Describing Asian Eyes
WritingWithColor Guide: Describing Asian Eyes
We get a lot of questions about how to write Asian eyes. We get them from Asians and non-Asians alike! People worry about being offensive when describing them. Well, if that’s been a part of your worries as a writer, this post is for you!! Let’s get started :)
While it might be simpler to just give you a list of what to do and what not to do, I’m actually not going to start with that. Nope! We’re going to look at some of the context surrounding this controversy because it’s important to understand where this difficulty stems from.
This always bears pointing out, so let’s start with this:
Asians do not look the same.
“Asian” encompasses a huge, diverse group of people. We don’t look the same. We don’t act the same. Asia is the world’s largest, most populous continent. Remember: “Asian” is not a physical characteristic!!! Check out lightspeedsound’s awesome post and then come on back here: I don’t have an Asian fetish…
Some Asians have large eyes:
(Fan BingBing)
(Aishwarya Rai)
(Takeshi Kaneshiro)
Some have small eyes:
(Kim Sang Woo)
(Sandra Oh)
But there are non-Asians with small eyes too, like:
(Taylor Swift)
(Will Ferrell)
(Michelle Rodriguez)
(Laura Prepon)
(Alek Wek)
People don’t seem to have difficulty with describing small eyes in general.
So! If…
- Asians don’t all look the same
- There’s a huge range of diversity among asians
- People don’t seem to have trouble describing smaller eyes if the person is non-Asian
…Then why is there such an emphasis on how to describe Asian eyes? Why are we so afraid of it when there’s so much diversity among eye shapes among people in general?
They’re just eyes, right?
RACISM, YOU ARE WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS
The biggest issue people have with describing “Asian” eyes is they’re worried about offending people. And with good reason! Anti-Asian racism often focuses on a few key points, and one of those is our eyes. Many Asians are bullied or teased about their eye shape, and made to feel unattractive or ugly because of them.
There is a long and heartbreaking history to anti-Asian racism in the US, and in the 200 years since Asians (specifically the Chinese) began immigrating here, the tactics have changed but the racism has not. It’s honestly too long to get into here, but racist depictions of Asians is still a huge problem in Western media.
People often have trouble with describing what’s considered a typical East Asian eye (common among those of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent). These eyes are often mono-lidded, with an epicanthal fold.
Racism posits a few things about Asians, like:
- We all look the same
- We’re all East Asian or look typically East Asian
- We don’t look white/“normal” and are therefore unattractive
- Our eyes are small, we have buckteeth and wear glasses
As you can see from above, ALL of these suppositions are false. But, we’re so used to negative, racist imagery and wording that it can be hard to find other words/phrases to describe East Asian eyes.
And then we have the other end of the spectrum: fetishization.
BUT I JUST LIKE ASIAN PEOPLE; WHY IS THAT SO WRONG?
Being fetishized isn’t a compliment. It isn’t a positive thing. So while writers should avoid using problematic/racist phrases to describe Asian eyes, they also have to be cautious about fetishization. Again, not all Asians look/act the same. We aren’t interchangeable. Fetishization treats us as if our ethnic background makes us exotic, interchangeable dolls, where the most important thing about us is our race.
Waxing poetic about monolids is only affirming (that is, positive) when it’s *not* fetishization. Monolids do not make a person exotic.
WHAT ABOUT ALMOND SHAPED?
Ah, the almond shape. The phrase seems so neutral, so innocuous. Whenever I see anyone describe Asian eyes as almond shape, I genuinely suppress a shudder of revulsion. And then I stop suppressing it and simply give into the disgust.
I have two really great links on this, but TL;DR: it’s lazy, it’s racist, it’s inaccurate. We’re so used to it that we think it’s true; it isn’t. Even if your Asian character actually has almond shaped eyes (which is possible!), find another way of describing their eyes. It’s basically an indicator of an author who cannot figure out how to realistically describe Asians, so don’t do it.
NPR: Almond shaped eyes?
Claire Light: Almond Eyes
MAKEUP TIPS ON A WRITING BLOG? YESSIREE!
So how do we describe Asian eyes if we’ve been so inundated with racist imagery and phrases? Well, who better to help us out with that than people who actually look at Asian eyes all day: Asian beauty bloggers and makeup artists. I kid you not, if anybody knows what different kinds of Asian eye shapes there are, it’s them.
BunBun, a beauty blogger in Singapore, actually has two great posts describing Asian eyes (and some makeup tips, for those of you interested in that!). In fact, I see her work floating around Tumblr all the time without any attribution to her, so here you go! She gives some great adjectives regarding eye shapes!
