U.S. actress Reese WitherspoonStephen Hird/Reuters
Sure, the majority of the world's population has brown eyes but why would you want to look like everybody else?
A California doctor promises he can turn your muddy peepers into sparkling blue gems just like your favourite Disney princesses!
The doctor, Gregg Homer, told California TV station KTLA he uses a laser to remove pigment for the top layer of the iris. A few weeks after the irreversible procedure, the brown fades to blue.
The procedure is not yet available but if it does get the green light from health regulators, it would cost about $5,000 U.S., the doctor says.
In his interview with KTLA, he said, "A blue eye is not opaque – you can see deeply into it. A brown eye is very opaque. I think there is something very meaningful about this idea of having open windows to the soul."
Really? It's 2011, the population of North America is as diverse as it has ever been, and we're still on a quest to make everyone fit the same beauty mold? Between skin bleaching, eyelid fold surgery and jaw reconstruction, haven't we gone far enough with efforts to make everyone reach that Aryan ideal?
This 2007 Marie Claire story questions whether Aishwarya Rai, the Bollywood megastar, would "be as popular if her eyes weren't a glowing green-blue?
Would she have snagged a L'Oreal cosmetics contract or crossed over to Hollywood?"
With those kinds of associations being made, it's no wonder Ms. Rai and plenty of other non-Caucasian stars with light eyes (natural or not) have inspired scores of young people to artificially change their eye colour (a "mistake" of nature, as many of them see it) from brown to hazel, grey, green or blue.
In 2007, a representative from CIBA Vision, which make the popular FreshLook line of colour contacts, told Marie Claire that the company's products were most popular in the U.S. with women of African-American, Hispanic and Middle Eastern origin.
The popular Fox show Glee tackled the subject last season, when Tina, an Asian-American character, was called out by another Asian-American character for sporting blue contact lenses. She admitted she had a complex about the shape and colour of her eyes.
What's your take on this new procedure? Are you happy with your eyes or would you pay to change them?
Dakshana Bascaramurty