This was a really interesting read. Being surrounded by all the magical photobooths that are designed to make your eyeballs MASSIVE really makes me go 8|a at what's become the beauty standard pretty much everywhere, even in a country where Caucasians are a teeny tiny minority.
People here are constantly telling me "OH WOW YOUR EYES ARE HUGE." I think it's a combination of different eyelids + longer eyelashes + deeper set eyes (LIKE a stronger brow bone, so it kind of casts a shadow and contrasts the white part?! WHAT AM ENGLISH) that just make them seem bigger by comparison.
Haha, well, it's also partly a youth thing! Young people tend to have bigger eyes than older people. Like the double-eyelid thing is also currently a beauty standard in much of east Asia, and double-eyelid is likewise something that tends to become less and less pronounced as you age, because your skin gets puffier in that area so eventually it'll droop over and hide it.
The supraorbital ridges, yes? I think it's also partly, like. The way your brain processes perspective? The presence of depth markers tends to exaggerate size, like the one optical illusion >-< <-> ← that one.
Oh man, Zhang Fei's description in ROTK sounds hilarious in English and makes him sound like some kind of bizarre chimera. But a lot of translations of Chinese works just translate literally and don't give cultural notes like you did, so taking the context away makes it sound bizarre
( ... )
Oh god Chinese metaphors. Translating between Chinese and English is such a pain in the ass because very rarely the metaphors actually match up between languages but most of the time they are NOTHING ALIKE
...hahaha that makes sense! WWII propaganda lolololol. (And then there's hilarity like this.)
(Yeah the picture I linked is... a little scary, tbf haha)
Yeah, and a lot of the time, they're not really metaphors that English-speakers can easily draw a line between (for instance, 'cloud-like hair' doesn't mean a whole lot to me - it makes me think of frizzy, fly-away hair - but chances are it means straight, silky, flowing hair, right? Or am I totally off here?).
Oh lord, you wouldn't believe some of the stuff I was told as a kid. Like that the reason Chinese have a sort of waddling gait in movies and cartoons and stuff is because they cut off their big toes - and only when I was older and had access to the internet (and started reading up on Chinese culture) did I find out about lotus foot and how it actually looked. (Moral of the story: Americans are WEIRD)
I'm actually not as clear on the specifics of "cloud-like hair" either, but I think it refers to the appearance of clouds that are obscuring a full moon? Current general beauty standards for hair look for dark, coarse, thick, and shiny.
...hahaha what. LOTUS FOOT WEIRDS ME OUT as far as I know no one in my family ever did that, my dad's family was the wrong socio-economic bracket and my mom's family were weird hippies even way back then.
...omg this one time my highschool US history teacher showed us this pamphlet from WWII on HOW TO DISTINGUISH OUR CHINESE ALLIES FROM OUR JAPANESE ENEMIES and they said things like. Chinese people are kind of dumpy and happy-looking, Japanese people are super thin and angular and sinister. Chinese people sort of shuffle when they walk, Japanese people STRIDE PURPOSEFULLY. So based on gait apparently I'm Japanese, because I often accidentally outpace people a foot taller than me when I'm walking.
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People here are constantly telling me "OH WOW YOUR EYES ARE HUGE." I think it's a combination of different eyelids + longer eyelashes + deeper set eyes (LIKE a stronger brow bone, so it kind of casts a shadow and contrasts the white part?! WHAT AM ENGLISH) that just make them seem bigger by comparison.
If you want I can do the photo thing, too. 8|a
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The supraorbital ridges, yes? I think it's also partly, like. The way your brain processes perspective? The presence of depth markers tends to exaggerate size, like the one optical illusion >-< <-> ← that one.
IF YOU LIKE it might be interesting! |Da
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...hahaha that makes sense! WWII propaganda lolololol. (And then there's hilarity like this.)
(Yeah the picture I linked is... a little scary, tbf haha)
Reply
Oh lord, you wouldn't believe some of the stuff I was told as a kid. Like that the reason Chinese have a sort of waddling gait in movies and cartoons and stuff is because they cut off their big toes - and only when I was older and had access to the internet (and started reading up on Chinese culture) did I find out about lotus foot and how it actually looked. (Moral of the story: Americans are WEIRD)
Reply
...hahaha what. LOTUS FOOT WEIRDS ME OUT as far as I know no one in my family ever did that, my dad's family was the wrong socio-economic bracket and my mom's family were weird hippies even way back then.
...omg this one time my highschool US history teacher showed us this pamphlet from WWII on HOW TO DISTINGUISH OUR CHINESE ALLIES FROM OUR JAPANESE ENEMIES and they said things like. Chinese people are kind of dumpy and happy-looking, Japanese people are super thin and angular and sinister. Chinese people sort of shuffle when they walk, Japanese people STRIDE PURPOSEFULLY. So based on gait apparently I'm Japanese, because I often accidentally outpace people a foot taller than me when I'm walking.
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