RepresentASIAN Matters! Beauty Standards and Body Image in an Age of Materialism

[MUSIC] Dear Asian girl, four Asian girls, by Asian girls. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the dear Asian girl podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about beauty standards, which is a simultaneously oversaturated and under-saturated conversation, because when you talk about something so much that it actually starts to lose rather than gain meaning, I feel like that's what happened with the term "unrealistic beauty standards" for coming such a buzzword recently, because we all know the fact of the matter, which is that beauty standards are Eurocentric and unfair, but do we actually know the ways in which it's so toxic and the historical background, to the perceptions and how the beauty standards actually differ across all of Asia, so not just in East Asia, but yeah, we thought we'd cover those topics today, but to run you by who we have here, my name is Eden, I'm 21 years old, I'm based in, in between London and Bristol in the UK, and I'm a recent graduate. Hi, everybody, my name is Magna, I'm 19 years old, I'm currently a student at UCLA studying public affairs and business econ, and I am based in lovely Los Angeles. Hi, everyone, my name is Abby, like usual, name hasn't changed, I am 21 years old, and I am currently a student studying sociology, and I am based in very beautiful, very rainy Seattle, Washington. Okay, well, before we launch into our discussion of beauty standards, because this is our first episode of the Season as in DAG Team 1, if you guys didn't know, DAG is actually organised into two teams, and we are number one. Anyway, because this is DAG Team 1 first. We're number one, but we're all number one, DAG for life. You're so right, everyone in DAG is number one, there are no hierarchy in DAG. Anyway, so we're labelled the first DAG Team, and this is our first episode of this new season about arts and culture, so it'll be really fun, really fun to check in and talk about some of our recent favourite Asian media. Does anyone want to go ahead first, Magna? Sure, okay, confession time. My most recent favourite Asian media that I like is not something that I've actually watched yet. I swear to God, I was planning on watching it very soon, but life came in, and things got postponed, but this is definitely something that I'm planning on watching very, very soon. I'm very excited about it. It's a sort of recent movie called "For Some Uses," a little bit of context first, so I did an internship this summer for an assembly member in Southern California, and my district director, basically one of my supervisors, actually recommended this movie to me because she's a council member on the Artigia City Council, and Artigia is basically a little India down here in Southern California, and so this movie is an Indian-American movie, and it was filmed in Artigia, and I thought that was so cool because I literally spent my entire childhood going to Artigia, going to the grocery stores in Artigia, and I can't believe a movie was filmed there, and I'm so excited to get that nuanced Indian-American comedic flair because it's supposed to be like a comedy. I'm so excited to watch this. It's on Amazon, but I might like pirate it off some other site. Actually, wait, maybe I should have put that in a recording, but I can't say that, make that. But anyway, I'm super excited for it, and I'll let you all know how it is once I actually do watch it. Wonderful. That's so exciting. I'm always looking for new movies to watch. I was off-letter boxed for a while, but baby, I'm back. I'm back, posting all the movies I've been watching, so I will put that down on my watch list. Thank you, Megna, for the recommendation. So for my media, though, the I'd like to focus on is that I've been going to one of the very few physical video rental stores left in this country. The country America, because not everyone in this call is in America, and it is called Scarecrow Video, and it's so, so, so cool. It is a beautiful library/video store. It's a nonprofit organization, ultimately, and they have all these DVDs, which has been super cool, because I recently went to my family's house, and I was like, "We're not, you're not using that DVD player, right?" And they're like, "No, of course not, who's using a DVD?" And I'm like, "Me. I'm using DVDs." And so I've been going and renting some movies, just like when I go grocery shopping, I'll also stop by there, grab a movie. And it's great because I get to watch all of these Asian films that I'm not really able to find in typical streaming services. Fun fact about me, I don't pay for any of my video streaming or music streaming services. I am a mooch for life, and also I love physical media. So I really do love Scarecrow Video, and they're not the Asian media I've been focusing on, but I have been watching a lot of director Park-Ton Wook's films, specifically his vengeance trilogy. I'm almost done watching it. I've got a finished old boy today, and then I'll have seen it all, and then some films by Malaysian filmmaker Simon Ling. It's been wonderful. Go support your local physical media library, everyone. Okay, Eden. Well, I don't know, Abby, if I have a local physical video library, honestly, I don't really know what there is in Slough. Oh no, I've leaked it now, guys, I live in Slough. I've been, I didn't actually know if I said that in the first episode I was in. Anyway, Slough is a really depressing town outside of London. I don't know what to talk about. Anyway, don't know if we have a physical media store here. Maybe we do. We have a lot of, I was going to say hidden gems, but I feel like a very positive connotations, kind of words. So I'm just going to stop dissing Slough here. Anyway, I have seen an influx of good Asian things, TM. Recently, my girlfriend and I went to Edinburgh for the French, and we saw a couple of good things. We saw 444, which is a play about four Asian actors and actresses playing four white men who are playing four fake Asians. And so the whole concept of it is that, so that's the frame kind of narrative, but actually what's happening is that inside this play, the four, the four white men who are playing the four fake Asians are attending FAA sessions. So instead of alcoholics anonymous, it's fake Asians anonymous. And so these like confessional type meetings where they're all like breaking down in white fragility and talking about how they've given up and they're over their addiction with being fake Asians. Anyway, it's like hilarious, and like so witty with some of the lines and really experimental. Also slightly confusing at times because there are like so many layers to it, but it was so cool to watch. It was unlike anything I've seen before. And then I also saw Hello Kitty Mustai, which some people may have heard of, because it was produced by the same producers as six. And it's about an Asian American woman trying to break free of the female Asian stereotypes, like the Hello Kitty stereotype of being really like docile and is that he say that docile docile? Being really timid. Anyway, I studied English and I graduated. But yeah, there's so much murder and like amazing songs. It was just really cool to see like a full Asian female cast. It was just so it was just so nice. And then that night once we got back, we binge watch the fast season of American born Chinese. And I just I just have no words. That was just so good. But I felt like I was watching one of my mom's Chinese dramas. It was impeccable. Anyway, that is my very large checking question. So exciting. I am going to check out both of those plays. I don't think I have a lot of, I don't think Seattle's necessarily known for its food or scenes. I don't think I'll be able to be like, I'm going to check it out too. But I will see if I can just get the PDFs or something. I can read the script and make the play in my, the movie in my mind if you would. A reference to a very horrible. Hello. I read my meditation on that. It's just anger. Oh my gosh. Anyway, but this we are not talking about musicals in this season. It's season seven. We are talking about Miss Saigon or Madame Butterfly or the King and I or any or any of the other ones. We're talking about an idea very central to media arts culture. All of this, which is beauty. Does anybody want to give us a general history of beauty? Magna, I'm staring at you. You look really eager to give us a general history. I'm always eager. I'm always eager. So beauty has always been like a reflection of societal standards and this has gone back for for centuries. For example, in the Renaissance period, women with really full figures, large breasts and soft physiques were considered the epitome of beauty alongside having light skin and light hair. But then in the 19th and 20th century, we had the rise of a different image of women, which involved long legs and figures and perfectly quaffed hair. So as you all can see, beauty is really defined by the priorities of each respective time period. And actually, something interesting I personally learned a little while back is that changing beauty standards can even be correlated to wealth or whatever signifies wealth in a given time period. With that example, with the Renaissance women and how they were beautiful, if they had really full figures, I read that it has something to do with how if a woman had a full figure in that time period, it signified that