What’s Behind China’s ‘Slanted-Eye’ Outrage & How to Avoid It

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What’s Behind China’s ‘Slanted-Eye’ Outrage & How to Avoid It




Online consumer boycotts accusing brands of disrespecting Chinese people by showing models with “slanted eyes” are overwhelming social media. From Dior, Mercedes-Benz, and Gucci to Made-in-China companies, international and domestic brands have gotten reprimanded on the subject by nationalist consumers over recent months.To get more news about chinkyeyes, you can visit shine news official website.

Moving forward, brands will have to confront a hard truth: Chinese consumers are increasingly aware of racial representation issues on the global stage, and they are demanding greater cultural awareness about how they appear to the world.

Last year, Asian model eye shapes caused China’s biggest luxury brand scandals. In November, netizens spotted a photo of a model with small eyes and spooky makeup from a 2012 Dior exhibition and quickly accused the brand of using an Asian stereotype to insult China. The photographer, Chen Man, later apologized for her “immaturity and ignorance” at the time of the shoot, and Dior issued a statement saying they do, in fact, “respect the feelings of the Chinese people.”
Then, in December, Mercedes-Benz had to remove a video from Weibo that featured a model with painted slants on her eyes due to public pressure. Even a Twitter campaign published by Gucci got met with criticism after a model with small eyes was received as a stereotype of Asian beauty.

But similar controversies have not spared domestic brands. In January, the Chinese animated film I Am What I Am pushed the hashtag #slantedeyes up Weibo’s hottest topic rank for the fifth time in a month. Apparently, netizens found the main character’s narrow eye shape and wide eye spacing to be a form of Chinese self-hatred. Additionally, the Chinese snack brand Three Squirrels recently found itself in a social media uproar after people got upset about a campaign from 2019 that featured a model with long, thin eyes.

Mainstream digital opinions among Chinese millennials have been divided into two streams: one believes brands must stop perpetuating the “slanted eyes” stereotype, while the other says the idea that “slanted eyes are ugly” is itself a way of conforming to the Western beauty standards.
Most online backlash against brands comes from the first stream, where consumers see slanted eyes as a sign of the West mocking East Asian features. In addition to the feeling that the West reduces Asian faces to one stereotypical eye shape, Chinese consumers are also intolerant of the slanted-eye look because they link it to the West’s perceived superiority.

Soon after the Dior scandal gained online momentum, Chinese state media Global Times published an article explaining the history of derogatory Chinese depictions of slant eyes, sinister grins, and braids in 19th-century American media and Hollywood films starring characters like Fu Manchu. These stereotypes perpetuated the racist idea that the Chinese are an evil threat to Western society.

Following the footsteps of Global Times, a wave of “woke” media theory posts flooded the internet, further decrying the aesthetic injustices Chinese people have experienced at the hands of Western media. On Weibo, hashtags such as #colonialaesthetics and #yellowperilmakeup have generated millions of views by exposing problematic representations of Chinese people in global media.