In my column on the much lamented woes of women at Harvard Business School, I mentioned that the modern left is most comfortable comforting the unafflicted. I'm not exactly sure who Julie Chen is: she's somebody on TV, but it's important that we know she was the victim of racism:
Julie Chen Got Plastic Surgery Because Her "Asian Eyes" Hurt Her Career
By Katy Waldman | Posted Thursday, Sept. 12, 2013, at 4:59 PM
The five hosts of The Talk have been divulging secrets all week. When Julie Chen’s turn came around, she started by showing a clip of her 25-year-old self newscasting for a local network in Dayton, Ohio. ...
After the up-and-coming Chen offered to fill in for vacationing anchors over the holidays, he gave it to her straight. “You will never be on this anchor desk, because you're Chinese,” she recalls him telling her.
“He said 'Let's face it Julie, how relatable are you to our community? How big of an Asian community do we really have in Dayton?
I suspect Ms. Chen's strongest reaction was: Who said I want to develop a relationship with Dayton? Connie Chung was the lead anchor on CBS in Los Angeles two decades ago in 1976. Malibu is more my style than Dayton.
... On top of that because of your heritage, because of your Asian eyes, I've noticed that when you're on camera, when you're interviewing someone you look disinterested and bored
sic ... oh, why bother ... not only the word, but the concept of disinterestedness is lost and gone forever ...
because your eyes are so heavy, they are so small.'"
Chen’s reaction was heartbreaking: She developed a deep insecurity around her eyes. She started taping her segments on a VCR and playing them back at the end of the workday, evaluating the heaviness of her lids. Though she knew her boss was being racist, she worried he might be right about her career. When a “big time agent” refused to represent her unless she “got plastic surgery to make [her] eyes look bigger”—the man then “whipped out a list of plastic surgeons” and assured her a few swipes of the scalpel would take her “straight to the top”—Chen decided to go for it.
“I will say, after I had that done, the ball did roll for me. Which I struggle with. You know, wow. Did I give in to 'the man' and do this?” ...
“My lifelong dream was to one day be a network news anchor,” Chen reveals early in the segment. You could argue that Chen sacrificed one part of herself to save another; that she ultimately achieved a platform from which she could advance our conversations about race more effectively than if she’d remained obscure. And certainly her talking about this now does that. But career aspirations should not have required her to tone down her ethnicity. "No one's more proud of being Chinese than I am," Chen told her colleagues. The way she talks about her old eyelids—“too much fat,” “excess skin”—doesn’t quite line up with that statement. I wonder how she'd feel about those eyes if they were still hers?
The pressure Chen faced was vile, unfair—and worth resisting. We know the problem: racism. ...
So, here's who Julie Chen is, from Wikipedia:
Julie Suzanne Chen Moonves (born January 6, 1970) is an American television personality, news anchor, and producer for CBS.[1] She has been the host of the U.S. version of the CBS reality-television program Big Brother since its debut in July 2000 and is the longest-serving host of any country's version of the show. She is also a co-host and the moderator of the CBS daytime show The Talk. Previously, she was a co-anchor of The Early Show on CBS.
Julie Chen was born in Queens, New York. Chen's mother, Wan Ling Chen,[2] is Burmese Chinese and grew up in Rangoon, Burma, where Chen's grandfather was a leading industrialist. Her father was born in China, and was one of the top leaders in the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek. Consequently, her family moved everywhere in China, eventually fleeing to Taiwan. ...
Leslie Moonves, president and chief executive officer of CBS Television, began dating the Big Brother host during his marriage to Nancy Wiesenfeld Moonves. On April 22, 2003, a week after Les Moonves signed a five-year multimillion dollar contract with Viacom,[20] his wife [and mother of his three children] filed for divorce in L.A. Superior Court ...
On December 23, 2004, Chen and Moonves were married in a private ceremony ... Following an old Chinese wedding tradition, Chen walked down the aisle with a coin in her shoe to guarantee prosperity.
The coin in the shoe thing seems to be working for the Moonves-Chen family. From Les's Wikipedia page, we learn his:
Salary $69.9M in 2011 (includes other compensation) [2]
For those who don't understand sarcasm, Steve is intentionally implying causality when it doesn't exist with the coin-in-the-shoe comment.
ReplyDeleteFeminism was a clever trick, wasn't it?
ReplyDeleteDoes anti-Asian racism explain Chen's severe nose job and hair extensions?
ReplyDeleteOff-topic, but Jason Richwine now has a blog. I'm surprised that he still gets published on NRO and RealClearPolitics.
ReplyDeleteSleeping with the boss probably helped more her career than surgery... Asian women are a story of the bravery of love! ROTFL!
ReplyDeleteWhat she was told about her features and TV presence wasn´t racist. It was just common sense. How many white tv hosts are there on chinese TV?
I used to think 'the princess and the pea' was a story. Evidently, it's social commentary. Nice to see that some things never change.
ReplyDeleteBefore I lived in Asia, I believed in objective beauty, but I thought the Asian Americans might have a case about Western standards of beauty.
ReplyDeleteAfter living in Asia, I know see these people are full of crap, though perhaps it grows out of an inferiority complex.
