A Deep Dive Into the Appropriation and Whitewashing of Asian Beauty

Asian beauty influence is everywhere. The hyaluronic acid sheet masks in your local CVS, your favorite cleansing balm at Target, and the gua sha tool you spotted on Instagram—it’s all based in Asian beauty.

I knew I was different as a kid, but it was never something I felt ashamed of; I loved to share my culture with my non-Asian peers. At the same time, it also brought a lot of frustration, especially when Asian practices were attributed as non-Asian inventions by popular content creators, bloggers, and YouTubers. In reality, Asian beauty trends aren’t just exports of culture, but techniques with a long history that should be honored and respected.

Gua sha was first recorded in the Chinese medical text Shang Han Lun in 220 CE, to detoxify the body and to encourage oxygenated blood to better circulate. Chinese women in the 17th century used warm rice water to wash their skin and hair, according to the Chinese text Liji. The Compendium Materia Medica was full of floral-based formulas to even the skin. Ancient Chinese empresses and imperial consorts used a variety of floral essences and nourishing masks to keep their skin youthful.

Sharing culture is beautiful, but it’s also a deeply unsettling task for Asian Americans. So many elements of our culture are dismissed as “disgusting” and “weird”—my childhood peers were reviled by the idea of eating chicken’s feet, gagged at candied hawthorn flakes, and sneered mercilessly at my mother’s homemade tea eggs. They all had a very distinct look on their face—a shared glance with one another, mouths pursed somewhere between amusement and disgust, and a strange self-assuredness in their shoulders. “Can you even imagine eating that?” they all seemed to say to each other, as though I was some kind of feral dog. At the same time, their eyes lit up at the sight of chocolate Pocky and milk candies. Same thing with Asian music, cartoons, and media. My classmates saw me as a weirdo for listening to TVXQ and watching Naruto. Now, everyone listens to BTS and streams Demon Slayer on Netflix. To see the explosive popularity of Asian beauty reminded me vividly of this—sheet masks were slimy and unpleasant, until they weren’t. Snail slime was gross and weird, until it wasn’t. Asian beauty, like most other exports of Asian culture, was weird and gimmicky, until mainstream non-Asian media started singing its praises.

So, the next time you reach for the sheet mask and jade roller in your skincare fridge, or you massage cleansing balm into your skin, think about the culture that brought these products to you. Think about the history behind that culture and experiences people of that culture face today. Because I do. Whenever I wash my face and pat essence into my skin, I think about my culture. I think about how we have been diminished and othered for so long, until we served a purpose. I think to myself about how proud and lucky I am to be alive today, with the power and privilege to write about the AAPI experience. And while we still have so much work to do, Asian Americans aren’t just abstract theories that can be dismissed. We are people, we are alive, and we are finally taking up space—right on people’s vanities.

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