It’s not “just a beauty trend.”
Flashback: Im in fourth grade the first time someone uses my race to hurt me.
I love my eyes.
Jennifer Li
But now, I look at them and I pause, unsure of myself.
Are my eyes ugly?
Is that why he keeps doing it?
If Im the only one who is seeing racism when no one else does, is it actually racism?
Maybe its just an edgy joke?
After that, he stops and thats the end of that.
I heard about the Fox Eye Challenge in April.
For most people, TikTok trends have been a breath of fresh air during quarantine.
This one knocked the wind out of me.
I went cold with stunned horror.
For some reason, people didnt see the irony.
But when I stopped to confront the voice in my head, things didnt line up.
Once again, I questioned my own outrage.
Perhaps I was overreacting.
I was, in fact, not overreacting.
I think I have the right to call it what it was:racial gaslighting.
I had internalized being racially gaslit into invalidating my own emotions and experience.
Theres something about the term gaslighting that makes it sound so accusatory.
I think its because the definition implies malicious intent.
But their unintentional gaslighting allowed them to avoid taking accountability for hurting me.
When most of the time, we were viewed as law-abiding, successful, hard-working, and intelligent?
Having good stereotypes attributed to your race is confusing.
In reality, all stereotypes perpetuate limiting, racist ideas of who people areeven the good ones.
The real story of Asian-Americans and the racism they faced were distorted into a success story of beating racism.
I was in sixth grade when I realized that mainstream beauty spaces didnt care about Asian girls like me.
I was dying to wear eyeliner, just like all the other girls at school were starting to do.
It didnt help that my parents banned it, which only made me even more determined to wear it.
I slipped a pocketful of quarters from my piggy bank and purchased a navy blue eyeliner from Target.
My excitement turned to confusion when I applied it to my upper lash line.
The liner was hidden behind my monolid.
Like any good Asian-American, I scoured internet articles and magazines to study monolid techniques.
The tips I found frustrated me.
Dust a subtle wash of color all over the eyelid.
This wasnt the advice my friends were getting.
They were told to embrace their eyes and to use bold colors to express themselves.
The message was unspoken, but it was clear: Asian-Americans did not belong in beauty spaces.
Resentment festered in me all the way into high school.
I started hating my eyes.
I hated how boys had bullied me because of them when I was a kid.
I hated how they kept me from participating in beauty experimentation, like my friends could.
I hated them because they had no place in mainstream media.
I hated how they made me feel like I truly did not belong.
I hated how ugly they made me feel.
Naturally, it escalated.
I learned to hate how sensitive I was.
I hated how loud I was.
I hated myself for loving things like literature and art.
But mostly, I hated having to feel like I was fighting for the acceptance to be myself.
Why couldnt I just have been born more aligned with the Asian-American stereotypes of being quiet and STEM focused?
I was lucky to be in high school for the rise of Asian-American beauty YouTubers.
I consumed their tutorials with rapt hunger.
They gave me full beats, smoky eyes, and dramatic lashes.
Even though I was the viewer, I felt seen in a way I never felt before.
It has taken even longer for me to realize how much I truly love my eyes.
And thats the problem that I have with the Fox Eyes Trend.
I know most people are doing it without bad intentions.
But I dont think a lack of bad intentions excuses causing racial pain.
I know I cant stop people from doing the Fox Eyes look or getting the Designer Eye Lift."
I remember all the people who have ever used my race to hurt me.
