On Beauty

Catherine Yan '24

“Did you apply sunscreen?”

Ma pokes her head through the door and yells down the hallway as I wait by the elevator. I furrow my brow, bus card in hand. “Don’t give me that look, you’ll get wrinkles!” She scolds. The elevator doors glide open as I turn to walk back to our hotel room doorway. Ma drops her golden tube of L’Oréal sunscreen into my open right palm “Spread it out evenly, don’t forget your neck!”

I spin the cap off, flip it upside-down and squeeze the tube hard. The procedure is muscle memory: Rub hands together – make sure sunscreen is evenly distributed, covering both palms. Start by pressing the product onto your cheeks. Then distribute the product with your fingers – swipe back and forth on your forehead, temples, under your eyes, nose, septum, chin, and jaw in lifting motions. Even on your neck, never forget the back. Apply whatever is left over to the back of your hands because a lady’s hands show her age. Still have leftover product? Dab it on your eyelids and nasolabial folds – you don’t want crow’s feet or wrinkly smile lines, do you?

A layer shinier with my sticky fingers wrapped tightly around the golden tube, I dash across the crosswalk with seven seconds remaining on the pedestrian signal

I pant as I halt at Far East Plaza stop – but I’m a few seconds too late. #972’s doors slide shut as the light turns green. I catch my breath as the scalding equatorial heat sucks the moisture out of my throat and brings it to my skin in beads. The sun is a furnace, and I feel my eyeliner, no doubt ruined from sunscreen and sweat, running down my face. My face mask, heavy from sunscreen, clings to my face like squid tentacles. As I wait for #124, #162, #167, #190, or another #972 to stop, Ma’s advice haunts my mind. Her daily reminder: apply SPF consistently, at 30-minute intervals each time, you’re doing your future self a favor.

I think of the BBC documentary Ma showed me about middle-aged women who didn't take care of their skin when they were younger: liver spots, freckles, sun damage, and wrinkles. At the time, I found the facial scan of a woman with sun damage beautiful, even though it showed every imperfection. I couldn’t help but notice how liver spots and freckles looked like stars in a constellation, how the sun damage resembled nebulas, and how wrinkles formed like galaxies. However, after looking in the mirror after being exposed to Singapore’s UV rays, I grew conscious of my skin darkening and a dark freckle forming on the tip of my nose. I grip the golden tube tighter.

#124 arrives. I exchange the noticeably lighter golden tube for my bus card and swipe it on the reader and climb to the second-floor front-row seat. As the air conditioner hums, I gaze out at Orchard Road: the retail heart of Singapore. A mixture of Chinese baroque houses and western 20th-century buildings – luxury hotels, al fresco bars, and eateries in a mishmash of consumerism and conversation. The people who trickle in and out of the buildings are birds of paradise. Even in the blazing heat, middle-aged ladies frequent the streets in their matching Chanel tweed suits, pins, and pearls, and young parents dressed headto-toe in Lululemon push their kids in strollers with Louis Vuitton shopping bags hanging off the handle.

I gaze at this part of Singapore – jam-packed with domed glass buildings with four major shopping malls, full of luxury brands. As the bus lingers at the red light by ion, the most famous of them all perhaps, I see – Tiffany, Rolex, Dior, and Cartier, just to name a few, decorating each nook and cranny. Luxury is a universal indicator of success, to show that you deserve to be envied just like beauty is. Because who doesn’t want to be beautiful? Society tells women to wear beauty like an asset – a privilege that differentiates them from those without it. So women stay in pursuit of what we do not yet have instead of embracing what we do. Maybe that is why women are so susceptible to the beauty industry drilling insecurities into our brains, which makes our eyes blind to our type of beauty. Appreciation for our beauty is replaced with a monolith of standards, so we put our faces through a series of assessments to define beauty: testing to see if we fit the golden ratio, to evaluate if our faces are symmetrical, to check if we have clear skin, big eyes, long lashes, and thin noses.

