“Before you’re dead you’ll see long noses everywhere”
What is your personal wish for 2024?
Health, prosperity, work promotion, passing an exam, maybe a new lover? For a great many Asians, it is a new nose.
Yes, I know, sounds bizarre, but it is true. Plastic surgery, or cosmetic surgery, is booming across Asia. South Korea now has the dubious title of ‘plastic surgery capital of the world’, with Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore not far behind. In my hometown of Chiang Mai, it is almost impossible to go shopping in a mall without being approached by young men and women selling beauty clinic services. Yes, even to me! They must be desperate!
My wife (aged 55), on the other hand, is already a paid-up member of the Thai middle-class cosmetic surgery clientele. A few years ago, she underwent abdominoplasty at a Bangkok clinic (removal of excess fat from the abdomen) and is next planning on blepharoplasty (eyelid operation) and rhytidetomy (facelift).
I’m sure my wife doesn’t need me to remind her that the abdominoplasty operation resulted in her being wheelchair-bound for two months — with me pushing it. Her pain I could only imagine. But that is all in the past. She is now determined to have the cosmetic surgeon take the scalpel to her once more — all in the pursuit of beauty.
And she is not alone.
My wife informs me that at least two young women in her family are currently saving up to have their moment on the cosmetic surgeon’s table. And let me stress, these are attractive Thai women in their early 30s. In England, such young women would turn any man’s gaze. As one older English woman friend wryly noted to me some years ago:
“Few Englishwomen can compete with the Thai female when it comes to the beauty stakes.”
So, given that Asian women, and Thai women in particular, are mostly born beautiful, how is it that Thailand’s cosmetic surgery business is now worth 72 billion Baht pa, with the most popular surgical practice being rhinoplasty (a reshaped nose)? In 2020, over 21,000 people (mostly Asian women) got new (i.e. bigger) noses in Thailand. Starting price for a Thai nose-job is around 35,000 Baht (US$1000).
As I say, this is very much a female middle-class experience — but propelled by Western cultural influence and Western globalising forces — though even the poorest Thais hope to one day have their nose lengthened: The young female housekeeper of one of my neighbours is apparently imploring her parents to pay for her to have a ‘new nose’ as she only earns 500 baht a day cleaning and cannot pay for it herself.
When it comes to noses I have to admit an interest. My nose is big. Okay, not on the scale of Pinnochio or bulbous like that of French actor, Gerard Depardieu. Mine is more like Bradley Cooper’s or Julius Ceasar’s. When I was 16 and very anxious about my appearance — especially to girls — I would look in the mirror and worry about my Roman nose. In my youth my looming conk, situated as it is right in the middle of my face and therefore unmissable, didn’t appear to me to enhance my masculine attractiveness in way at all. Throughout my teenage years I hoped and prayed it wouldn’t get any bigger. And even if some young lady did take a fancy to me, there is the issue of kissing. How to manoeuvre my lips to hers without my protruding conk getting in the way? Men (and women) with large noses all have to get skilled at kissing side-on, not face-on.
As the years passed (and I did more and more kissing) my nose-phobia slowly disappeared. Now it is gone completely. In fact, if anything, the reverse has happened. After arriving in Asia some 20 years ago I began to realise how my conk was seen by Asian women as quite alluring if not hypermasculine. Asian women looked upon it with admiration. Along with my dark-blond hair, pink skin, and English attire, my ‘larger-proportioned nose’ fitted their image of the ‘ideal looking Western male’.
Evidence for my newly-found nose beauty came from favourable comments women made about it not only in Thailand but also, for example, in Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam and Malaysia. Lucky for me, my nose didn’t decide to grow at the same pace as my manly self-confidence.
Somewhat inevitably, Asian women (and not a few Asian men), have over the past few decades moved from admiring the Western Roman nose to desiring it.
They want one just like it.
“By the time you are dead you’ll see long noses everywhere. This is what Thai women have come to see as beautiful. This is the first thing young Thai women save money for. The Koreans copy the Western look and Thais now copy the Koreans”
My wife is adept at coming up with intriguing statements of this type. For example, what time frame is she actually referring to? How long have I to wait until these two events coincide — my demise and most Thai women looking like Lady Gaga?
Ironically, for me one of the long-standing attractions of Thailand, and Asia generally, is that it is not like the West, and nor are the women.
I love the look of Asian women and always have done. That petit nose, rich lips, small eyes, long black hair and heavily tanned complexion, all packaged in a lithe body, equal perfection, at least for me. And I suspect, also for a good many other Western men.
According to my wife — and the growing evidence around me — the future of Asian (middle-class) beauty appears to reside in long noses, square jawlines, round eyes and bleached skin. All created artificially.
Let us hope not.
But I fear that is the direction Asia is going in with only the poorest Asians still left looking, well, Asian.
ACADEMIC ARTICLES BY STEPHEN
Refereed Journal Articles
Whitehead, S. (1997)
‘Men/Managers and the Shifting Discourses of Post-Compulsory Education’. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 1:2.
Whitehead, S. (1998)
‘Disrupted Selves: Resistance and Identity Work in the Managerial Arena’. Gender and Education, 10:2.
Kerfoot, D. and Whitehead, S. (1998)
‘’Boys Own’ Stuff: Masculinity and the Management of Further Education’. The Sociological Review, 46:3.
Whitehead, S. (1999)
‘From Paternalism to Entrepreneuralism: The Experience of Men Managers in UK Postcompulsory Education’. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 20:1.
Kerfoot, D. and Whitehead, S. (2000)
‘Keeping All the Balls In the Air: FE and the Masculine/Managerial Subject’. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 24:2.
Goddard-Patel, P. and Whitehead, S. (2000))
‘Examining the Crisis of Further Education: An analysis of “failing” colleges and failing policies’. Policy Studies, 21:3.
Whitehead, S. (2001)
‘Woman as Manager: A Seductive Ontology’. Gender, Work and Organization, 8:1.
Whitehead, S. (2001)
‘The Invisible Gendered Subject: Men in Education Management’. Journal of Gender Studies, 10:1.
Goddard-Patel, P. and Whitehead, S. (2002) ‘The Mechanics of ‘Failure’ in Further Education: The Case of Bilston Community College’. Policy Studies, 22:3/4.
Whitehead, S. (2005) ‘Performativity Culture and the Further Education Professional’. International Journal of Management in Education, 19:3.
Whitehead, S. (2008) ‘Metrosexuality! Cameron, Brown and the politics of ‘new masculinity’, Public Policy Research, 14:4.
Sanderson, R and Whitehead, S (2015) ‘The Gendered International School: Barriers to women managers’ progression’. Journal Education + Training.
Review Articles
Whitehead, S. (1997)
‘Class Inequality Revisited’. Reviewing Sociology, 10:2.
Whitehead, S. (1999)
‘Hegemonic Masculinity Revisited’. Gender, Work and Organization, 6:1.
Whitehead, S. (2000)
‘Masculinity: Shutting Out the Nasty Bits’ Gender, Work and Organization. 7:2.
Whitehead, S. (2000)
‘Postmodernism in Education Theory’, British Journal of Educational Studies. 48:3.
Whitehead, S. (2000)
‘Masculinities, Race and Nationhood – Critical Connections’. Gender and History. 12:2
Guest Editing (Journal Special Issues)
Kerfoot, D., Prichard, C. and Whitehead, S. (2000)
‘(En)Gendering Management: Work, Organisation and Further Education’. Journal of Further and Higher Education. 24:2.