Larger eyes are more expressive, which is why the Japanese draw cartoons with huge eyes. They're also more attractive. One reason puppies and babies are cute is because their eyes are a larger proportion of their faces. Finally, lots of Asians prefer larger eyes. Not Western round eyes per se, but larger Asian eyes. At least in China, there's really not a lot of Western beauty foisted upon the public, nearly all the ads and magazines have Chinese models. Chinese often remark on how Westerners seem to like ugly girls, i.e. Westerners seem to prefer the stereotypical Chinese eyes, perhaps because it is "exotic," whereas the Chinese prefer big eyes.
Just in the past few days, news sites have had pictures of China's most beautiful military instructor. Notice the eyes.
She still was Asian enough looking to attract a Jewish husband (a trend you should write about).
ReplyDeleteGood grief, could the before and after pictures be any more slanted (pun intended)? In the before picture, the lighting is so bad that her skin look sickly and her hair appears coated in oil. She had either a serious smirk or a minor cleft lip, and she thought the redder the lipstick the better. It's like taking a picture of a woman who's shopping at Walmart and then another after she's been to one of those places where they give them a pro makeover and then take soft-focus boudoir shots.
ReplyDeleteShe's the host of one of the most classless, budgetless reality shows on the major networks. The job mostly consists of interviewing a bunch of boring fame-whores for a few minutes a week. Big Brother fans call her the ChenBot, because she moves robotically from camera to camera and recites her lines with little interest or emotion (not that you can blame her, because they generate none). It's generally assumed that she has the job because she's sleeping with the boss.
She's hot for her age, though; gotta give her that.
> Chen's mother, Wan Ling Chen, is Burmese Chinese and grew up in Rangoon, Burma, where Chen's grandfather was a leading industrialist.
ReplyDeleteFor those who take a more disinterested view of Julie's suffering at the hands of her uninterested yet rracist audience, this is interesting background.
It brings to mind Tiger Mom Amy Chua's excellent book "World on Fire" and its discussion of "market-dominant ethnic minorities," focusing on Overseas Chinese in places like the Philippines. And Burma, for that matter.
From the pictures it looks like she may have gotten a nose job as well. The income amount seems astonishingly high for what seems to be a generic person, interchangeable with any one of millions of other people. Animation has gotten to the point where a real person can be simulated very well with their own fake individual personality and appearance. It would be a great step forward if they used it to replace all the actual media people. Just determine what character would play well and create it. Get rid of all the annoying talking heads, the anchor-faces and other bobble-heads whose main talent is in being able to raise an eyebrow meaningfully at the right moment.
ReplyDeleteI guess racism is why the leading country for people getting plastic surgery is that multicultural wonder, South Korean
ReplyDeleteThe saddest part is that she continues to use her "slave name" (Julie Suzanne) to this very day.
ReplyDeleteShe is so oppressed and beat down by dat ol' debbil white man that she cannot even use the name her parents gave her in public.
Shed the fear, Julie! Fight the hate! Use your real name!
"sic ... oh, why bother ... not only the word, but the concept of disinterestedness is lost and gone forever ..."
ReplyDeleteYep, 'disinterested' has been the victim of verbicide from long ago. Yet useful words can also undergo resurrection by concerned speakers and writers. And even the most violent campaigns to murder a word or co-opt its meaning for political purposes can be withstood. "The Quakers were ultimately unusuccessful in their attempt to take over the word 'friend'." ~ C.S. Lewis
Come now, Steve. If it weren't for racism, she could have married Rupert Murdoch instead of settling for 9 figure Les.
ReplyDeletedamaged goods...
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Sean Connery had the opposite eyelid surgery in "You Only Live Twice" for 'round eyes' to fit in to the Local Community in Japan.
ReplyDeleteAs for Ms Chen I'll only watch her if she has her ethnic breasts enlarged.
Is anyone going to advise her? Cosmetically Pleeeease for wanting to be liked on TV.
In a not-totally-unrelated story, Big Brother, the show that really made Chen famous, has been embroiled in a racial witch hunt this year after several of the (blond, female) white contestants made some rather un-PC racial remarks when the cameras were rolling (which is always, since its a show about a bunch of people living in a sealed house all summer, mic'd up and filmed 24-7). The "Racism Never Dies" crowd has made some small amount of hay over it, particularly when Chen confronted one of the contestants over the remarks in her post-game interview with the contestant, Aaryn
ReplyDeleteJudging from that photo, she had more than her eyes done.
ReplyDeleteGiven that there are plenty of successful Asian women in TV with Asian eyes. I wonder if what she was really told was that she wasn't attractive enough, not that she was too Asian looking.
I also wonder if she thinks she gets more sympathy by saying she had surgery to make herself look less Asian that if she admits she had extensive surgery to make herself more attractive.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/09/12/the-northeast-is-getting-older-and-its-going-to-cost-them/
ReplyDeleteI know that this is sending the professional pearl clutchers into paroxysms of rage and ennui but it's difficult for me to feel any real sympathy for Ms. Chen when the same surgery is the most popular procedure in asia for what asians generally consider as an improvement in appearance.
ReplyDeleteTell Ms. Chen to get back to me when she does what the little chinese chap did in the late seventies/early eighties because he was too short for any of the SF bay area police forces.....had his wife beat him on top of his head with a 2 by 4 so the swelling would "elevate" him to the required height.