she had greater access to food and had a much more regular diet, which indicated that she had wealth or she belonged to a wealthy family. And in the modern age, women who are slim and fit and tan are usually considered beautiful. And you know, those characteristics typically indicate that they have access to money and leisure time, money that they can use to buy healthier foods and pay for the gym and leisure time to go outside of work and school to like travel and exercise and go to warm sunny places that they can get that tan. And so all these things are things that typically like poor working class people may not have as much access to. So I thought that was really interesting that that correlation. And you know, beauty standards, they're they're still changing in our modern age with like, you know, there were these taboos with body hair and wrinkles and stretch marks, which are now being embraced and celebrated rather than hidden and shamed, which I personally think is like a good thing because now we're embracing things that are natural for our bodies. And I love that we are learning to to cherish and value those aspects of ourselves instead of rejecting and pushing them away and trying to cover them up like there's something to be ashamed of. Yeah, yeah, you'll say right. Really quickly, Megna, you know, with what you're saying at the end of the day, capitalism, when are we doing a whole season focused on dear Asian girls? Talk about capitalism. Dear Asian girls. That'd be so good. Dear Asian girls, introduction to Marx, just some things to think about. Anyways, Eden, please continue. Anyway, that would be a really good season. You guys should let us know if you want to see that season. The only valid answer is yes, you want to see that season. Anyway, yeah, receptional beauty, the thing with them constantly changing is that I feel like that's such like, why do we cling so much to needing to be beautiful when society is constantly changing what that means? Like, we've all had that friend before who switches off when you so often that they've become really unreliable and untrustworthy and it becomes really stressful to be their friend. And beauty is literally that friend like she's so unpredictable and unfixable. It's just such a toxic relationship because you you can never guess her next move like she's just going to do what she wants, she's going to mean what she wants. And if you're constantly molding yourself to try and fit the current modern perception of beauty, that's so exhausting, baby, you should stop that. No, but yeah, to answer your question, Eden, I feel like women have for so long been told that they have no inherent value outside of their physical appearance that there's this instinctive urge to like pursue beauty as a form of happiness because beauty is how we're told we can obtain all the things we're supposed to want as women like beauties, how you get a man to like you, to desire you, beauties, how you get that man to like give you kids, beauties, how you can get everyone around you to just like you like instantaneously, you just give them a nice smile and the pretty privilege will just do all the work for you. But then all the things that women aren't supposed to want have like nothing to do with beauty like wanting to be a leader in your community or pursuing your ambitions and applying for that promotion, everyone tells you you're not going to get. And when women do those things when they like step out of line and they're ambitious and driven and outspoken and they want things they're not supposed to want, that's when they're called things like ugly and angry and bitter and barren. And I've noticed barren is always like an insult that's used so frequently against successful and powered women who are you know know what they want and go for the things they want. They're called barren like that's like some sort of thing they should be ashamed of or like that's an insult or something. So I really think that so many women have pursued beauty throughout history because that's what we're told will make us happy. Not self-fulfillment, not recognition for our accomplishments but beauty. And I feel like what we need to do as as women and as an ex-generation is we need to start changing that narrative to break us out of that continuous loop of beauty will bring us happiness. So real magnetiers in my MFIs. Honestly it's it's kind of like that one Kate Moss quote. I mean not your your monologue wasn't but what I'm going to say about this quote is like the nothing tastes as good as being skinny. It's like why do you reduce your enjoyment of life so much. There's so many beautiful things out there other than this thing of this idea of beauty and this idea of like skininess. And of course like it gives you power it gives you accessibility and it gives you like entrances into spaces that you don't usually have access to. But God. No like white people. I'm like yeah no wonder you guys are saying that you're not eating good. Like I don't think I don't think I hear like a most like I'm sure there's some like co-cat bipock out there who's like Kate Moss, Monadol Ray, my little angel, cigarette, Moburo, Coca-Cola. But like there are so many delicious foods out there that that is an honestly offensive statement makes me so pissed whenever I hear it. Anyways though that's not too sense on that. Skinny can't taste better than hotpot you know what I'm saying. It's like there's no way like I just it's just logic anyway. Plastic surgery, Abby. I'm pretty curious to hear your thoughts on this being someone who is Korean and obviously South Korea being such a hub for plastic surgery. I was just about to make a joke being like are you asking me about plastic surgery because I'm Korean? That's exactly what she's saying. And that is exactly what you were saying. So that's all you are. South Korea is considered the hub of plastic surgery. And frequently this is operations at range from getting the desired Eurocentric double eyelid which will have you know was created by an American surgeon during the Korean War. If I could find him I beat him up. It makes me so mad. Fun fact though he did also do the surgery I think for clubbed lips and adjusting that so it just shows there's two sides to every coin. One is making man. Yeah the duality of man. One is fixed in quote unquote club flips and then the other one is making Asian translators look more trustworthy. I I will I'm going to kill. I'm going to murder kill kill kill murder kill. I join you. I join you. Anyways, so we should stop planning murder plots on camera. We'll talk to we'll talk to the head the head leaders about that. So from getting the desired Eurocentric double eyelid like I said or a sharper jawline that V shape a petite nose but also getting a nose bridge. It's a shame because you know so much of Korean like culture and Korean faces is about the beautiful like having that moon face of like these are your real faces and now instead it's like we're having to both in Korea and the diaspora Koreans everywhere having to be like reducing yourself to so many sizes. Something recently like I was just thinking about this was this memory I have from when I was a kid. Eat in magnet do you guys know like those videos of the like fashion through the years or like make up through the years style the years. Those were so many text talks on that right but do you remember like the when there was like a big trend of those being like a ton of those on YouTube like Buzzfeed would do them and they would less feed different countries or whatever and so when I was a kid I was like watching this one for Korea and it did both North and South which was interesting because it showed when the divide happened and I was reading through all the comments and I was like first I was like oh this video is so cool wow cool video 12 year old Abby said and then I was like reading through the comments and it was people just being like this model is so affirm ugly um like random white dudes too when the comment being like this is why Korean women need so much plastic surgery to look good and I was like oh my huh and that like stuck with me for so long I'm like wow um that's awful Abby yeah I feel like people don't talk about the nuances enough about this idea of like they're like oh Korea is so shallow and vapid because of their abundance and plastic surgery but then meanwhile like wipe like or they're like oh they're so fake but then like wipe their hands clean at like how both western colonization and then just like the patriarchy or whatever have is like a place in this like you not only with the audacity to make a problem and then be like oh when someone's trying to like quote unquote fix the problem to be like wow you guys are so shallow and vapid can you just love yourself um anyways so uh there's also some other examples of plastic surgery being like liquid nose jobs which is just something more common among East Asian women in general as this trend has people getting filler injected into their nose to give them a bridge like a nose bridge which is more similar to like typical like wasp nose I suppose not wasp but you know like euros western idealized nose um but of course you can't have too much nose bridge because I hate it I hate everything oh my god when I know I'm so I'm so hot hot hot hot hot hot she's toxic go block her I'm taking beauty and I'm I'm beating her up also along with with the surgeon from the Korean war I hate