Julie Chen’s disclosure of her past history of cosmetic surgery has caused quite a stir and has resulted in numerous accusations of her “denying her heritage” and being “white-washed” from the Asian community as well as further questions regarding additional surgeries beyond the double eye-lid procedure she had done in her 20s. In fact, it’s a double-bind for Julie Chen because she’s penalized for not appearing “white” enough according to the news director and agent who both noted her “Asian eyes” as a quality that would prohibit the viewing audience from relating to her and demonized by the Asian community for “giving in to Western standards of beauty.”

You just can’t win.

It’s a complicated issue of race and gender entanglement that everyone is responding to since Chen isn’t being accused of just giving in to any ordinary ideals of beauty but to specifically Western ideals of beauty. Women are already penalized for not fulfilling society expectations of beauty, but when they try to address this inadequacy through practices such as cosmetic surgery women are then accused of being vain and shallow. Since her disclosure, Chen has had to respond to additional questions about a nose job, cheek implants, chin surgery, and veneers. But in this case the vanity is linked to racialized notions of beauty. It’s a catch-22 that doesn’t really give us space to talk about the real issues at hand such as gender discrimination or racial discrimination – what are the real underlying cultural values at work here? Why are there beauty standards that any woman needs to live up to? Why does a non-white representation of an “American” cause so much fear and anxiety? Why is cosmetic surgery an industry rooted in the idea that individuals are inadequate and need to fix the problem?

It was brave of Chen to talk about an issue that is rooted in racial discrimination and the very real pressures she faced as an Asian woman in the work place. But with the ensuing discussions of is she “Asian” enough, we’ve lost sight of the real issues at hand – how race and gender get tangled up together. In terms of racism, we see what it looks like in everyday life and for gender we see how women, regardless of their race, are held up to specific kinds of beauty standards. We see how Chen was judged as a racialized woman in her workplace, but the problem of beauty standards has gained little attention. This is similar to the maelstrom of racialized discussion with the crowning of the American-born Nina Davuluri as our newest Miss America. Her historic achievement as the first woman of Indian descent to win has caused many to question what it means to be an “American” if Davuluri represents our ideal woman. The racist comments toward Davuluri illustrate the fear behind living in a truly diverse society. In fact some of our citizens can’t even get their racism right and the accusation of being an “Arab” is thrown around as the universal “other.” And still other members of the South Asian community note that Davuluri would never win in India for being too dark skinned.

We still have much work to do in understanding and living with diversity in our country, but it is clear women are caught in the middle. A more collaborative space is need for women and men to discuss these issues and to acknowledging the different ways gender and race work together in our society. For the moment, however, women just can’t win, especially women of color.

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