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/29/my_best_military_book_list_ever_the_ones_that_i_went_back_to_read_a_second_time?wpisrc=obnetwork
ReplyDelete"since 1968"
ReplyDeleteC'mon Steve, there might be young people reading who don't know any better. This liberalism for the unafflicted stuff is all from 1991 and on.
Invisible during the '80s and most of the '70s. Feminism was a flash in the pan, and its main goal -- the ERA -- got crushed.
Late '60s was about the War in Vietnam, and student/youth rebellion. No whining about gay rights (check the media and intelligentsia, not a re-writing from the '90s about how everyone focused on the Stonewall Riots, when nobody did). Nothing about poor HBS women, Chinese reality dreck hosts, etc.
It's all a Millennial era phenomenon.
I am reading this sitting in the visitor chair next to my loved one in the chemo infusion suite. Julie Chen, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama - who else, I'm not going to bother thinking about all of them - they are awful people. Gosh, narcissists in the extreme.
ReplyDeleteSander Gilman explains How Even 'Good' Stereotypes Can Be Bad; Myriad Subjects With a Common Thread: The Images We Build to Define Ourselves to the New York Times in 1998.
ReplyDeleteGilman is also the author of "The Asian Body", and wrote The Asian Eyelids: Are Asians White? Or the History of the Eye Job.
Fascinating stuff if you ever wondered where this Asian resentment over plastic surgery and "racism" comes from.
Oh, the horror!
ReplyDeleteA new logo for vdare?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/09/13/a_herd_of_ghost_deer_roams_the_abandoned_seneca_army_depot_in_upstate_new.html
I wonder whether she did the rest of her face at the same time or if it was incremental. She certainly didn't stop with the eyes; her nose, lips, chin...everything looks better. She either lost some weight as well or it is just the added surgery.
ReplyDeleteHer Asian nose didn't seem to be helping much either.
ReplyDeleteOf course what will never get mentioned is that Ms. Chen got her job in the first place because she was Chinese, while 100 white J-school grads got passed over so the station could have some diveerrrrrrrrrrrsity.
ReplyDeleteAlso the story about her boss sounds entirely contrived.
Oh, to be making $70M a year AND be able to unleash a cry from the heart about how the world has been so cruel to you.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't get better in our life than that.
May I see that $35K bag?
So this boss gave Chen career advice that turned out to be stunningly correct and helpful -- in five years Chen vaulted from Dayton to the heights of Hollywood -- and she complains bitterly and personally about it?
ReplyDeleteIt's sexist when you don't mentor women, and it's sexist when you do.
Oh please! Her whole career is propelled by tokenism, that is to say by white-hating racism. She had to get her eyes modified, I had to lose my whole civilization in this exchange, but SHE'S the victim.
ReplyDeleteA couple of commenters on Slate say it’s make-up, but it sure looks like she got a nose job too. We’ve grown so used to seeing all these surgically altered E. Asian women that we don’t even think about it, but so many of them really don’t even look human anymore. Plastic surgery remains a primitive art, I guess.
ReplyDeleteOn the topic of E. Asians, does any one know what the deal is with them and chess? Here is the official national rankings:
http://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtml
China is pretty good, in third place, but Japan is in 86th place, two places behind tiny Andorra and four spots worse than the Faroe Islands. South Korea is in 114th place! That puts them behind places like Angola, Nigeria, Jamaica, El Salvador and Uganda. Though they do edge out the island of Jersey. It doesn’t look like either has much talent coming down the pike either.
I know they each have their own national chess-like games, but still.
I live in Japan. Chess is not big here, much more effort is put into Go or Shogi (like chess but with more pieces and you can put the enemy's captured pieces back on the board as your own). That would account for all of the lack in ranking IMO.
DeleteEyes?
ReplyDeleteLooks as if Ms. Chen hated her nose as well as her original bears no resemblance to that of the here and now.
Wait. I thought feminists were always telling young girls to accept themselves as they are. No?
Certain ethnic groups seem to train their girls to marry for money. Others, not so much
ReplyDeleteIt looks like she had her nose done too. JoeJoe
ReplyDeleteNever mind her eyes. Look at her piggish original nose.
ReplyDeleteIn Japan they would call that a garlic nose. For some reason Chibese are mos likely to have one.
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbJEM2mQsns
ReplyDeleteYoko Ono the vile bitch won't shut up.
China must be very 'racist' since women with 'white eyes' are favored.
ReplyDeleteLooks like she did the nose too, but didn't mention it. I wonder why?
ReplyDeleteIf those are the before and after photos, she had more than just her eyes worked on. Way more.
ReplyDeleteThe main difference that I see between those pictures isn't "Asian woman -> not Asian woman" but "Dumpy looking woman -> Hot looking woman"
While she does look less Asian in the second photo, I wouldn't really say she looks White either. She looks more like the multi-racial genetic mash-up that TV and Hollywood seem to prefer these days. Some people inheret that look from their parents, she bought it as an aftermarket package.
It just goes to show that 'problems' are relative.
ReplyDeleteWhat goes by the name of 'poverty' in the US would be considered RICH in many third world countries. In material terms, 'pretty well off' even by first world standards.