you man okay so plastic surgery is prevalent in young people in their 20s and 30s and it has now really spread outside of Korea to the other starting parts of that eastern south uh southeastern Asia with surgeons who will travel abroad to Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and China really just it like showing how much of an influence Korean beauty standards have internationally especially because of Korea's prevalence in uh media representation and like the power of k-pop k-dramas and k-beauty but we shouldn't deny of course the beautiful all the other versions of like c-pop, c-dramas um but it has to really acknowledge how that k-pop face has made its way throughout all of Asia um and also to note and another part of Asia we're moving a little bit less from the east is like turkey like turkey is kind of the hot spot for other people primarily from western countries to go to get their procedures done bbls the removal of bbls uh hair transplants like nose jobs it's so weird because plastic surgery is like so actually normalized in the west too but the difference is it's like hidden and so it's therefore less like condemning worthy than in korea because it's like how many of those like tiktoks you see of like white girls who are like i got a nose job when i was 16 for my birthday but then the moment they're like oh all koreans look the same because they get they cut up the massacre their face to look the same it's a complex it's a complex topic and i feel like it doesn't get enough nuance do you have anything to say on that sorry i just talked a long time yeah no you're so right there's all very valid points and on the point of turkey did you guys hear about well there's like so many stories spiraling now about this about people who go to turkey for a nose job and then they come back and then they're really ill and they can't figure out why and then like i think one of them discovered they did a scar like well like some kind of like mark wearing down the side of their body and the surgeon had deadass taken a kidney like yeah you got a pretty nose girl but you've got one less kidney like they he's pretty just stolen organ like girl it's not worth it don't get the nose job that guy raw do it makes you happy that's so funny do it makes you happy but that is so wild it's like Charlie the unicorn or something that all do to you but like took my did you just take my kidneys whatever i can't remember what i was saying make me go ahead i mean on the topic of wild things while we were researching for this episode we also discovered that you know there's this cosmetic surgery tax refund that comes with like all cosmetic services performed on non-Korean passport holders and it apparently makes the transaction like a better bargain like if surgery renders like a tourist's face unrecognizable from their passport photo there's actually a service to like give them a plastic surgery certificate so that immigration officials can accept that as like proof of identity along with the original passport so even if you completely change your face you can still like leave the country and you will still be recognized as this person who has the passport and just you know did all this plastic surgery so you might not look the same but you know you can still like leave i guess i mean it seems i mean it seems kind of necessary when you think about it but before we kind of move on to the next topic about skin care and kind of how that inflow treats its way into beauty standards you know i'd like to take this to this conversation to the diaspora because we talk about things that happen in a lot of the homeland countries about all plastic surgery and stuff but like it's also very prevalent in similar ways for people who aren't even in just korea i grew up like with a lot of people in my life who i knew who wanted to get plastic surgery um whether that was the double eyelid surgery or like Botox and the jaw to slim your face and they were able to get it happen at young ages and i'm a lot of these people are people I'm close to so i'm not going to like condemn them or something but it is something to be said that while people are so quick to make a to speak voice about this and to maybe like condemn it i don't think i've seen anything which actually stops any um the reality the situation i don't think i know like i don't think we hit the point it's a society where people have actually started to find ways to make plastic surgery seem less desirable which i guess ties into some stuff that we'll be talking about later with like the idea of can we stop the idea of beauty standards but it's just interesting because usually it just feels like it ends up being a a way to be mean to woman usually when people condemn plastic surgery sometimes that is so true like i feel like we've got to a point where we're we're talking about issues and we're recognizing that they exist um we're often complaining and ranting quite heavily in our circles and in our echo chambers but we're not yet at the point where it's like widespread to actually do anything about any of these issues or to take things deeper think deeper and then instead of just being depressed and angry about it actually taking action and that's obviously because the issues that are facing us today especially for like our generation of people are age there's such overwhelming things to think about like i don't know how i'm going to fix poverty and racism at the same time god like that's so hard and i'm just a girl but like it's just so overwhelming to think about that of course we're stuck at the stage we're paralyzed at the stage of like consciousness but not being able to be fast then like move to freedom you know we just want to be free eat in mega why have you guys not fixed poverty racism um misogyny that's my list why guys wait the clock the clock is ticking oh why are you all I'll put that higher up on my priority list i promise i'll get to it i'll get to it okay yeah i've got i've got cook dinner i've got cooked dinner and then i've got fixed poverty but i can move poverty up a bit higher and see if i can get around to it sooner the dinner's taking me a while take your time or don't we need we need this ASAP okay i'm done being a little joke sterile you know what else you know what else people need ASAP or think they need ASAP and it's become a real i don't want to call it a crisis no i will call it a crisis a real crisis is just as this graphing for glass skin and like perfect skin skin that not only doesn't have acne or dryness or or redness or discoloration skin that is literally like glass skin that doesn't have pores even though pores are just a part of your body like if you search up glass skin on google you get tons of articles walking people through about how to achieve it it's it's not only lists of like really expensive skincare products from like cleanses to toners to moisturizers to face masks to serums that all cost like extortion amounts of money but also it's to go off the plastic surgery thing it's it's cosmetic procedures and it's beauty treatments that are sometimes invasive so you've got like needling or injections or lasers but to cover what glass skin is more generally and to sort of define it the glass skin is skin that is extremely flawless it's it's free from pores blemishes marks any acne it's crystal clear and it glows like a piece of glass and obviously the issue with this is the extreme lengths that people will go to not to be dark and that's life and dark it's just to be opaque like girl do you want to do you want to actually want to be glass like it's like it's about like not wanting to take take up space anymore and to just become invisible not to turn the spiritual but I feel like it is that um but having glass skin is often described as having translucent skin or snow or have being like snow white which obviously feeds into that perception that lighter skin is more desirable and superior even to skin that is any degree darker and obviously all of this is just not realistic because influences who perhaps do appear to have glass skin have access to products that most people can't afford because they get extensive amounts of PR and things I would love to receive PR anyway and filters and like camera lenses and just the modern day standard for skin is so unsustainable it's so unattainable even not just unsustainable like I can't even get that girl like yeah how am I gonna sustain it if I can't even attain it I am covered in pimple patches right now and I feel you like yes calling out influencers but also if anyone wants to sponsor us if anyone would like to sponsor dear Asian girl you want to send us a little PR kit we've got social media we've got TikTok we've got Instagram don't be shy yeah don't be shy send us out like five between five and 20 sets of PR five because like the five co-hosts but like we've got a bigger team and we orders our PR yes guys are being we're being so silly and goofy in this episode magna I really want to hear about your thoughts on skin wow okay first of all that kudos to avi to just looking that in there like she's always on that promo path I honestly like when I think about how awful I felt about my skin throughout my life um I think like the real detriment to me is that I always had this belief that the condition of my skin isn't something that like I can control like that's something that I came to realize eventually after you know I used so many products and