Vancouver, the Beautiful

Vancouver, the Beautiful

View of Mountains in North Vancouver

Last week I was in Vancouver for the first time since the early 1980s. A lot has changed both in my circumstances and in those of the city. Downtown Vancouver no longer appears to be the end of the line for runaways, drug addicts, panhandlers and prostitutes. This may still be the case in the Down Town East Side (DTES); however, I was struck more by the opulence of the city's core--the empty office towers, the new BC Place stadium, the Colosseum-style library, the Skytrain, the Olympic and Expo buildings and the emptiness of the once thriving Chinatown.

Cherry Blossom

If my memory serves me correctly, downtown Vancouver was much more Asian, Native and gritty. I was told that the city had gone through several successive clean-ups in recent decades and that certain populations had been shifted to other areas of the Lower Mainland. I once felt like a foreigner in the hustle and bustle of Chinatown, which has apparently moved south to the city of Richmond. The empty office buildings, I was told, were the holdings of wealthy Chinese poised for the next economic boom, which was expected sometime in the next three years. In addition, some 130,000 new immigrants were expected to arrive in Vancouver shortly, according to our tour bus driver.

Gates to Chinatown

Of course, some things had not changed. The 1,000-acre Stanley Park, just west of the downtown, was still there with its towering trees and relatively new seawall for cyclists and pedestrians. The fresh forest air, the smell of red cedar and the beauty of the surrounding coastal mountains are among my fondest memories of British Columbia. We were just in time for the cherry blossoms and azaleas, but it had been a cold spring, so the rose garden in Stanley Park had only some tender green to offer.

So which Vancouver do I prefer? The new orderly wealthy White city or the old, adventurous, multi-ethnic chaotic mixture of rich and poor. Difficult to say...orderly is good for investments, which leave me indifferent, while diversity makes for a much more interesting city, or is that just nostalgia speaking? Whatever you prefer, the sushi is still cheap and the rain plentiful.

For further reading on real estate speculation in Vancouver click here.



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More Impossible Beauty Standards

More Impossible Beauty Standards

Today on Twitter, Bitch Magazine asked the following question:

What do you think about the surgery many Asian women get to make their eyes appear rounder? Hmm... great question!

I recently blogged about impossible beauty standards, but since there are so many, I'm going to choose my favorite, being thin, to illustrate my point.

On a daily basis, we are bombarded with images of skinny women. We are exposed to marketing every day that tells us in order to be beautiful, we must be thin. However, Mother Nature has different plans for us. As we grow older, our metabolism slows down until it grinds to a near halt at menopause. In addition, as we get older, we become less active. Slower metabolism, less muscle mass and less activity...This is a no brainer. We're going to gain weight as we age, and this is true for almost everyone. There is one upside to getting older, which big business is well aware of: as we age our disposable income also increases.

Wow! Great money making opportunity here. I know! Tell women they're not thin enough... by repeatedly bombarding them with images of thinness and then sell them something that doesn't work, so they keep buying more. Isn't this called the "diet industry?" Or you could have a medical professional drain the fat out of you or staple your stomach in exchange for a big wad of cash...

Enter Asian women who want to make their eyes rounder. Wow, sounds like another impossible beauty standard cooked up to make women spend a small fortune on being more "beautiful." I mean they are your eyes, not much you can do about them. Right? Wrong. Start with a popular actress who appears to have had this surgery done and then overexpose her. Presto, an iconic round-eyed Asian beauty. Once a few more highly visible women get it done, you have a trend. And plastic surgeons can walk outside with their pockets open, as it rains down money.

There is also the more disturbing aspect of elective surgery for rounder eyes. It reeks of ethnic self-loathing, like some women are ashamed of their Asian eyes. It's a little bit like someone with dark skin using skin lightener, except this is a lot more costly, and once it's done, it's done. Or maybe, plastic surgeons can charge another small fortune to have the operation reversed.

But should we really be surprised by this trend? China, once the world's largest untapped market, is now open for business. There are potentially billions of dollars to be made by telling women that there is something wrong with them. Not outright of course, but subliminally, by hiring only models who have surgically altered round eyes to sell everything from cars to toothpaste.

That is how thinness has been sold to us in North America. Today, even female opera singers are expected to be thin. How did we get here? By being constantly exposed to images of the impossibly thin. These images slowly eat away at our own idea of beauty until one day, we relent and buy into theirs. Big business is banking on it.

For further information on this topic go to:
http://www.asian-central.com/stuffasianpeoplelike/2008/03/20/41-eye-enlargement/


The following is a video of a beautiful Asian girl gluing...yes, gluing her eyelids back to make her eyes appear rounder. Young women who do not have the money actually glue or tape their eyelids back. I had to see it to believe it.

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