In yet another sign of the changing times in China, plastic surgery for beauty enhancement is becoming more widely accepted.
This Associated Press article on China Daily.com describes how plastic surgery is one way in which the Chinese are channeling their growing desire to spend their newly made money in the once-repressed society. There's even a Chinese reality TV show all about extreme makeovers.
Fortunately, practitioners are getting beyond the techniques that in the past often rendered the Western aesthetic ideal of plump, pouty lips, larger eyelids, and high noses. Now, women are requesting and receiving the looks that work best for Asian faces.
While men, too, are slowly getting into the plastic surgery picture, the gender divide is still stronger in the Chinese culture. As one young woman described it, the norm is to believe that such trivial pursuits as appearance, or "grace", should be strictly of concern to women, not men.