like tried all these different things and I know that like we're on this episode we're on this podcast talking about how we need to break away from beauty standards and how we need to empower ourselves but also like it's a trap that I feel like a lot of us have fallen into and it's a trap that I myself have fallen into so I'm out here being like you need to love yourself and we need to dismantle beauty standards but it's something that like I've experienced as well so it's not like we're immune to it it's just that we're trying to move on right and and like for me with with my skin and my my guess my skincare journey if we want to call it that like I I used all these moisturizers all these facial cleansers I even used like these Ayurvedic herbal remedies that my mom got me from India and like I had to really reckon with this with this reality that you know my skin is just oilier than other people skin that's just how it is and my skin is more prone to acne and my skin is more prone to growing hair and that's just something that I have to like that's just how I am and I live with that and that's just that's just me and and what was frustrating for me and like what was really like hard for like my mental health I guess was like some other people you know have different skin different skin conditions and those people didn't have to deal with like oily skin or acne prone skin and that's just how they are and so it was like this constant like a mental cognitive distance where I'm like why do I have to deal with this why am I the only one or whatever and I was really in my head about all that and it's like how many people have have had to grapple with this decision between choosing their physical health and then choosing the path that will take them to this ideal standard of beauty standard of skin condition that they think they can achieve if they just put on all these chemicals and all these procedures to like get rid of of discoloration and different marks and scars on their face and it's like how many people have to deal with that how many people have to choose between their happiness and their health and I think I mean I can't like I were I can't solve that none of us can really solve that but I think like me personally how I've been able to transition to a more healthier mindset about my skin and my skin my skin's condition and and the state of my skin is just trying not to think so much about like the the little things a little quote-unquote imperfections I'm trying to think more of like how can I improve my general health and how my improving my general health will just naturally improve the state of my skin right like making certain lifestyle changes that are just generally healthy like avoiding like unhealthy foods that cause me to break out having like a regular routine of like washing my face several times a day and just building like a modest skin care routine where I'm not you know splurging and all these expenses but I have something that you know makes me feel good like I have this very modest skin care routine I know some people are very elaborate skin care routines and and that gives them happiness that brings them happiness to do that and that's I I'm I feel so happy for them that they have that for me it's like I just have like a set number of things I do and just like completing that routine like in the morning in the evening or whatever twice a day just makes me feel better about myself and I don't have perfect skin like doing this doesn't have doesn't give me glass skin like we just talked about but you can see like the natural improvement in in how healthy you are and how how healthy your skin is because you have that routine and I just think moving towards improvement rather than perfection just does wonders for your state of mind and your mental health and your physical health so I think like if we want to try to transition away from this constant pursuit of perfect skin perfect beauty it's to think about how can we just improve ourselves within ourselves within our means and and in a healthy way where we're not you know constantly chasing after things that just aren't attainable for us yeah you're so right with all of that thank you for showing that magnet and I also just want to add that I feel like it's so hard for kids like us to even engage with modern especially Western skincare because I know for me as a kid from the diaspora growing up in the UK it took a really long time for me to find products that worked for me and it wasn't until I switched over to like I just gave up on Western skincare and beauty and I switched over to East Asian skincare and beauty that I was able to see like improvement in my skin and find products that actually worked with my skin because I was using sunscreen that didn't make me look like a ghost and especially with my my makeup I found that I can't use most Western makeup especially anything pertaining to my eye makeup um especially mascara like and Western mascara get it away from me like the and the issue for me with this is that I can't just walk into a boots or a super drug or a drugstore if I'm being American I can't just walk into a drugstore and like pick up some makeup and then walk home and go to my makeup and then like go to a party like that's not how it worked I need to go online I need to search like so many different websites for the best prices and best shipping and like just to see where things are in stock and it's just so difficult to have access to the products that worked for me and more and more I'm seeing things appearing in the UK that are like Asian beauty and Asian skincare related but it's just taken so long and I'm like I'm grown and I'm tired and I just I just needed these things when I was a kid because when the white Western girls around me like my my literal friends were like getting to walk into boots and just pick up mascara and I couldn't do that with them it just felt like you're being deprived of like a key childhood experience like that that's probably a reason that's probably a reason why I didn't get into makeup even though I love it so much until I got to like uni and I got a bit older and I learned how to like research online and find places that stopped the things that would work for me you didn't I mean first of all wonderful things you say I also only can use Asian mascaras but I gotta say you got to visit the west coast of the US except for organ come visit come visit some of the you have to come visit Washington come visit LA well okay come visit some parts of Seattle come visit some parts of LA just go on like a big ol makeup haul because there's like a lot of I think something I am thankful for at least having grown up in these areas and then having a lot of family and so cal is like you can find Asian stuff which rocks and so hearing your point of view of someone who isn't in like the US really interesting makes me think I'm thinking when I was in the US I went for the first time this summer and I was just when I walked into Daiso and I walked to the back of Daiso and I saw like no wait it was a Daiso it was like it's not Don Quixote but it feels like Don Quixote and I walked to the back and I saw a wall of like Asian beauty skincare makeup like a wall and it wasn't extortionally priced like it is when I try find it online when I'm in the UK it's actually online like they were just the normal retail prices or like cheaper because everything was on offer when I walked and I saw that wall I literally just like first what I took a picture because I was like I got to I got to remember that I was to head in front of this wall and I just gas I couldn't believe that I could reach out and touch all these products in the UK and I think it's because in the UK when you say Asian people think of South Asians whereas in the US it's like the opposite problem where you people think of like not even East Asian they just think of Chinese people when you say East Asian and so we don't really have things like Daiso or that Don Quixote shop that I can't remember the name of like it was just yeah I was it was just magical maybe I do need to come back to the US speaking of you know different regions of Asia particularly South Asia like you mentioned you know the South Asian beauty standard also incorporates like aspects of colorism like we just talked about like you know valuing that lighter skin prioritizing people with lighter skin for promotions for being partners for marriage and I mean I think colorism is prevalent in all of Asia in East Asia and Southeast Asia and like darker skin just has that cultural and historical route in hierarchy as you know having darker complexions meant you were spending most of your day working outside and manual labor and you know that works itself into the socioeconomic status and hierarchy of these these civilizations and really that was exacerbated by colonialism and I think that there really is this glorification of lighter skin tones that kind of worked their way into a lot of these Asian cultures because of colonialism like I know for Indian culture like so many of our gods and goddesses are described as like dusky which essentially means darker skinned and like those are our like our divine beings those are the people we revere and worship are these people or these figures with darker complexions like some of our most important divine figures like Krishna for example has always been described as having darker skin and yet in like