This week's post: "Windows to the soul," and beyond

The emphasis on the eyes in this week’s readings falls into line with things I wrote in last week’s post: patients themselves admit to the special significance the eyes have beyond simple racial markers, being the primary representation of a person’s internal mental state: “dull,” “sleepy,” “alert,” &c. The “double eyelid” operation is particularly opportune, whether as “Westernization” or “individuation,” because it is relatively easy and remarkably effective at changing the appearance of one’s character.

I was very much intrigued by the comment made by Kaw that other modifications Asian-American women would consider for the purposes of beauty include things like leg-lengthening, not presently within the scope of medical practice, but certainly within the realm of theoretical possibility (consider what is presently possible with hip replacement, for example). Going forward into the future, are we entering an age in which extreme bodily modification becomes normal? It certainly seems we might, if Bordo’s comments about our “plastic culture” are correct. The holy grail of this sort of editing would be human genetic engineering.

Regardless of why women undergo “double eyelid” surgery, it does conform to white-Western standards of beauty, and white-Western concepts of self identity. In a possible future, race disappears (for those with money) into some pseudo-Greek ideal—not multiracialism but a new human construct of engineered sameness. I think we’d all feel uncomfortable about that, and it re-presents the same problems as “double eyelid” surgery on a larger scale. With the rapid and seemingly ceaseless progress of technology, this seems worth thinking about.