At last November's Miss Chinese Toronto pageant, all 10 finalists shared a single feature uncommon among Asians: round, wide eyes that some might consider Western-looking.
"It could be a coincidence," says Tina Chow, marketing manager at Fairchild Television, which organizes the annual event.
"It doesn't matter, as long as they look sweet."
Coincidence or not, Chinese prize that look -- the result of what is called a double-fold eyelid, the type of lid most Caucasians have. But among Asians, these are relatively rare. Only about 30 per cent come by them naturally. (I'm one -- check out my photo for a classic Asian double-fold lid.) The rest are born with single-fold lids, which seem to vanish behind the eye.
Now, yikes, Chinese in Toronto are undergoing eyelid surgery here or taking double-lid package tours to South Korea.
Kim Global Consulting Inc., for instance, advertises eyelid trips in Toronto's Chinese dailies. The package to South Korea, home to the highest per-capita number of plastic surgeons in the world, takes six days and costs $10,000 for a driver, a Chinese-speaking guide, meals, accommodation and the operation. Cosmetic surgeons confirm the trend. What's less clear is the reason so many women -- and some men -- choose to do it.
Christine Tang, a plastic surgeon in Etobicoke, calls the operation "Westernizing."
Other doctors disagree. "It's not Western," says Jean Carruthers, a Vancouver ophthalmologist who performs the surgery, known as Asian blepharoplasty.
"My patients are very proud of their cultural heritage. They just want a little more room on which to put eye shadow and mascara."
Dr. Joseph Wong has performed 3,000 Asian eyelid operations in Toronto, probably more than anyone else. He says it's a myth that Chinese want to look like Westerners, but agrees, "It's probably the most culturally sensitive cosmetic surgery."
Still, a global standard of beauty is emerging, which doesn't favour any group. Cross-pollinated by the Internet, satellite television and Hollywood, the homogeneous, racially ambiguous look is in. Supermodels of the moment have narrow hips, small noses and thick lips.
No one accuses women who inject collagen into their lips of seeking to look black, or who diet to a size zero of trying to look Asian. When people get deep tans, no one presumes they're Pakistani wannabes. Or that a Caucasian whittling down a nose is trying to look Asian.
But if Chinese have eyelids done -- the most popular cosmetic surgery in the Pacific Rim -- the assumption is they're trying to look Caucasian, instead of just trying to look like an Asian with double-fold lids. (You decide. Do I look Western?)
Paintings that predate widespread Western contact show Chinese beauties with large double-fold eyelids. In classical literature, the approving term is feng yan, or phoenix eyes, as in this description from the mid-18th-century novel, A Dream of the Red Mansions: "She had the almond-shaped eyes of a phoenix, slanting eyebrows as long and drooping as willow leaves . . ."
"In an aesthetic sense, it's been around a long time," says Colin Hong, a Toronto plastic surgeon who performs two or three Asian eyelid surgeries a week.
Dr. Quintin Son-Hing, Vancouver's only Chinese plastic surgeon, thinks that Caucasian people flatter themselves into thinking everybody wants to look like them.
"On the odd occasion, a patient says, 'I want to look Caucasian,' has blond hair and is wearing blue contact lenses. Then I know I've got a problem. But 99.9 per cent say, 'Don't make me look Caucasian.' "
To create a double-fold for Asians, the surgeon scrapes away some eyelid fat, then stitches it to create a fold.
To actually "Westernize" an eye, the surgeon would remove all the fat. The effect is usually freakish or aging. "But there are some Chinese, like Adrienne Clarkson, that naturally have the sunken look," says Dr. Son-Hing, who adds that his wife also has eyes like that.
Whatever their reasons for wanting double-lids, Chinese are as enthusiastic as any other ethnic group when it comes to self-mutilation. This is, after all, a culture where parents once bound their daughters' feet so they would atrophy into sexy little three-inch stumps.
Rising affluence and capitalist-style competition in China today mean that some people there can and will do what it takes to give themselves an edge. With one exception, all the members of the ruling Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party now dye their hair black -- in a society that once venerated old age.
Last month, in a tawdry promo for China's booming plastic-surgery industry, Beijing held its first Miss Artificial Beauty contest. The 22-year-old winner produced certificates showing that she had undergone four operations, including one to give her double-fold lids.
The increasing acceptance of cosmetic surgery in Asia also means that many Chinese here think nothing of being sawed and sewn. China's new ambassador to Afghanistan (who is married to Toronto's consul-general) had work done here, including eye-bag removal, before leaving this month for Kabul. Statistics Canada, the Canadian Society for Plastic Surgery and the Canadian Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery don't keep statistics on Asian-related cosmetic surgery in Canada. But Dr. Wong, a past president of the Canadian Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, estimates that in Toronto 20 per cent of Vietnamese women, 10 per cent of Koreans, 5 per cent of mainland Chinese, 3 to 5 per cent of Taiwanese and 1 to 2 per cent of Hong Kong Chinese women have had surgery here to create the extra fold.
One of his patients, Rosanna, a financial analyst in Toronto, underwent the eyelid operation last year to achieve symmetry. Like a surprising number of Chinese, she was born with one single-fold lid and one double-fold.
"I didn't do it to get Westernized," says Rosanna, 32, who asked that her surname not be used.
Yet she admits she had her natural double-fold lid deepened too. "The single eyelid makes you look tired, like you're sleeping. Now, everybody comments, 'Your eyes are so big.' "
Dr. Wong opened his private clinic in Scarborough a decade ago, anticipating the shortage of hospital operating-room time. A head and neck surgeon, he spends 80 per cent of his time doing cosmetic surgery, compared with 80 per cent on cancer facial-reconstructions 10 years earlier.
He charges about $2,000 for eyelid surgery. Nose jobs, brow-lifts and face-lifts cost $4,000 and up. In 2000 and again in 2001, he flew to his native China with a volunteer team from his hospital, Credit Valley Hospital, and spent a month operating on rural children born with cleft lips and palates. He also spent $200,000 of his own money paying for their drugs and hospital costs. Now, he has started a registered charity, http://www.smilechina.com.
He does gratis work for Toronto patients too. Mariya Dovhanyuk, 20, had already had six operations in Ukraine for her cleft lip. But people still couldn't understand her at Winners, where she works in customer service. She heard about Dr. Wong's cleft-lip expertise, but her mother, a waitress, and her father, a packer, couldn't afford to pay for the operation.
"Dr. Wong said, 'Don't worry. I'm going to change you for free,' " said Ms. Dovhanyuk, who says her seventh operation, in November, was a success.
On a recent icy morning, when I stop by Dr. Wong's clinic, he compliments me on my double-fold eyelids. After all, he was a judge of Miss Chinese Toronto for five years. Encouraged, I ask if he can make me look like Gwyneth Paltrow.
The doctor looks aghast.
"If you were a patient coming in, I wouldn't do you," he says. "You'll never be like her."
Darn.