modern you know society and India right now and lots of parts of South Asia East Asia Southeast Asia like lighter skin is seen as you know superior or the epitome and you know a lot of that comes from like the theory of eugenics and how this influence colonialism like Europeans thought they had the right to rule as they were the quote unquote superior race and they you know justified that because they had lighter skin and and it's just it's crazy how that like completely changes the psyche of a community when you have like divine figures that have darker complexions but then all your community members are you know valuing people with lighter complexions more in just like everyday life just to pick up on the colonization point I thoroughly believe that most of my issues and life and most of the issues of life not just in my life and my issues just come come back to colonialism you know it's just it's always colonialism isn't it um this is a slight tangent but I believe everything is interconnected um but yeah the way that fat phobia is rooted in the demonization of the black woman is another obvious obvious another important example of how colonialism just ruins fucking everything um because black women obviously come in all shapes and sizes like all women do but this was a time where the west was really eager to paint an image of black people as lazy and unable to exercise control over their bodies i.e. their appetites and hence overall less intelligent and in need of being subordinated by this supposedly superior white western man and as usual this meant projecting qualities that didn't inherently exist onto the black community and by driving this narrative that black people were fat fatness became and still is in this neck in this um present day a negative attribute rather than just a neutral descriptor and we'll come back to neutrality at the end of this episode but fatness and being fat isn't and should be just a neutral descriptor for a body that is just bigger and bigger same deal with bigger bigger doesn't have to be a negative word and it shouldn't be and all these connotations that we have in modern day of a causal colonialism so every time i feel my internalized fat phobia pop out because we all have it because we're grown up taught this narrative i remember that it's rooted in this colonialism and in this racism and in this hatred of black women who slay and it reminds me why it's so important that i dismantle these beliefs and i stop perpetuating the harm that fat phobia causes because there's so much beauty in fair and dark skin and every shade in between and in small and big bodies and every size in between those and it's just ridiculous that i can conceptually understand that but it's so difficult to actualize what i know is logical and that's how you know it's so deeply rooted in our incredibly messed up society not to get incredibly pessimistic no yeah for sure and i know we were talking earlier about like capitalism and how capitalism can really perpetuate a lot of beauty standards and i think like one of the epitome examples of this is like this product called fair and lovely that is like or at least it was for a long long time like used all across south Asia particularly and really like fair and lovely was i mean something that like i personally was exposed to at a very young age and you know i watched a lot of movies a lot of bollywood movies a lot of other indian cinema industry movies and you know they're all different they have all different different cultures different casts but something that is really like a common thread among a lot of these movies is like the types of people they cast in these roles and the the way that you know women especially women who are paler skin lighter skin tones are always in a starring roles of all of these movies and as a little kid you you see this in front of you and you see this constantly it is like always reinforced in your mind every time you consume this type of media and something that was really shocking to me when i grew up and came to this realization is like how like embedded these beliefs can like become in your psyche and in the way you perceive and see the world and you don't even know it until like much later when you can actually comprehend what happened to you and like i mean like when i was eight years old i was like in third grade and i remember like looking at myself in the mirror and looking at my face and looking at the skin of my palms and wishing that the color of my palms was like the color of all of my skin and back then it was a really sort of innocent desire like it's not like i hated myself as an eight year old little girl but like i thought that the boy i liked in school would like me back if only my skin was lighter if it was the same color as his and yes i do realize that means i'm confessing on live national television that i had a crush on a white boy but the point is i never i never understood how disturbing that desire was until i like grew up and figured out where it was coming from like it was coming from my cultures both of them the indian and the american my cultures like as much as i loved them were inundating me as a little girl with this idealized version of the perfect beautiful desirable woman someone who's fair and pale and lovely and someone who i could just never be physically like it was physically impossible for me to be that person and i never gave a much thought because i thought it was just normal and in a way i guess it is normal in the sense that it's a shared experience among probably millions of people but it's not normal in the sense that we shouldn't have to feel this way you know like sigh but you know i feel like we're we're talking about you know so much of what's like in society right now what's entrenched in society but we also we need to talk about the turnover in society that there are movements of resistance against these standards and against perpetual the perpetuation of these standards and something that has happened in in South Asia specifically is this movement against like fair and lovely specifically like you know the company that produced fair and lovely unilover um like actually a re-branded fair and lovely to glow and lovely um but you know some of their products are are still perpetuating that idea of like whiteness being the epitome of beauty and there have been like we said movements of resistance like specifically there's this campaign called the unfair and lovely campaign which is like a hit series that um really inspired like a social media movement called hashtag unfair and lovely and it was it was really it was really created after um this person created like a photo collage of her south asian um like classmates in college and it's just like i've seen these pictures and they're just gorgeous gorgeous pictures of these wonderful um dark-skinned women and like they are all so beautiful and gorgeous and just i i love that for them i love like how how much power they're taking in their own beauty and and the way they look and it's just i love seeing them i love the visibility and i love being able to to just see them out there like owning their own lives and and owning their own bodies like i love that for them i love that that's hope you know because how much depression have we've been spouting in this episode and here it is it's hope and it's there and hopefully one day things won't be same as that because that would be really nice um but to expand the conversation how about we move to an area of asia that is hardly ever talked about when it comes to beauty standards you know people are always talking about east asia and sometimes they'll talk about south asia but they won't you talk about central north or west asia yeah very true Eden and so like it's interesting because if you look up central slash north slash west asian beauty standards uh not with the slashes literally uh anyways you are going to see just all these articles that talk about korean japanese chinese beauty like i wasn't that's not what i was looking up um in general like just as we have this problem where asia or asianness is viewed as only one group as we said earlier primarily east asians in america and primarily south asians in like the uk um like we have the same dilemma and it always comes down to things like visibility and this idea of like how much you can then say in this conversation Eden could you add on to that a little yeah you're so right about the exclusion you know in the in the us asian means chinese and increasingly i guess recently japanese and korean as well so just east asian and in the uk asian means indian so not even a whole lot of south asia um just india um and so there isn't a place in the world as far as i know where someone says asian and they're referring to west asia or central asia or north asia and maybe it's because it's not till recently that in my experience at least people are actively trying to move towards using the term west asian rather than for example middle eastern but i think it's still really indicative of the way that our english language is built upon exclusion we're never really saying what we mean and it's really worth noting that our research has really struggled to find information on central north and west asian beauty standards for this script which is heartbreaking far more than they struggled to find east southeast and south asian beauty standards and also we were trying to find a guess for