Asian Eyes vs Caucasian Eyes
Make-Up Tips for 14 different types of Asian Eyes
Yes, 14 different types of eyes, and that’s only for East Asian eyes. If we actually included all of Asia, we’d have a much longer list!
In fact, makeup artist JeannieO, in the Philippines, compiled a list of seven different types of monolids alone:
StudioBox10: Different Types of Monolids
Disclaimers regarding the above sources:
- Note: she does use the phrase ‘caucasian’ to mean white, which WWC does not advocate~
- We also wouldn’t recommend using the phrasing phoenix eyes to describe Asian eyes if you’re not Asian.
It can be liberating for Asian-Americans to realize that they aren’t ugly because they don’t have stereotypical white eyes. In Korea, narrow or smaller eyes are not considered unattractive (despite what you may have been told on the internet)!! In fact, some Koreans think having an elongated, narrow eye has 매력, a word that can be translated as magnetism, or attractive point. Personally, I like to think of the word meaning ‘fiercely attractive’!
SO… HOW CAN WE DESCRIBE ASIAN EYES?
Well, let’s take Kim Sang Woo and Sandra Oh for example. They both have eyes that some may consider typical East Asian eyes, but when you look for longer than a second, you can see how different they are in shape.
Sandra Oh’s eyes are much rounder, and have a distinct curve to them. They’re not deep-set, but more prominent. Kim Sang Woo, though, has a much longer eye shape, with sharper angles to them. His eyes are more hooded. Sandra Oh’s eyes remind me of a teardrop curve and Kim Sang Woo’s eyes bring parallelograms to mind.
Some Asians do not find the phrases “tilted” or “slanted” to ever be appropriate when describing Asian eyes. It’s genuinely triggering for many Asians, particularly those who have been harassed, abused or bullied by racists. Other Asians, however, don’t find those phrases problematic. I’m going to suggest you stay away from those phrases. Why? Because there’s no reason to trigger/harm your audience. If you want to cause serious flinching in your readers, kill off a beloved character instead of being racist, okay?
Some people like to use medical/scientific terms for Asian eyes (like “epicanthal fold”). There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but (1) not all Asians have an epicanthal fold and (2) unless you’re intending to describe most character’s eyes using clinical terms, it’ll stand out a lot. Like, A LOT.
Words you *can* use to describe eyes (in general!):
- close set
- wide set
- hooded/deep set
- prominent
- bulging
- thin
- narrow
- angular
- rounded
- triangular
- small
- large
- heavy-lidded
- puffy
Sometimes, I find the hubbub over describing Asian eyes problematic within itself. It seems like writers (particularly non-Asian writers) find Asian eyes to be so exotic/Other/unique/weird that they have to describe them, and they feel the need to do it every time said Asian character enters a scene. The truth is, we (as writers) don’t often nitpick this much over how to write eyes in general. There is more to an Asian character than their eye shape.
BUT HOW ELSE WILL YOU KNOW THAT MY CHARACTER IS ASIAN?
And here we come down to most writers’ problem with Asian eyes! (Yeah, it took me this entire wall of text to get here. Apologies!)
Particularly for fantasy/SFF/spec fic writers, this actually can get tricky. If you’re basing your setting in a world that ISN’T Earth but you’ve got races that are analogous to countries/ethnicities here, then how can you tell a character is Asian without describing their eyes?
Or what if your protagonist doesn’t know your Asian character’s race/ethnic background? How can you be sure?
Well, there are far more indicators of “Asian” than just eyes. I promise you, there is more to me than my eyeballs and their lids~ Again, “Asian” is NOT a physical descriptor! There is no one way to look Asian!!!! So you can’t rely on looks to tell you someone is Asian because there isn’t any one way to look Asian.
So if you’ve got a fantasy world setting (and please don’t use pan-Asian themes in your fantasy world settings. Just. Don’t.) and Asian-analogous characters, there are other ways to describe their background. Like, their skin tone, hair color, eye color, their clothing, their culture.
SUMMING IT UP
- Don’t use: almond shaped, slanted, tilted. Or racial slurs~!
- Treat your Asian characters like your other non-Asian characters - if you’re not going to spend a lot of time describing their specific eye shapes, stay away from doing it to your Asian characters.
- Don’t feel the need to give your Asian characters “white” features just so you can get away from the controversy surrounding East Asian eyes. Your characters with thin, angular, narrow eyes can be beautiful. Your characters with small, rounded, prominent eyes can be beautiful! Your characters don’t need to read as white to be attractive.
- If you’re going to have micro-aggressions towards your Asian characters regarding their eyes, make it clear in the text that it’s a micro-aggression (that is, that’s it’s racist and inappropriate). Otherwise, you’re just being racist in your text.
~mod Stella
