Asian Fortune Your source for all things Asian American
By Jenny Chen
It comes with the territory. As an Asian American female, I have constantly been reminded about my eyes. They’re too small, they’re too slanty, my eyelashes are nonexistent. In my Midwestern elementary school, classmates would ask me, “How can you see through those eyes?” I imagined my eyes to be akin to some kind of Voldermort-like slits.
There’s hope though, for those whose eyes are size-challenged. There is blepharoplasty – or what is known as double-eyelid surgery. It gives mono-lid Asians a fold like their Caucasian counterparts so that their eyes appear slightly larger. Blepharoplasty has had its share of attention in the media recently. Anchor Julie Chen came out to say that she got double eyelid surgery in order to help her career. Chen said that when she was working at WDTN-TV in the ’90s, she was told by her boss “you will never be on this anchor desk because you’re Chinese.”
Just as short people always fixate on their height, us monolidded Asians are always fixated on our eyes.
So when I got the opportunity to get eyelash extensions at Goodarzi Hair Salon in Gaithersburg, Md. I was intrigued. I had known a couple of Asians who had gotten eyelash extensions and I wondered whether they would give my eyes the oomph they needed.
When I walked into Goodarzi, I was met by a bustling salon, packed to the brim with customers all chatting about their kids, their housing situations, and more to their stylists, nail technicians, and the like.
I was led to a curtained off area in the back of the salon where I was greeted by Paulina, the eyelash expert. Paulina was a quiet spoken esthetician from Vietnam who explained to me that because my eyelashes slanted downwards (thanks monolid), they weren’t naturally visible.
“They’re long, but they’re also very thin,” Paulina explained to me as they brought a lamp over my face. I lay on the bed as apprehensively as if I were undergoing surgery.
Eyelash extensions, unlike the fake strip eyelashes you get from the drugstore, are more natural looking because the esthetician glues each individual eyelash to your eyelid. The whole process took about 2 hours but it was almost kind of meditative to be lying on the table, chatting with the aesthetician, and not worrying about anything in the real world.
As I was getting my eyelashes put in, the owner of the salon, Nasrin Goodarzi, walked in and said “You’re eyes are going to look so pretty!” I was still skeptical…after all, I felt like a hedgehog being poked with little, miniscule bits of hair. My eyes were feeling a little dry and achy…how pretty could this turn out to be?
When Paulina was done, I looked in the mirror and at first, I didn’t see anything different. But then I looked closer and was shocked. It was subtle, but there it was – long, thick, luscious lashes peeking out of my eyelids. They did indeed…look pretty.
Nasrin explained to me that because Asian eyes tend to have sparser eyelashes, we don’t have the darker outline around our eyes. The thicker lashes provide that outline. Even guys do it – Sam Dang, a nail technician at Goodarzi showed me his eyelash extensions. He’s hoping to get them shorter next time so that they are even more subtle, but it’s true – the eyelash extensions make his eyes pop.
I went home and did some reading up on eyelash extensions. “The market is like a contagious disease. When I give one girl services, she brings in friends, and it just keeps multiplying,” May Lee, founder of JJ Eyelashes, told Cosmopolitan.com in an article titled, Confessions of an Eyelash Extension Junkie. “Once you have the lashes, you realize how important the eyes are to looking beautiful.” The author of the article, Michelle Ruiz, notes how addicting eyelash extensions can be – once you get them, you can’t go back to your stubby looking, god-given eyelashes because they just don’t compare to eyelashes like woah.
I can see the addiction. That night I went to a party without even putting on make up. I suddenly felt a touch more alluring, just by virtue of the fact that my eyes were now more winsome.
There are precautions though. From all the horror stories I’ve read online about women who went to get a eyelash make over and instead, ended up losing all their natural eyelashes – I’d suggest that you go to a reputable salon, with skilled technicians.
I am told that bi-weekly touch-ups are $40 a pop and a whole new set of extensions can go up to $200 a set which makes me realize that with my current income, I might have to be content with my stubby set of lashes and a tube of mascara, and dream of what could be possible for a couple more years to come.