this episode and we really struggled to find a west asian guess or a central or north asian guess and i think that really says something about where we are when it comes to exclusion and who we're including in the conversation who has access to the conversation so i really hope we can see that move forward in the coming years yeah especially because so much of the more academic language that we use in asian circles today are kind of co-opted from language that was primarily used and created by people who are from like our west asian and like the idea of like the traditional idea of the orient because people nowadays are like oh orientalism is when you fetishize an asian person like an east asian person but it's not like orientalism has very specific connotations and while there is certainly some overlap just because if you are in any part of the the non-oxidental which is the opposite of the oriental you are going to be considered another in that way and othered in the same in the way that they that the west considers anything that is not western however it's interesting because these like like the language has not disappeared but the representation of who is being focused on has and it's a little bit of a tangent to our topics of beauty but it's just something to think about also it makes maybe if we think about what language means a little bit more well stop trivializing it and just stop throwing around words just to thought i i remember i was like in classman time and someone was like yeah orientalism and like the iconography of like the japanese like stuff and i'm like hey i love you you're another asian person i love you that's so cool um why would we do this to Edward say why would we do that to that why would we do this to that beautiful man to that sexy beautiful man it's that's not what that means find a different word anyways yes you're completely right and to drop off this whole like we owe so much to west asia kind of thing no this isn't really something we owe them you know i'm just going to talk about how Kurdish brides look so beautiful and like here we are not being shot to be able to find anything about like their standards of beauty or anything or like we had to dig kind of deep for it and i'm just like but the more i am on tiktok you know what the more i see of like west asian beauty gurus and things and it's so nice to see like when i follow who i completely cannot remember the name of and now would be a good time to shout her out nope don't remember um yeah she recently got married and did her makeup and she just looks so beautiful and i'm just oh anyway should we talk about what the actual west central and north asian beauty standards are that was my tangent okay so central asian beauty norms were largely shaped by those nations that were historically part of the savior union and back then didn't really have the influences of external nations like from the further west so traditional russian ideals emphasize light skin and dark hair and dark eyes and that's also kind of mimicked in north asian beauty standards and dark skin was viewed as a symbol of poverty and you living in a rural area whereas light skin was associated with wealth and urban areas um so when the Soviet Union fell and these cultures were exposed to western beauty ideals and did have those external influences coming in central asian women became heavily exotic exotic by the global beauty community so if we look at Kazakhstan for example long hair was desirable because short hair was associated with being part of the LGBTQ+ community and having really big eyes and blue green eyes specifically was considered beautiful as well and so you'd get people having plastic surgery to get those bigger eyes um small notes also desirable and full of lips so lip injections were in our popular and there was a tendency to prefer fair skin so that's that's still carried through to today and if we look at why uh so many Indian countries prioritize fair skin i wonder why like what could be the common thread there you know i don't know make now that's a really good question we'll have to think on it what could yeah after they i'll get back to you on that if we look at west asian beauty standards more generally they tend to center around having distinct facial features and shapes so full lips and eyebrows to find cheekbones striking eyes and oval shaped faces so there's a really heavy cultural emphasis on using really expensive makeup products and many will result to medical procedures to alter their nose and they're under eye areas to better align with these western influences into their beauty standard and on the flip side many western cultures have adopted the beauty norms that were traditionally aligned with west asian culture so skin tanning and this is a whole thing we could go on about for an episode of its own yeah Eden as you kind of brought up with the idea of the trendiness of tanning like it's interesting how much beauty trends nowadays kind of commercialises typical asian features or cultures or let's be real most like like also let's include like black features and black culture uh but this is duration girl so i'm going to talk about some beauty commercialization of things like the slanted almond monolid eye or whatever and how then then came the the fox eye trend where it's like white girls or really just a lot of people in general who don't have that eye shape but mostly white girls creating a makeup look that gives their eyes a slanted upto look ironically enough like this came when this like in a time where anti asian hate was it at all time high and kind of clearly in illustrating how white people really will cherry pick things that they like but not really stand up for the cultures as a whole and it's also important to note like there have been so many instances of white cause players who will literally tape their eyes to do slanted like to make them slanted um i i don't think it's maybe fair to say yellow fishing because that's definitely a term co-opted from black fishing and sometimes with the abundance of East Asian people doing black fishing it feels weird to use the term uh but it's quite literally a moment of happy to be like oh my god my body is not your ignition impact cause play with the heck oh my god um just had to just had to voice my horror there yeah it's just so messed up how an East Asian kid grown up will likely if they're in a non-Asian majority school be bullied or teased for for their eyes and you have people for i people follow me around pulling their eyes back to maybe having slanted eyes also also i have big eyes not to be not to be that girl but i literally have big eyes i don't have the like the slanted eyes that some of my cousins have for example like i just i just can't with big eyes like that's how you know that they just weren't seeing me for who i am i got smaller yeah it's just like real sorry my eyes small AF but i also feel like we both should not have gotten people doing the Chinese Japanese, Korean Iceland thing no one should have to say right honestly it was awful but yeah being a kid and like having that surround you and have that hatred surround you and then grow up and be be a girl like in her teens like getting into makeup being really excited but also being really nervous about her appearance appearance appearance and then seeing the white Western girls around you probably the same ones that were teasing you when you were a kid now doing things like the fox i trend is just so it's so many things it's like disillusioning it's really upsetting it's really confusing and it's really angering like i don't know why we are being messed about like this but it's really hard to keep up like beauty is that toxic friend and we should all block her she is not good for us and it's healing our summer or healing girl winter i guess healing girl every season also it's like okay great thanks Emily you started doing uh fox i trend what's next are you going to start being like hey everyone uh i found this like really cool recipe and i call it spicy sour crout you take this is a ploy about making fun of people like if they were to culturally appropriate kimchi um spicy sour crout stuff but we kind of talked about that in our food episode um but here like we'd like to just kind of keep on going on kind of other examples of beauty trends really just commercializing Asian culture for instance with gwasha like this is a massage technique which has a really long and important cultural history in traditional Chinese medicine and it's known to relax muscle tension and bring down inflammation and reduce eye bags and like promote overall health but it's been completely repackaged and rebranded by the west and completely co-opted and it's just so disheartening to see i actually put this i think i was just angry one day as i am some days i just wake up in a so real state of the world but i just i just posted something in my story like about like beauty standards and how like frustrated i am with um fetishization and the way that Asian um features and Asian beauty has just been stolen by the west basically and i was talking about gwasha and the number of defensive white people i had popping up to my story like replying to it being like oh but is it okay if i do it and babes if you're one of those people listening right now maybe you should maybe you should think a little deeper honey anyway but i had the number of people i had replying to my story i was like why