According to this photo shoot for Vogue Nippon, taping your eyes back is the new black. And no, this isn’t about taping your eyes for double eyelids. This is about taping your eyes UP and BACK away from your face, so you can create the perfect stereotypical Asian face. Supermodel Crystal Renn dons this new look for her spread in this behind the scenes video, where she playfully (and painfully) poses with her new chinky look.
Connie Wang from Refinery29 asks if this would count as the new blackface, but I want to know what the purpose of this taping was for. Was the art director aiming for Renn to look more “Asian” for the Japanese subscribers or is this some secret fashion stylist trick to make their model’s faces look less fat? If it’s the former, why couldn’t they have hired an Asian model? Then again, this is Vogue, where their Italian edition recently came under fire for hawking “slave earrings” and Vogue Paris featured a model in full blackface. If there’s one thing always in fashion, it’s knowing how to offend people.
[H/T Jenn Fang]
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I've seen plenty of products to whiten the skin in Asia (like SK2) and to make women look more "western", why not a white woman trying to look more "asian"? As long as she doesn't do a video screaming "Ching chong chang" like Rush Limbaugh, I'd take it more as a compliment than anything else.
Her face reminds me of the boy from the circus in the music video Aerials by SOAD. Also, nice eyebrows.
So if I tape my eyes back and add an additional slant to my eyes, I will be twice as fashionable. It's like "smeyesing" (a la Tyra). We can call it "sleyesing" -- smiling with slanted eyes. I am brilliant.
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Mar 3: (New York, NY) Vong Pak’s ‘Electric Shaman’ Concert
Apr 30: (Sacramento, CA) California Asian Pacific Islander Policy Summit 2012: iAdvocate