Among alt right folks, there's a lot of complaint about how white running backs are discriminated against in favor of blacks.
Or, complaints about how blonde and blue eyed people are often cast as villains but not as leading men in Hollywood. It's a big deal among alt right cons but trivial-sounding to Jews and blacks.
When America was filled with dirt poor folks as in GRAPES OF WRATH, problems meant not having enough to eat.
Now, when even poor people have blubberoon fat arses, it's about micro-problems.
But to be fair to the complainers, 'micro' can have huge repercussions in the elite world.
Higher one aspires to, small details begin to matter more.
It's like a reasonably good-looking woman can find a mate and be happy. But if she wants to succeed as an anchor, beauty queen, or some such, she better have the right kind of looks.
There was a time when most minorities sought basic equality. Now that such is a given, the main question is not equal rights but more power.
It's like if you're hungry, you just want food. But once you have enough food, you think about the quality of food. Satiating hunger is no longer enough. It's about finding the best food in best restaurants.
Minorities are now tired of equal rights since they got it. Now, they wanna make the climb to the top, and they are finding out there are certain things(ranging from subtle to not-so-subtle) that serve as obstacles.
It's like white gentile conservatives can do very well by studying hard and working hard. But there is a glass ceiling for conservatives in many industries and institutions like Harvard, Hollywood, and etc. If you wanna reach the very top, you better not oppose 'gay marriage'. If you want real power, you better not criticize Jewish power. If you want to be promoted, you better worship MLK.
It's like Sailer isn't starving and has all the amenities in life necessary for living well, but if he wants MORE, he aint gonna get it since his views are anathema in the corridors of power.
For some, it's the shape of eyes. For others, it's refusal to worship MLK.
Equality for all is now a given at the median level. But 'more power for me' at the elite level is still dependent on things like looks, ideology, style, and the like.
Liberals often mock white conservatives for complaining about discrimination. Liberals say whites have it so good and most white conservatives are mostly middle class and doing just fine. That may be, but when it comes to rising up the ranks of power-and-influence, there are barriers against conservatives, some of them blatant, some of them 'holistic'. Jim Webb was right about the 'myth of white privilege'.
America is now way past the Andy-Rooney Age. This is the age of bottled water, not tap water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjGLP5021YM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7LqsAnhrR4
But then, the very founding of this country began on the basis of micro-problem-complaining.
The British were generous to the American colonies. Colonies were taxed very little, and the Brits had done the heavy lifting in the French-Indian War. But American colonialists made a mountain out of a molehill and even collaborated with Britain's arch-enemy France.
Colonialists wanted more than basic necessities of life. They wanted power.
The mediocre in America are content with equal rights. The ambitious in America demand more power.
For rich Jews in the past, it wasn't enough that they were rich and could afford nice things. They wanted IN to the Wasp blue blood society, and when Wasps said 'No', Jews began to bitch and whine and still haven't stopped.
MMMMM, interesting how Chen's nose job goes unmentioned.
ReplyDeletethis story would have been killer if it was about an asian-american guy who got a sex change operation and became an asian woman to land an anchor gig.
ReplyDeleteIn the first pic, it's not just the eyes. The hairdo, the ugly lipstick, the silly smirk, the bleached photo, the piggy nose, and etc all make her look ugly as hell.
ReplyDeleteThere are Asian women with Asian eyes who look good. Chen was just plain ugly, period. Judging by the adjoining 'after surgery' photo, it looks like a lot more than her eyes got altered.
Fact is people don't like to see ugly women of whatever race on TV.
Looks like Chen did better with tanned skin than with pale skin.
ReplyDeleteNews media be racis' against white-skinned folks!!
I blame Yoko for breaking up...
ReplyDeleteThe Murdoch and Moonves marriages.
I suspect a lot of East Asian women saw how even a talentless crazy uggo East Asian could get a rich, witty, younger, musical man and thought 'if she can...'
So her boss was right, she had to change her face before she got the big jobs as a pretty face on TV and marrying the big TV boss. It certainly was not her news reporting ability. If the guy is still around maybe she should send him a check for the good advice.
ReplyDeleteTrue story- 2 weeks ago we let the kids play in a mall playground (bad decision- we're finally getting over the cold that's bounced around the family since then; compromises you make for a little parental hands-off activity).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, a Chinese grandma was there with her mixed race grandchild. He looked almost Hispanic- not the typical Keanu Euro-Asian mix. After building a bit of rapport with her, she finally asked: "He no look like black baby?" Apparently her son has a black wife, and it was weighing on her.
Other true story. At an alumni picnic back when my wife and I were still dating, there were some crashers from Harvard (not a big metro area, so not a huge concentration of Ivy-level graduates unlike, say, NYC). One of them was a middle-aged Taiwanese guy with his mom. Seems she had a history of procuring random white girls for him and was fixated on having good-looking halfie grandkids (I would agree Euro-Asian kids are often quite good-looking). Acted like she thought she could negotiate for my someday-to-be-wife; or at least get the number of her sister. Went on about the first President of Taiwan's wife (Russian ballerina) and what a nice lady she was.
