Essay Beauty and the East By Samantha Loong	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
美と東洋 この前東京を訪れた際、筆者は友人の勧めで面白半分に無料美容診断を受けてみました。十代のころはティーン雑誌を読みあさって自分はデブでブスだと落ち込み、この種の診断を面白がるような心の余裕はなかったのですが・・・。

During my last visit to Tokyo, a friend and I decided to spend a weekday afternoon finding out how porous our faces were. It's not something I would normally choose to do, but we were curious about a free face analysis being offered in Shibuya. Another friend suggested we try it, as she thought it was both interesting and amusing to find out all the ridiculous flaws of our skin. She had proudly attached her own analysis, which came complete with a somewhat melancholic close-up of her face, onto the door of her refrigerator. With nothing to lose, apart from perhaps a little self-confidence, we went in search of this beauty clinic.

If I were in my teens or early 20s, I wouldn't have seen this excursion as something fun to do. I went through a stage of reading far too many teen-girl magazines, which made me feel overweight and unattractive. It became such a problem that I decided to stop buying them and instead now read food magazines — this has been much better for both my health and happiness.

It was just as well that I bolstered my self-esteem before moving to Japan. My first attempt at buying clothes in Osaka resulted in me feeling like an incredibly fat giant, with enormous clown feet. "Is this your biggest size?" was one of the first lines of Japanese I became fluent in saying. It became a rhetorical question, as I knew what the answer would always be. I had to resort to buying jackets from the men's section in clothing stores and endure looks of scorn from much bigger Japanese women as I tried my luck in the ‘plus size' section of department stores; I was too big for the average Japanese woman, and too small for the average plus-sized Japanese woman.

Japanese women have a reputation for being slim and beautiful, which puts a lot of pressure on everyone to conform to a certain look. Whitening moisturizers, miracle creams and magic anti-wrinkle potions line shelves in drug stores and pages in magazines. Beauty advertising, both in Japan and around the world, tends to imply that there's something wrong with you rather than focusing on what's right. To me, a woman confident in her own skin radiates much more beauty than one who tries to mask it under layers of foundation. Wrinkles, grey hairs and a bit of meat on your bones should be worn as a badge; they should be signs that you're to be respected and valued.

The results of my face analysis didn't really yield any surprises, only some new Japanese vocabulary and speaking practice with the friendly beauty consultant. Along with impressive facts and figures, there was a spider web chart on my report to show how much my skin deviated from the "norm." I can see why my friend was proud of her analysis — my list of imperfections were so varied that, conversely, they became signs of accomplishment. All I need now is a magnet — I know exactly where this report is going.

Shukan ST: NOVEMBER 9, 2012

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