are people replying and getting defensive instead of moving past the initial white guilt and thinking oh why am i engaging in this behavior that's now just become a trend instead of a culturally significant practice like what does that mean about who i am and like what my beliefs are and whether i'm questioning what my beliefs are enough for interrogating the things that i've in turn lies growing up in a colonial capitalist very racist society like what does that mean like again like people are we thinking deeper because when it comes to the traction of trends like this it's like i feel like we aren't and maybe we'll get there because i again don't want to turn really pessimistic again but for example with henna making i don't know if you want to talk about that that's another major thing oh my gosh i will never stop talking about about henna and in the way like we were just talking about how like Asian features are being co-opted by like western culture and western people and like henna is like such a big component of west and south Asian culture and just having it be co-opted by people who don't have like a proper appreciation for it is also really frustrating like i think there i mean i think obviously there's a distinction to be made between non-west and south Asian people appreciating henna culture and appropriating henna culture because when i think about people who appreciate henna culture i think of people who will wear henna the way it's supposed to be worn you know they'll paint it on their hands or maybe they'll paint it on a different part of their body because it's not unusual to put henna on like your arms or your legs and your feet but the people who appropriate henna culture will do things like the henna freckle trend on TikTok like never in my life have i ever seen a west or south Asian person put henna on their face but that's just not part of henna culture at least as i've experienced it and and these people i feel are just using henna for their own purposes like they're just taking our culture and turning it into something it's not supposed to be and i feel like it cheapens it almost it turns it into just some other beauty product or commodity but you know we're not a commodity and our culture is not a commodity for other people to use so i feel like either appreciate our culture the way it's supposed to be appreciated or like just please stop interacting with it and i mean i this might be no you know what this i feel like this is not a controversial take but i feel like henna will always look better on brown people like i will die on this hill i'm sorry it was made for us by us uh we we love to have you appreciate it and and have it on your hands and you know pay for us to henna on your hands for our fundraisers and charity drives and stuff but we it's always our signature look it's always going to be our signature look i mean it's like the idea ultimately give credit where credit is due um you can appreciate something but fundamentally like don't pretend that you just reinvented the wheel because first of all everything has been of something of course like that's just how life works we don't want to live in a world where like everyone is kind of stuck to their cultures and they don't get to kind of interact and make fusions or like understandings better but like the pivotal idea is like you we want you to be able to understand something uh i think a big example this for me is like when people do uh cbd tutorials and they're not Asian uh on tiktok but then they like credit where they're coming from to talk about joyin or something i i don't know if i'm really great at pronouncing it um and the origin of this makeup style and it also shows that it can be done on different types of eye shapes but they're not being like welcome to my new i call this the twinkle eye fairy look no no bitch just say it's cbd um i think also another example is like this white guy on tiktok or something he's on instagram and he's like so good at making korean food and like he's using the right ingredients and he's calling it what it is and it's like yeah that rocks like i mean maybe don't be like i am so pro at making korean food and he isn't by the way he just shows that he's making it and it's like yeah that's that's a good example appreciation it's it's weird how we kind of have to go through life it's weird how bi-park people in life have to go and tell people like okay that's how you appreciate something and that's not some level of common sense also important to note uh asia and asian is a very big idea we are not immune to appropriating each other's cultures something to keep in mind but before we move on actually i just wanted to say to your point abbie that i totally agree i love being able to share culture and like have it be a two-way street like i'm also super curious but other people's cultures and i want to respect other people's cultures and it's just like we need to be able to communicate effectively and and listen to each other and make sure that we are being sensitive with the way we interact and the way we you know indulge and and share with each other so i like i will say i love henna on brown people but i love also sharing henna with other people and i love sharing other aspects of my culture and i want to continue doing that so i really i really do appreciate that point that you brought up just being able to to respect each other and making sure especially within our asian cultures and within different like cultures of color that we are not being disrespectful to each other so yeah just wanted to put that in there in this topic of beauty commodification and like how we people tend to take from asian features and culture we've been talking about everything but hair and like how can we not talk about hair it's on every part of your body that has skin for the most part even if you can't see it there's like really tiny hair um and just just like the way capitalism and colonialism is in every part of your existence like the little tiny hairs you can't see anyways so there has been kind of some positive and negatives about this concept of hair whether that is in a lot of different countries there has been kind of maybe the more normalization of different ways of expression of hair when it comes to dyeing your hair uh the idea of like perms and such i'm pretty general about this but i'd like to ask you guys what do you have to say about hair i have so much to say about hair and body hair in particular um i know that like recently there have been trends but like empowering people to you know appreciate their body hair or like not be as conscious of their body hair and it's like specifically like in western culture with people with light skin and light hair and it's not as noticeable but then on the flip side so many young like west and south asian girls particularly have been so like stigmatized for having lots of body hair and and and these groups of people tend to have like just hairier skin and it's like so many of those girls have had to suffer through procedures like waxing like threading like lasering to like get rid of this hair that so many people are telling them is unattractive and like even people within these communities are telling each other that it's unattractive and like just feeding into that belief and like me personally i've i've done it all bro like i've waxed i've threaded i lasered and like a literal laser on my face to get rid of the hair and it makes me so like frustrated because it hurts it hurts so badly and it hurts so badly whenever i do it and as a matter how many times you do it it still hurts and like all i can think to myself is like god do i have to do this for the rest of my life like do i have to endure this pain of literally ripping and plucking and lasering the hair off my body for the rest of my life and like so many girls have to like just bear that and you know how they say like beauty is pain i never realized how literal that saying is until i waxed for the first time and i just sat there aching and wondering why i was doing this to myself and it's like who is this supposed to be for is it supposed to be for myself so i feel more confident or is it supposed to be for that nameless faceless person who might think i'm pretty if i don't have hair on my body and it's like i i want you to stop i want to stop being a part of that cycle being a part of that perpetuation and i feel like i'm starting to but like there's still that part of me that's like i don't like it when there's hair on my body and people can see it and it's a process it's a healing process magnet me too i have quite literally had every chemical i have had lasers threaded i was getting like my face threaded at like 12 um and just like waxing like i have done everything funny enough um you know like a lot of my family for some reason on them like all the woman of the family tend to be for my mom's side tends to be hairier than the men of the family and it's always been said in the words like oh cool but then in my brain i'm like definitely i'm just feeling evil because like i whenever i would feel i feel you because like i would see these posts i'm like a like a 13-year-old untumbler and then i see their posts being like normalize body hair and i'm like uh it's hard to normalize body hair when i have two hairs coming out of a pore in my armpit and it's very dark and it's very prominent and if i don't shave which by the way no matter what i will