You can say that 2015 was the 12 months of the lip filler and Brazilian butt elevate (and these stats would again you up). In 2022, everybody on the web was immediately speaking about buccal fats removing. Now, it looks as if an “higher bleph” is the beauty remedy du jour.

In case you haven’t heard about it but, an higher blepharoplasty (its technical title) is a surgical procedure that removes additional pores and skin in your eyelids to make your eyes look extra lifted and bigger. Currently, my TikTok feed and Instagram Discover web page have been flooded with social media sleuths and medical doctors speculating about which celebrities went underneath the knife for this eye makeover, and I’m not the one one interested by it (#upperblepharoplasty has greater than 100 million views on TikTok). Nor are celebs the one ones signing up for the surgical procedure: In keeping with the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, an higher bleph was one of many high 5 most requested procedures within the US in 2022, marking a 13% improve from 2019.

Earlier than I dive into my little rant, let me preface it by saying that I’m not right here to yuck anybody’s yum. You must do no matter feels best for you, and though it’s, for probably the most half, a beauty process, higher blepharoplasty can have purposeful advantages too: Some folks get it to enhance imaginative and prescient when drooping eyelids are impairing their sight, for example. What I’m right here to say: There’s nothing mistaken with the way in which your eyelids look, and also you shouldn’t really feel obligated to surgically change them within the title of “magnificence.”

In fact, the need for greater, extra “open” eyes is nothing new. I’d know, as an Asian lady who was bullied for having very hooded ones—most likely my most standout facial characteristic and, sadly, the topic of many racist jabs. Again in center college, I’d resort to utilizing double-sided tape to create a crease in my lids (which, let me inform you, wasn’t precisely comfy)—an try to adapt to what I assumed would make me extra “lovely” and subsequently accepted.

Happily, after years of self-reflection and easily rising into myself, I got here to embrace my hooded eyes. “Not higher, simply completely different,” my mother used to inform me at any time when I complained about my ethnic options. And naturally, my mom knew finest and was 100% proper: As I encountered extra individuals who resembled me (IRL and on the large display), I spotted there are such a lot of completely different (and equally worthy) eye shapes on the market—and this one simply occurs to be mine.

So right here we’re in 2024—greater than a decade after I gave up the tape—and my hooded eyes are again underneath the microscope, being labeled as a flaw to be corrected as a result of they supposedly make you look “drained” and “older.” And the underlying message of this social media discourse is bringing me proper again to center college: Your eyes ought to look a sure strategy to be thought of engaging, fascinating, and adequate. And in the event that they don’t (which is the case for many Asians, statistically talking)? Nicely, there’s a process to “repair” that!