I swipe my iPhone and stare at my reflection in the back camera. The hooded epicanthal folds surrounding my eyes – my monolids, are my most prominent feature.

My monolids – the subject of scrutiny by many ballet teachers applying makeup for recitals. My monolids that would swallow every layer of primer, eyeshadow, and eyeliner when I opened them. A nuisance that Madame did not want to deal with, so she smeared on the eyeliner so thick that my eyelids stuck together and the eyeliner almost touched my eyebrows.

The monolids that my cruel elementary school peers in mainland China made fun of with ever-original questions: How are your eyes so small?, Do you only see half of the world? and When are you going under the knife for double-eyelid surgery? Questions I did not know how to respond to. Because I came out of the womb like this. Because I can’t change the way my eyelid pouch slopes and sags over my eyeballs. Because I can’t change how my brow bone is not high enough to create an eyelid crease.

Comments from family friends and acquaintances made things worse. In casual conversation with my parents, I heard things like she’d be gorgeous if she got double-eyelid surgery and have you considered getting it for her as a coming-of-age gift? Maybe the adults knew that the real coming-of-age gift was not the actual event of surgery, but the promise of pretty privilege after you wake up from the anesthesia and the incisions and stitches made by the surgeon’s knife and scalpel heal.

But my parents forbid me from going under the knife. And so, I avoided mirrors, wore hats to hide my eyes, and vowed to become beautiful in eighth grade. Beautiful enough to be ignored and not picked on. Beautiful enough for people to see

what I had to offer on the inside and not the outside

My road to beauty became a vicious cycle. Every day after school ended, I watched tutorial after tutorial to get bigger, more beautiful eyes. I secretly spent my pocket money on double eyelid tape, eyelash curlers, mascara, false eyelashes, and eyeliner. I would doze off with double eyelid tape on, hoping that my eyes would have magically formed a fold by the time the sun rose. Even after I saw Ma’s eyes well up with tears every time she caught me in front of the bathroom mirror, I was relentless in my pursuit.

Every morning, I would wake up early and skip breakfast to apply lash glue to my falsies, wait 30 seconds for the glue to dry transparent, and then pop them on my lash line and cover the lash band with liquid eyeliner – because who would want to look at me at school without pretty eyes? How would I show people that I was worth talking to, that I was worthy of attention? But this strategy failed, for my lashes would start peeling around 2 pm, and the boys in my class would stare in horror as I peeled my eyelashes off.

Inevitably, halfway through the year, I got an allergic reaction from the lash glue and watched as my left eyelid swelled up to three times its normal size. So I laid off makeup for a month to heal my swollen eye, and surprisingly, no one really noticed or cared enough to expose me. I don’t know why I thought people would care so much. Maybe it was anxiety about not being perceived as beautiful – a woman’s defining compliment – and the fear of not being worthy of attention. It was only when I saw the Terracotta Army in Xi’An during spring break of that year. Seeing the clay men row after row – statuesque, grateful – all carved with monolid eyes – affirmed my beauty. Little by little, I began to accept the excess skin on my nose and eyelids that saved my ancestors from snow blindness. My low nasal root, accentuated zygomatic arches, flat- lying eyelids, thick, tight, dark hair, and dark eyes were formed for my ancestors’ survival. The rows upon rows of men, carved to represent masculine power and beauty, were the standard of beauty in ancient times.

Maybe the western invasion and battle losses during the turn of the 21st century made Chinese people shift towards facial features that did not remind them of their roots. Maybe that’s why subtle internalized racism defines half of China’s population’s eyelids as ugly.

My thoughts shudder to a halt along with the bus arriving at Dhoby Ghaut station. I hop off and join the sea of subway goers taking the orange MRT Circle Line. While walking, I take the now half-empty golden tube of L’Oréal sunscreen out of my bag, squeeze a copious amount out, and vigorously rub the sunscreen onto my decolletage and shoulders.