What laura miller has to say about eyelid surgery

page 119-120:
"critics of double-eyelid beauty work are eager to dismiss the claims of Japanese women themselves, who say they are not creating the extra fold in order to appear Western."

-she is talking about the many scholars who insist that this surgery is an attempt for Japanese people to look western. They say that these women have "internalize white-woman beauty ideal"
-She does not outright deny this claim because the truth is that Japan has been dominated by the West and is still heavily influenced by them.

-She pushes the envelope further than this by asking people to look at the reason why the Japanese are saying they are getting this surgery. very few of them actually say it is to look western.

-She points out that many articles and advertisements rarely say that this surgery will make a person more western, although Miller does admit that there are ads where a white person is featured and thus does hint at this idea.

-She says that the people she interviewed who disapproved of this surgery said they disapproved of it specifically because the surgery does straightforwardly emulate the west.
- "This suggests that Euroamerican beauty ideals have indeed played a role in promoting this feature."

-She does suggest that people explore what the Japanese are saying about the surgery and the reasons they give as to why they are getting it.
- "...the most common word for the double-eyelid look is patchiri, "bright, clear eyes."
-she insists that surgery that makes the eyes look too western are "disliked"
-"Instead the desire is for an eye shape that looks bigger but is still Japanese."

Reasons for getting the surgery:
-want to be patchiri and more attractive
-because born with one double eyelid and one single eyelid
-are tired of using the glues and tapes and are tired of not being able to go to the pool or beach
- to look "cuter"
- complex about having small eyes (one woman was made fun of horribly for it)
-fear of being discovered for using the glues and tapes

-page 121
She suggests that these stories indicate normalization of this double eyelid practice.
"The process of normalization has created a sense that the double eyelid is the "average" for Japanese people..."

"The normalization of the double eyelid has occurred within the context of Japanese culture and is not simply a comparison of an individual's self to the Euroamerican media."

-She says this is seen in Japanese women looking at roles models in Japanese magazines, not American ones, at looking at Japanese pop stars, not American ones. So they are looking intrinsically at their own models, not foreigners.
-my only question is about the Japanese models who get this surgery. What is their motivation for doing it? Who are their role models?

She goes into details as to why this surgery is and isn't a direct influence of the west.
-it is b/c of the pressure of the "global standard of white beauty" (116)
- it's not because there was a mixing of japanese people historically from the Yayoi people and the Jomon people that made it so that 80% of the Japanese naturally have the double eyelid and the rest are born without it. (116)
- she doesn't explicity explain her rationale behind this but i assume that because people are naturally born with and without it, that certain ideas of beauty are constructed just by looking at each other.
-it's not b/c there is a practice in Japan about personality types based on eye shape. And cosmetics can make you change to a desired trait both physically on your face and personality wise (118)
-says it's not b/c this surgery has a long history. The first recorded surgery happening in 1896 (118)
- but wasn't there western influence by then?

-The main difference between the double eyelids of Japanese and Euroamericans is that Japanese eyelids have more fat. Japanese that have surgeries that remove too much fat from the eyelid are considered weird-looking" (118-119)

-She blames alot of this notion of this eyelid surgery being a copy of westerners is out of western ethnocentricsm.
-Euroamericans have a certain idea of how Japanese should look and to change that is to make them a different race
- indicates they hypocrisy that Americans have when they say the Japanese are trying to be white when they adapt new styles, but when we do it, we're just being creative

-There is something going on in Japan that has been happening for a while that Japan is "modernizing" and taking on Western ideas of fashion and styles and their diets are changing so their physical appearence is also changing.

I wonder if it's just that there's a lot of changing going on and Euroamericans don't know how to handle it