On a related note, when can we start feeling sorry for Debbie Wasserman Schultz? If only she had agreed to that nose job and hair-straightening solution. Hard to be considered Lady President timbre when your best angle is from 1.5 km away.
She got surgery done on her eyes, nose, and chin. She needed it. Seen her before photo? I wonder how good looking chicks are uglies that had surgery.
ReplyDeleteWonder what her kids look like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNSIqUE1C_4
ReplyDeleteShe's such a phony baloner.
She had surgery--and I'm sure more than on her eyes--because she's damn ugly, but she tries to make herself the victim of 'racism'.
On the other hand, the one good thing about this revelation is it shows how 'racist' the liberal community really is. Libs say they don't judge people by looks or race, but entertainment and news media that are controlled by libs have long promoted and favored certain kinds of peoples and looks over others. I mean how many Asian-Indian anchormen? How many short squat Mexican-American anchorwomen? Indeed, it turns out that the liberal dominated media industry has all sorts of rules as to who gets in and who doesn't.
Btw, I wonder why Chen was pressured to reveal her 'secret'?
Though packaged as a 'racism' issue, could it also be a white liberal feminist attack on dragon-bitch-ism? Could it be Jewish and white women in the media feel threatened by rise of yellow chicks and wanna expose yellow beauty as a fraud?
It's kinda funny in a way. Nazi propaganda told Germans to beware of Jews trying to pass as Germans. There seems to be something similar here: beware of Asians trying to pass themselves as white-looking Americans. They are ch--ks underneath the skin. The Eternal Chinagirl.
I find liberal logic bemusing and amusing. It seems to twisted, repressed, and contradictory.
http://youtu.be/RlHVin56U2w?t=18m33s
how does she explain the nose job too, then?
ReplyDeleteshe just wanted plastic surgery to look better - which is completely normal for a person who's job it is to be looked at. that's literally her job. for millions of people to stare at her while she is talking.
she didn't look that bad before, but she didn't look great either, like she does now. in an industry where looking great counts, she made the right decision. she's no different than dozens, maybe hundreds of other people in broadcasting, television, and film who also have plastic surgery.
Big racism news breaking now:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/12/red-lobster-suspends-waitress-who-received-none-nr-as-a-tip/
1. Of course the waitress had to be suspended - publicizing confidential information like that is not and never has been acceptable;
2. Does the handwriting of the slur (TM) match the signature? I'm not sure;
3. The Worst Word seems to be needlessly pluralised, and "none" misspelt as "nane".
Are 2. and 3. clues that this is a hatehoax by a disgruntled (and not very bright) waitress needing some attention and knowing precisely which buttons to push?
Asian Blapheroplasty - by far the most common form of eyelid surgery - does not make a full-blooded Asian person look non-Asian. The reason is that the surgery creates or enhances a double-eyelid (which all Caucasians have, but only about half of Asians do). The affect is to make the eyes rounder and softer, but the person still looks Asian. The effect is cosmetic - in just about all cultures rounder eyes are generally considered more aesthetically pleasing then thinner ones. Whether this is a Western standard that Asians are trying to adhere to is open for debate.
ReplyDeleteAs far as what creates the "Asian-ness" of Asian eyes, it is not the roundness or lack thereof that creates it, but rather the presence of the Epicanthic Fold, which all Asians have. There does exist a type of surgery to remove the epicanthic fold, but it is very rare and considered dangerous, since it can damage the tear ducts.
One thing I would be interested to know is the prevalence of Asian eyelid surgery among half-Asians. It seem they would be more motivated by a desire to fit in with their white peers than full-blooded Asians would. And even if they have distinctively Asian eyes, the rest of their face might contain enough Caucasian features so that if their eyes were rounded, they could conceivably pass for White. Or at least Hispanic, which is preferable to Asian if you are a guy.
It looks like she also lost a little weight and improved her makeup. Yeah, the eyes do look a little puffy on the left. I don't generally notice that in Chinese women. Maybe it was more of an individual characteristic.
ReplyDeletehttp://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/in-future-everyone-will-be-fired-after.html
ReplyDeleteI don't think her problem was being Chinese, but rather that she was ugly. That isn't as good of a story as racism though.
ReplyDeleteChen has obviously had plastic surgery on everything: eyes, lips, nose.
ReplyDeleteThis look is standard on Japanese actresses. I find it ugly.
"Burmese Chinese" - no such thing. They are Chinese in Burma, and the Bamar people hate them. Read Chua's World On Fire.
$69.9MM/year pays off an immense amount of butthurt
ReplyDeleteApparently, her nose was hurting her career, as well...
ReplyDeleteScreenwriter yammers about how good he is.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaDDKHFg3Tg
Why Some Races Outperform Others
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGx17P_O2LI
yabba dabba
Wow, the before and after is striking. Congrats to the surgeon.
ReplyDeleteI am a 77 year old white male. I have been advised that my eyelids droop and that I should have surgery on them for better reading and also cosmetic reasons. If I were to do this would it help me to get a job with a major TV network?
ReplyDeleteProbably some relatively minor rhinoplasty too but it might just be a lot of "image editing"; I'm "on the fence" on this important issue of our times.
ReplyDeletebiology sued for epicanthic fold! news at 11!