get in grown hairs it's always present like it's not as it's like that's cool that it's an easy thing for you because you got fucking the same wisps of hair that's on your head and your pits and in other areas but guess what no not not me and i think it's so frustrating too because hair is body hair specifically but also hair on your head is so tied to this idea of femininity or masculinity and already when you are a non-white individual you are going to be viewed as intrinsically less you know like less feminine and i think magnet equally like it's so so frustrating because at the end of the day it's weird because it's like who am i doing this for but i'm like i'm doing this for myself but not in like a i'm doing this for myself in paramount way i'm doing it for myself so my life is easier like because i'm technically doing it for society because ultimately i will get treated better if i look more according to how society thinks i need to look so so true the figure up on the whole like who are you doing this for when you really think about it you don't even have to think that deep when you just like think very slightly about it this obsession with having no body hair is like actually sickening because as grown women and family people we exist with body hair i think that's just how we exist we grow up and then we exist with hair but you know who doesn't pre-pubescent girls and children so while we and when i say we i'm saying those rich white men who embedded these ideas in our society so obsessed with looking like underage children like i've come such a long ways since childhood in so many different ways and i assure you i do not want to go back into i'm like i don't want to go back to those days and it's just it's yet another reminder that beauty is that toxic friend because why is she saying to pick up the more abbey we're saying why is she saying beauty being she that hair in your head is good and hair above your eyebrows even better you can do the fluffy brown look i'm saying that i literally have fluffy brows right now like but you can't have hair on your kuchi like what do you mean i can't have my kuchi like but i can have it in my head she's toxic and you've got to cut her off i mean like even the fact is i'm not gonna lie when i was younger pre-pubescent i was still pretty hairy so it's like dang i have to not only follow like these ideas of whiteness but like also a young white person's perspective like i can't deny my history i've been hairy hairy girls rise up were the new the new nations sweeping the country anyways let's kind of round things up everyone yes so to round things out we thought it would be really nice to just talk about body neutrality because this is a more modern approach to like body positivity that i really like and that we've been sort of referencing i think throughout this episode so far so yeah it's sort of similar to body positivity but instead of learning to love and appreciate those stereotypically undesirable aspects of your body it's much more about completely detaching your body as a functional system from your body as an aesthetic object because the human body doesn't inherently exist to look any particular way it exists to function it exists so that we can walk and run and dance and hug and smile and that's why it exists it doesn't exist so that i can look thin or pale or unmarked or like glass like that's not why we have bodies that's not the function they serve and by separating and making that distinction between our body as an aesthetic object and our body from this functional system that is so much good for us and enables us to do so much and have so much fun and so much happiness that is a really well i find it a really productive way to think about beauty and to like sort of distance myself from beauty because she's toxic and i've blocked her on all platforms no that's that's cool because like i've never heard about body neutrality before like that was never a philosophy that i interacted with and like honestly i feel like i've just transitioned into a headspace where i'm actually trying to be more like positive about how i look and how i feel about how i look so i'm very much in like the body positivity mindset right now but i feel like body neutrality as as you've explained it sounds so intriguing like i think i really like that interpretation um as well because like especially in light of all that we've discussed regarding how quickly beauty standards change how fickle beauty standards are like our bodies aren't meant to be looked at or to be perceived as beautiful because if they were then there probably would be a much more stable history of beauty like beautiful people would all look one way but we all know that's not true like beauty exists in different forms beauty exists among different people who look like completely different from each other and so if like we embrace this philosophy that our bodies are meant to function to help us live and survive then i feel like that kind of blends really well with this idea that we all define our own beauty like we can all exist as as this idea of beauty because our bodies are meant to be beautiful so like we define what's beautiful like within our own self so like i really like that that philosophy i feel like it really nips that toxicity of beauty standards right in the bud yeah magnet that was like it's really true but for something for me this is like the idea of body neutrality can just feel like so terrifyingly impossible like how do we actually get to that point beyond just saying it um because how can we make us a reality without the systematic systematic and literal destruction of the patriarchy you know because the two are so intertwined uh i'm going to talk a little bit about my Femzel history i wasn't an actually in cell but i'm sure if the term if i knew the term when i was younger i probably would have identified as a Femzel so like i grew up being a lot less attractive than a lot of my Korean friends um Korean American friends they were skinnier and also i'm going to just acknowledge how gender and sexuality leads into this because uh they were all like cis hat and at that point in my life uh i was queer but i didn't know that i was queer but it still manifests in different ways and it was insane how differently in my life when i became more pretty which also follows cis hormonic cis-hat normative ideas of prettiness uh primarily when i started appearing more Fem um i was differently treated by everyone and it wasn't just like guys it was like everyone treated me differently and i think the only people who didn't change their perception of me were those who were also queer and those were a lot of those people who were queer but then also a BIPOC so something to just keep in mind is like i think we should move towards this goal of body neutrality however we gotta do some we gotta do some destroying of things i think if we need to make it a reality and sometimes it feels like a very difficult goal and we've talked about this throughout today's episode but i mean the most we can do is just work towards it i suppose yeah right and we do it you're so right and we do it by not only destroying things and entire systems and patriarchy but also by supporting each other because we can be kind and loving and gentle not just destructive so guys we hope you enjoyed that episode about beauty standards we had a blast filming it filming it well i mean we do have our faces on the screen right now you just can't see it although i think we might actually be transitioning to having more of our faces on TikTok am i not just saying that i think i am anyway we hope you enjoyed the episode i found that really fun to record did you guys yes i also really enjoyed the process of recording this episode like i feel like this whole process of just talking about this with you all was really cathartic and i feel like we discussed so much and you know we haven't come up with concrete solutions but i think just voicing this out and communicating these ideas is really important and i hope that whoever listens to this video you know feels validated and feels empowered to start having these conversations within their own circles and their own groups so i feel like if we all work together we can you know move forward towards a society where we are free of like the urgency of complying to beauty standards and we're allowed to just exist and be happy yeah and you know for all of our listeners we would love to hear from you please comment on our instagram tiktok i think some from Spotify loves you to do that if you are on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast we would love to hear how you personally are finding ways to unfollow block remove friend beauty like in what ways do you reclaim your body for yourself thank you all for listening bye bye everybody bye as this episode comes to a close we'd like to shout out the rest of our team who you don't hear from as often as us co-hosts their contributions are integral to the smooth running of dear Asian girl and we would hate to take all the credit for what is truly a huge team effort anika may pavani yelda onya and mccayna are researchers and sonya is our audio engineer Emma precia and claire are social media writers Chloe Kayley and Nicole are social media illustrators Alex is our social media manager and the net is our podcast manager and finally Ellie is our podcast director thanks team we couldn't do it without you