A couple of years ago, my coworker asked me if I had something done to my eyes to get double eyelids. I was so shocked that she asked me that?!!! No one has ever asked me such a weird question about my looks before so I was caught by surprise, especially in a work setting. I was like "No, do people do that?"

She said "yea, a lot of Asians do it". I thought maybe she was being racist but the other times, she's really nice to me so I try to brush it off and can't blame her for being ignorant if she doesn't know much about the different Asian races. She's Mexican and was born in Mexico so I don't know how her outlooks are like from her upbringing.

It's weird how this is still bothering me that she asked me that and I feel like calling her right now, even a couple of years later to yell at her for her rude question and yell "No, I did not have surgery of any kind. I am of Vietnamese descent and was born with double eyelids!" I know I'm being a bit neurotic right now but I can't help it. So that is why I am venting in this blog instead.

I started researching on the double eye lid thing with Asians and there's been a lot of things on the news online about Chinese or Korean women getting a lot of plastic surgery in order to get married but later ended up having not so pretty kids because how they look now is all plastic.

Well, I'm Vietnamese so my coworker probably just lumped all Asians into one category with looks. From my research, most Southeast Asians like Vietnamese, Thai, Cambodians and Laos have double eyelids. There are always exceptions (as you can't expect everyone to look exactly alike) but it's safe to say that we're usually born with double eyelids. From my memory, I would say 90% of my Vietnamese relatives were born with double eyelids. I have a few cousins who are mixed with Chinese.

East Asians, however, are usually not born with double eyelids. Chinese and Koreans are under this category but there are exceptions to this too. It doesn't mean not all Chinese and Koreans were not born with double eyelids but it would be safe to say that most are not born with double eyelids. I guess there have been reports that many women with these descents do have some kind of surgery or something for this. I'm not sure what the procedure is called but maybe because of these articles online, people just assume all Asians do this. Man, this is a bit frustrating.

Can anyone else relate?