It's a Beautiful Life

In China, ugliness is penalised more in women, but beauty is more rewarded. The figures for men in Shanghai are –25% and +3%; for women they are –31% and +10%. In Britain, ugly men do worse than ugly women (-18% as against -11%) but the beauty premium is the same for both (and only +1%).

-The Economist, Dec. 19th, 2007

The premiums/penalties in North America are all below 10%.

So apparently, it pays to be beautiful, and especially so in China. Plastic surgery has boomed this decade, and the trend has been covered extensively by everyone from the local media to the Boston Globe to Time Magazine. Then again, it's not really surprising that China, with its growing middle-class tradition of foot binding, is now getting caught up in this cosmetic craze (there's even an annual "Miss Plastic Surgery" contest now).

However, the culture surrounding plastic surgery is a little different here. For one, demand for different types of surgery are different. Double-eyelid construction (costing about a month's salary) is very common here, as was leg-lengthening surgery (at least until it was banned). Boob jobs, on the other hand, are probably less popular. I guess it goes without saying, but beauty is judged differently in China. Height, for example, is not only appreciated as a physical trait, but also because some Chinese believe that being tall is a reward for acts of kindness in past lives.

It's also probably true that the Chinese are motivated to go under the knife for different reasons. Like I said in my last post, it's a tougher job market here simply because you have to beat out so many others for a job; professional aspirations are always brought up in those "plastic surgery in China" features. It's now at the point where schools will encourage their students to opt for surgery (again citing better job prospects). Anything to stand out from the rest.

Perhaps the worst thing about all this is that those in smaller towns (and usually with less qualified surgeons) are increasingly feeling like they "need" to get a facelift or an extra set of eyelids to compete, leading to botched surgeries, permanent scars, or worse, compromised health and/or death.