Rice Served with Apple Pie

Chang Vue's eyes have been opened to the world of cosmetic surgery, and he likes what he sees. Vue, who underwent an eyelid operation in March, is pleased with his wider, more relaxed look. The procedure - technically called blepharoplasty - removes excess fat or skin from the upper and lower eyelids and also usually helps minimize bags below the eyes. For Vue, the $1,300 procedure added an upper eyelid crease that is sometimes absent on the eyes of Asians and Asian-Americans. “I look different now, but in a good way,” Vue, 38, said. “Even my mother thinks so. Everyone tells me it looks good.” Vue is a part of a growing number of people of color across the nation who are getting cosmetic surgery.

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Hispanics led the way last year with 921,000 cosmetic procedures performed, up 67 percent from 2004. African-Americans followed with 769,000 procedures, also up 67 percent. Asian-Americans had 437,000 procedures done in 2005, an increase of 58 percent from the year before. Surgeries on Caucasians increased only 1 percent last Eye year from the previous year, but they still accounted for most of the more than 7.8 million total procedures. Overall, the total number of cosmetic surgeries increased 11 percent from 2004 to 2005. A breakdown of the most common procedures performed in each ethnic group shows Hispanics routinely had breast augmentation, liposuction and nose reshaping. African-Americans favored nose shaping, liposuction and breast reduction. And eyelid surgery, breast augmentation and nose reshaping were the top three procedures with Asian-Americans.

Bruce Cunningham, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the director of the Division of Plastic Surgery at the University of Minnesota, said cosmetic surgery is now more acceptable, thanks to television shows like ABC's Extreme Makeover and Fox's The Swan. “It has exposed a lot of people to what cosmetic surgery can do,” he said. “It's not a hush-hush back-room country-club kind of thing anymore.”

Cunningham said there are two categories of cosmetic surgery procedures: The first is the mainstream work intended to make patients look younger or thinner. Examples include botox injections and liposuction. The second set includes surgeries designed to change a person's image or identity.

Patients in the second category, Cunningham said, are primarily people of color who want a more international look - not a complete alteration of their physical appearance. “It tends to be associated with ethnics who want to look more mainstream,” he said. “(People of color) who want to get rid of some features like the shape of their nose do so not so much to look “Western” or “American” but to make them look more international. People do not want to expunge their ethnic origins but only to Eye_2 soften it a bit. (They) want to make it less easily identifiable.”

Mimi Nguyen, an assistant professor of Gender and Women's Studies and Asian-American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said she doesn't dismiss an Asian who has had surgery as “duped” or “self-hating,” saying the patient likely has other motivations. “It's impossible to generalize about why minorities get cosmetic surgeries or straighten or perm their hair,” she said. “I think we engage these techniques and technologies of beauty for many reasons, and we should be careful not to conflate aesthetic judgments with political, moral or psychological ones,” she said.

She also notes, like in all ethnicities, the variety of hair textures, skin tones, facial structures and nose, lip and eye shapes varies widely. “There are Asians who have the double eyelid naturally, for instance,” she said. “So arguing that these surgeries are necessarily about wanting to “look white” is problematic, since it ignores this vast variation among Asian people.”

Plastic surgeon David Thao saw an Asian-American niche market in the Twin Cities when he opened his practice in Oakdale, Minnesota last fall, becoming the first Hmong-American plastic surgeon in the country, he said. Most of his patients, like Chang Vue and Por Soua Xiong, are Asian-American. He said while there's not a set standard of what is “beautiful”, people should always be aware of their natural attributes. “You don't want to make a nose look unnatural ...,” he said. “You want a balance of the face. A balance of beauty.” Chang Vue seems to have found his balance with his eye procedure. Vue said if any of his five children, ages 8 to 16, wanted to have cosmetic surgery one day, he'd be OK with it. “I'll support their decision,” he said. “If it's their wish, they'll know when ... to ask.”

> Read Response to "Rice Served with Apple Pie"