Eyelid standards and attitudes in modern Japan

I didn't really grow up thinking much about eyelid shape as a beauty standard to adhere to. Living here, though, I've noticed double eyelids versus single eyelids coming up in everyday beauty talk, especially in makeup ads, eyelid tape tutorials, and casual convos that assume you understand the difference between hitoe (single eyelids) and futae (double eyelids).

What helped me understand how culturally embedded this is was a blog by BigFamJapan, which looked at how from the 1990s through the 2010s, there was a noticeable boom in people undergoing procedures to turn hitoe into futae. 

Following on from that, a recent survey of 500 parents in Japan gives a pretty clear picture of where attitudes sit today. Only a small minority, about 1 in 8 parents (12%), said they would flat-out refuse to sign consent for a high schooler wanting double eyelid surgery. The most common stance from almost half of parents (45%) was "I'd rather they wait until they're an adult." Another quarter (24%) said they would agree, but reluctantly, and only about 1 in 5 (18%) said they'd happily support it without hesitation.

So overall, it's not that parents are strongly opposed, but more that most want to delay it or approach it carefully, mainly due to concerns about medical risks (around 1 in 3 parents), facial growth still being underway (about 1 in 4), and worries about long-term effects or regret. There was also a noticeable gender difference, with around 1 in 5 parents saying they'd be more open to the idea for a daughter than for a son. 

Personally, I felt a bit uneasy reading about how early some of these conversations start here, especially when it comes to changing something as central to your face as your eyes. There's something about eyelids in particular that feels more "fixed" than things like hair or makeup, so the idea of surgery around them can take a moment to sit with. I also wasn't a fan of the big gender difference, since I feel like as women we often get the brunt of constantly moving goalposts when it comes to what's deemed beautiful, and having to try and match that.

At the same time, I catch myself thinking this isn't entirely foreign. Back home, it's fairly normal to see people getting lip fillers, Botox, or all sorts of little tweaks that also aim to bring faces closer to a certain ideal...it just looks different on the surface. I guess in both cases, the question underneath is how (and who?) decides what is "better", and how early those ideas start to shape people's perceptions of themselves.