The amount of white people on YouTube and Instagram doing “foxeye” is absolutely infuriating.
Asian eyes are shaped differently than white peoples’ eyes. Asian eyes are generally thinner, elongated, and often hooded. White peoples’ eyes on the other hand, are generally wider and more circular.
Asian people are often either fetishized or seen as inferior-looking to white people (especially those of us who don’t have the anime-style ultra-pale smooth skin or super-full lips). White people do not experience this double standard in the western world.
Therefore I am understandably irritated when I see white influencers and makeup artists doing eyeliner tricks to make white people look more “Asian”, because first off, these tutorials are usually very “stylized” and not an accurate representation of what actual Asian people look like. Secondly, it’s a form of cultural appropriation (similar to the ‘yellowface’ that is often seen in anime cosplayers). We aren’t an exotic or ‘other’ culture for you to use as a Halloween costume or Instagram selfie. Because white people have the privilege to pick and choose their desired ‘Asian’ features for a little but still benefit from being perceived as white.
And not to mention the fact that the majority of white people-oriented eyeliner and makeup tutorials are inaccessible to a lot of POC. Our faces, skin tones, and facial structure are different than yours. It’s not just “slap a little more melanin on someone”, people from different ethnicities have different facial types than you do. And your white person facial type isn’t the ideal “norm” to return back to, it’s just another in a big group of area-specific phenotypes. So quit acting like it.
White people who like makeup, please kindly choose one of the other myriads of makeup styles available to you. And people making tutorials, if you’re white, it isn’t your place to make foxeye videos.
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