many of them, the ideal definition of beauty comprises anime-like big wide eyes, flawless white complexions, sharp V-shape faces, defined skinny noses and stick thin figures.
It could be the unscrupulous ad campaigns, the Chinese men striving for these physical attributes in women, Korean pop-culture, Japanese anime and even Western beauty standards driving these women to go through such lengths, however to feel the need to look a certain way to ‘fit in’, feel ‘accepted’ and ‘wanted’ certainly isn’t right.
What will the future generation of ladies learn from this? Besides, that’s A LOT of work.. Who even has time for such a routine every morning? Damn..