"The most beautiful makeup for a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy."
- Yves Saint Laurent
In a conversation with some of the Vietnamese roommates a few days ago, we asked the boys to pick between dating an intelligent but ugly girl or a beautiful but stupid one. One of the Vietnamese guys responded very frankly, "The intelligent one."
"Why?" we asked.
"Because the intelligent girl can get plastic surgery. The stupid but beautiful girl can't do anything to make herself intelligent."
"But what if the intelligent girl doesn't want plastic surgery?"
"Then she's not actually intelligent."
The other day, my friend Yi linked me an article from the New York Times titled "Sans Makeup, S'il Vous Plaît," which praises the French, natural approach to make-up. It criticizes the overdone look that Americans tend to prefer, covering their faces with foundation, concealer, eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara, eyebrow pencil, lipstick, lipliner, blush, bronzer, and more. Not one little detail on the all-American face is overlooked and the result is something not so much beautiful as fake and plastic.
Without going into the cliche rant about accepting and embracing your body's flaws and faults, the article does make a good point about different standards of beauty and how make-up trends are reflective of them. The American obsession with self-perfecting starts at an early age, with glittery, sugary lipgloss substitutes becoming popular even before kindergarten (hi, Bonne Bell), Bath & Body Works dominating (and suffocating) the junior high girls' locker rooms, and fake and bake tans becoming the must-have pre-Spring Break accessory (because nobody wants to be the one pale person on the beach in Cancun, obvi).
From living and working in Hanoi, I've noticed that the Asian approach to make-up here is a strange blend of American and French, almost an "all or nothing" type policy. Although my workplace dress code is "business casual" (which is also possibly the vaguest term ever invented), women here don't normally wear make-up in the office. Most women rarely wear make-up in daily life either, which makes sense since 1) make-up is still a luxury good and 2) it's so hot that any make-up worn during the day would probably be sweated or melted off the face by noon. The nighttime club scene is more half-and-half split between the natural and the made up, but the general trend I've noticed seems to be that when make-up is worn, a lot is put on.
In a country obsessed with beauty pageants, the attention Americans heap on make-up products is instead shifted onto skin products in Asia. Case in point: it took me about 20 minutes at Intimex (the local, international superstore) to find the one brand of body lotion that did not contain skin-whitening product. While I spent the daytime hours of Spring Break 2008 laying out on the beach, the Asian female population here hides under umbrellas during the daytime, covers their faces with masks to hide from the sunlight (and all the air pollution), and lathers on the sunblock. The same story is true in China, where essentially tan skin implies that you work outside, which implies that you're doing manual labor, which implies that you're part of the working class.
At any rate, there have been so many studies done that show that more attractive individuals get better jobs, higher pay, and better treatment in society in general, that it's hard to write off beauty trends as just a stupid superficiality, although plastic surgery, as our Vietnamese friend mentioned, might be a bit extreme.