ReplyDeleteIt's about time ugly people became recognised as a separate race.
ReplyDeleteThere was ugly as ugly and beautiful as beautiful. Ugliness wasn't sexy, but beauty wasn't necessarily sexy--at least in a skanky way--either.
ReplyDeleteGreta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and many other glamorous stars weren't necessarily sex goddesses.
But if someone had to be sexy, she had to be good looking at least.
But then, there arose the idea of ugly as sexy. Ugly girls who couldn't win the beauty or glamour department could bare their breasts and shake their asses to compensate. Their faces might not be much to look at, but if they act all skanky, the animal nature of males might come out as some guys who hump just about anything. (Come to think of it, it goes back to Theda Bera, a gross looking Jewish woman who was something of a movie sexpot in the silent era. She looked like the fat Jewish girl in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA who also looks like Lena Dunham.)
So, it may be that ugly girls led in the skankass ho department for awhile. But once skankass ho-ness became legit, even beautiful girls began to act skankass hoey, and then ugly girls lost the edge.
So now, they got ugly + intelligence + sexiness. Somehow, if you're ugly and skanky AND 'witty', that's supposed to give you some kind of edge(at least according to feminist conceit). I guess this was what Streisand and Dunham have been peddling.
For a time in the late 60s and 70s, it seemed like not-so-handsome men were taking over the leads. Think of Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman. Jack Nicholson and Deniro.
There was an emphasis on grittiness and reality.
But in time, the Tom Cruises of the world took over.
Gordon Levitt isn't handsome but he's cute, and I guess girls go for that.
This is true. Every few years the New York Times does a sob story on how attractive, highly educated, well-connected young women in Manhattan (who are also friends of the person writing the column, one suspects) just cannot find a man worthy of them. Because somebody has to tell the sad tale of this put-upon and marginalized victim group!
ReplyDeleteSomehow I don't think you can pin this one on the racism of white guys. Chinese girls don't seem to have a problem attracting white guys. I suspect the Dayton version of Ron Burgundy was giving her good advice based on the catty sniping of female viewers, not his own personal preferences in women. My experience has been women are their own worst enemies in this regard.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't just her eyes that have had work.
ReplyDeleteGotta hand it to her, she has come a very long way. She must be off the charts in everything else, because it's not looks.
ReplyDeleteanybody else notice how extreme lookism has completely taken over casting in the movie industry as well as position placing in television?
ReplyDeletethere used to be lots of ugly actors with interesting appearances, acting chops, and character actor ability. they've mostly been eliminated now. very few of them in the younger generation of actors in their 20s and 30s.
don't even get me started on the bimboization of news and sports reporting on television. today it's far more important to look good than to know what you're talking about. in fact i doubt most of this new wave of bimbo anchors and journalists do any actual reporting or investigating at all.
Here's how she looks without makeup:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rickey.org/julie-chen-without-makeup-photo
Look at how lookism has taken over politics. Jay Carney, Jen Psaki, Stephanie Cutter, Sam Power, Victoria Nuland, all spokespersons, all attractive. There are no Marlin Fitzwaters or even Mike McCurry's any more.
ReplyDeleteSomeday, there will be genetic surgery to change the 'problem' at the root. And then, entire traits might die out.
ReplyDeleteBut today, we still have stuff like this:
http://www.worldcrunch.com/default/plastic-surgery-nation-chinese-man-sues-wife-for-being-ugly-wins/china-plastic-surgery-advertisement-verdict/c0s10072/
I guess if transsexual surgery is okay, trans-look surgery is too.
Maybe if the cost of plastic surgery comes way down, looking pretty will be a 'human right', and tax payer dollars will pay for plastic surgery for all.
http://sociorocketnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/2012-05-07_115944.jpg
ReplyDeleteRotfl.
I mean LITERALLY Rotfl.
She has a classic "plastic surgery" face wherein not one of her features looks natural. Perhaps that is unavoidable since she had so much work done but a very skilled plastic surgeon can (on his best day, anyway) produce a more attractive natural look. Winona Ryder had quite the schnozz at the beginning of her career but her nose job is one of the best I've ever seen. Julie Chen either didn't shop around enough for a plastic surgeon or she just got a good one a bad day. But nose jobs are required for even beautiful white actors so it's no surprise that minorities have to get more surgery to compete.
ReplyDeleteGloria
"3. The Worst Word seems to be needlessly pluralised, and "none" misspelt as "nane". " - he admitted to writing the none. Still the Starting capital N is in print and not cracker rune.
ReplyDeleteIf Julie Chen grew up in Queens in the Seventies, she got to see several Asian females working as TV news anchors when she was a little girl. Indeed, by the early Eighties, when she was just a kid, it was already common to see middle-aged white male anchors paired with younger minority (often Asian) females. Kaity Tong was just the most prominent example from New York.
ReplyDeleteSo it's preposterous for her to claim she thought Asian looks would prevent her from being a news anchoor.
For the record, having lived in Ohio and Michigan, I've seen lots of East Asian (and South Asian) - as well as black and Hispanic - reporters and anchors on the air, in both the larger and smaller media markets.
ReplyDeleteMs. Chen, this isn't true of all Asians, but you're prettier as a white lady.
ReplyDeleteI'd shed a tear for this poor, poor, multimillionaire who has been treated so unfairly but it's time for me to start my twelve hour overnight shift at the factory where I earn minimum wage.
ReplyDelete"I wonder if what she was really told was that she wasn't attractive enough, not that she was too Asian looking."
ReplyDeleteMy thought as well because, well... she wasn't!
in 1960 or so, cosmetic surgery was considered unethical.
ReplyDelete. Winona Ryder had quite the schnozz,
ReplyDeletepics?
is that why i thought she was dumpy in lucas?
Often those 'big' Mediterranean/indian eyes correspond with a big nose and when you mr-potato head on a Nordic nose it looks silly.
http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Rebels-1979-Birth-Century/dp/0465018386
ReplyDeletejody said...anybody else notice how extreme lookism has completely taken over casting in the movie industry as well as position placing in television?
ReplyDeleteIn music too it seems. Singers of really marginal talent like Katy Perry have great careers because they're hot looking. I don't think anyone who looked like Janis Joplin could get into the industry today.
Woud Aretha Franklin have made it beyond backup singer today?
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see how successful the rock band Alabama Shakes is with, as their lead singer and guitarist, an overweight funny-looking mulatto woman, who happens to be musically terrific (if you like 1970s Southern rock).
I've seen one Chinese movie, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Very good.
ReplyDeleteAll the sympathetic characters were essentially Caucasian. The more despicable the character, the more Asian. And if there is any sing-song in Mandarin, I didn't hear it.
The idealized white face is the gold standard for beauty all over the world, no matter how few of them exist and how many others fell out of the ugly tree.
What everybody said. Chen did her whole face, and now she wants to make herself more relevant than a girl who prostituted herself for advancement. At least 90% of white women are not good looking enough to advance in that business. People are not hired for their accomplishments. They are talking models.
Her boss would have been more blunt if she was white. You're ugly, get it fixed. That's the thanks you get for trying to be nice.
I wonder if what she was really told was that she wasn't attractive enough, not that she was too Asian looking.
ReplyDeleteI'm Asian and I know these types very well. In her mind, both are the same statement. They are self-hating Asians that equate Asian features to ugliness. It's really a mental disorder of some sort, sometimes caused from childhood trauma of being different from their peers or maybe overexposure to media portrayals. Either way, pretty much most women in WM/AF relationships suffer from it, despite their adamant assertion that they are proud of their Chinese/Korean/Japanese heritage. The only things they retain are cuisine and major holidays.
I'm not sure if they hate their fathers, but they usually despise Asian men and avoid any association other than with family members. They keep their Asian girlfriends, however.
Maybe if the cost of plastic surgery comes way down, looking pretty will be a 'human right', and tax payer dollars will pay for plastic surgery for all.
ReplyDeleteThe military covers one cosmetic procedure for service members if it causes psychological issues like depression or anxiety. I've only known females to take advantage of this benefit and most seem to get breast enlargements. A few used it for breast reductions and I've seen some get nose jobs.
I wonder what she thinks of white people who go to tanning booths?
ReplyDeleteYup, a lot of the hot East Asian girls have been surgically enhanced.
ReplyDeleteBut far from all.
Check out Grace Park of Battlestar Galactica fame (2004 version). She has that asian nose, no double eyelids, small boobs and the well developed, round asian skull with a matching jaw. Full blood Korean. She is so, so super cute. And pictures donb't do her justice. Just watch a small clip on youtube to see her in motion.
Sorry, but like some have already noted, she's just plain ugly. There are lots of female asians who are better looking without any plastic surgery.
ReplyDeleteOn facial features alone, she's a 4/10 before surgery. Ewwwww.... You can hang out in any asian city and easily find hordes of better looking asian women, even without plastic surgery.
"I don't think anyone who looked like Janis Joplin could get into the industry today."
ReplyDeleteBut Oprah is big.
"In music too it seems. Singers of really marginal talent like Katy Perry have great careers because they're hot looking."
ReplyDeleteKaty Perry is actually quite talented. Doesn't have the strongest voice, but she has written and performed a lot of songs in a range of popular genres. And looks alone didn't make her successful -- see Andrew Barker's Variety review of her concert documentary Part Of Me for the details, but Perry wrote and performed everything from gospel to pop-punk on before striking gold with her current pop persona.
Also, a couple of counter-examples to the claim that "lookism" dominates pop music are the successes of Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. Both were professional song writers for others before becoming pop stars themselves.
ReplyDeleteSo, it may be that ugly girls led in the skankass ho department for awhile. But once skankass ho-ness became legit, even beautiful girls began to act skankass hoey, and then ugly girls lost the edge.
ReplyDeleteThese days, staying slender/thin/not fat is a big edge, even for homely women.
-OSS
I'm gonna agree that her boss was indirectly telling her that she wasn't good-looking enough, not because she was Asian, but because she personally wasn't all that. I've seen plenty of good-looking Asian women with her eyes and her nose. Pre-surgery, she just had a bad combo of features. And for a talking head on TV, that's a fatal defect.
ReplyDeleteeye fold surgery is extraordinarily popular in east asia - by far the most popular form of cosmetic surgery. Guess that's our fault too?
ReplyDeleteWe are so deranged, i honestly would not be surprised if westerners were required to have eye fold surgery to look oriental since our eye folds are 'racist' thats how nutty we've become.
Good thing she's not in China, her husband could sue her for pulling that crap:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223718/Chinese-man-sues-wife-ugly-court-AGREES--awarding-120-000.html
Of course another interesting thing here is that this woman had essentially all the same things done to her face to appeal to Chinese society. Kind of puts a damper on Chen's little 'white men are so awful' self-pity party.
Steve, thanks for the tip on Alabama Shakes. I like 'em.
ReplyDeleteHas anyone pointed out that post-makeover Julie Chen is much darker? Maybe her evil racist boss told her that in America, pale skin is associated with sickliness or something. But that wouldn't fit the narrative, since white people have pale skin!
ReplyDeleteChen displays the typical gratitude among immigrants in modern day America. America (and by proxy white people) gave her family an opportunity to come here and prosper, an opportunity for her to become a millionaire and marry a prosperous husband, have all the wonderful things life can offer. But we are the devils.
ReplyDeleteHow much prosperity would she or her family have known if they had stayed in Maoist China with her dad as a former KMT ? Would she even be alive today? Or put a different way, how much suffering would she have gone through compared to being in the US? Being Chinese, China is the only country that had had any kind of obligation to her family, by the way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgJC4Pu_tbo
ReplyDeleteThe problems of the past.
I suppose one appeal of immigrants from poor countries is they appreciate American for its opportunities than for its problems. To them, even a job washing dishes at low wage isn't a problem but a blessing.
"These days, staying slender/thin/not fat is a big edge, even for homely women."
ReplyDeleteEven for homely men...
Katy Perry is not good looking. She's not exactly ugly either, but she's unexceptional in the looks department.
ReplyDeleteShe's s not a song writer. The modern music industry likes to give the "performers" a sheen of credibility by listing them as co-writers on the songs they sing. But try to find one song credited entirely to Perry. On her big hits she is always listed as co-writer - along with such powerhouse names as Max Martin and Łukasz Gottwald.
These days, staying slender/thin/not fat is a big edge, even for homely women.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, they're no more overweight than the men.
Adele is a "plump" and somewhat homely woman, but it has not stopped her having a very successful career.
ReplyDeleteI'd say her boss did her a big favor and gave her great advice. In a sane world, (I.E. not politically correct) she should have given him a thank you.
ReplyDeleteI saw the very first episode of Big Brother, but haven't watched it since, not really seeing what the point of the show is. One of the isolation rules is: "In most versions of the program books and writing materials are also forbidden, although exceptions are sometimes made for religious materials such as the Bible, Torah or the Qur'an." If the cast is composed of people who would voluntarily go that long without books, no wonder the people are so low grade.
ReplyDeleteCry me a river.
ReplyDeletePale white skinned East Asian women (Chinese, Korean, Japanese) and fair yellow skinned Southeast Asian women (Malaysian, Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodia) are hot, hot, hot to a lot of men out there (both foreign and domestic).
They have long straight black hair, petite bodies, nice pale skin tone (white to yellow) and exotic squinty eyes. In fact, East Asian women are attractive to a lot of White men, Asian men, heck even Black men (but Asian families hate, hate, hate dark skin and coarse/rough features, so black men are forbidden and seen as horrible suitors).
On the other hand, South Asian women such as Indian and Bangladeshi(who are yes, also Asian) can't really attract men on the same level. Arab women (North African, Middle Eastern, West Asia) can't attract most men either.
For South Asian women, it's because they have yellow-brown skin and straight/wavy or wavy/curly hair, despite having more of a Caucasoid facial features than most East Asian women and being as thin too.
For Arab women, they are also quite Caucasoid in both facial and body features plus they have a Mediterranean skin tone, but they have the scary Muslim religion tag on them so nobody likes them either.
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-american-publics-foreign-policy-reawakening-9045?page=1&mail&action=subscribe&op=Save&form_build_id=form-ea555d792907d044b62e6c5263ecf9be&form_id=simplenews_block_form_32
ReplyDeletehttp://nationalinterest.org/commentary/israel-syria-american-moral-hazard-9057
ReplyDeleteOld fogey alert- I miss the days when rock musicians could look like Steve Howe or Rick Wakeman, or Robert Fripp, or Lowell George, but also play like Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman and Robert Fripp and Lowell George, and become huge based on their talent alone. By the time you saw them in concert, you already had heard and loved the music and didn't give a hang how they looked (other than some of the younger girls always debating who was "the cute one" in a given group).
ReplyDeleteNow John Mclaughlin could both play and look good, but nobody who listens to him ever thinks of him in terms of his looks.
Now image could still be important then, sometimes, but that's not the same thing. And even there, the parameters were wider (as were the styles of music in the rock genre alone).
You know things were different when even a female, such as Janis Joplin, could rise to the top without having the homogenous attractiveness required now, or overt "sexiness" if the female just isn't pretty enough.
It looks like her eyes weren't the only thing that got plastic surgery, to change her from Plain Jane to Ms. Foxy.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of very attractive East Asian women, in fact its sort of a cliche, but the chick in the original photo is very plain and unremarkable looking.