The eyelid crease of the beholder

I've always been fascinated by cultural differences in ideals of female beauty. Did you ever stop to notice the eyelid crease above your eye? Some Asians are born with that and some aren't. While in Japan I learned that this crease is considered beautiful. The models in all the advertisements have them. In the cosmetic aisles at drugstores I saw tools for painting on this crease with a pencil. In magazines I also saw advertisements for eyelid crease surgery. It's funny that something so important to many Japanese girls, many American girls have never even thought about.

I am firmly convinced that no matter what a girl may look like, some culture somewhere in some time period would consider her drop-dead gorgeous. I have proof: for one day, I became Japan's Next Top Model.

While walking on campus at Nanzan one day, I got a call from a Japanese friend. She told me that a friend of a friend was majoring in fashion and needed a gaijin model for a school project, and if I would do her a favor by volunteering.
She wants me?? I thought to myself.

Me?

As in me?


Well, okay. Caucasian volunteers aren't exactly common here, so she must be desperate, I thought. My friend's friend took me to meet the girl studying fashion, Rei. During the train ride there she was on the phone with Rei, saying, "Oh yes, I'm bringing model-san right now." It was really weird hearing myself referred to that way, and I started to get really nervous, hoping my looks wouldn't disappoint. I was just in my jeans, t-shirt, converse, and heavy backpack.

Rei met us at the station with two of her fashion classmates. One was dressed like a bag lady, the other had unnaturally tan skin and long blonde curls. Rei wore jeans, a white blouse, and a vest. The three of them exchanged glances.
"SHE'S SO CUTE!!" They exclaimed.
"Isn't she?" My friend's friend said proudly. "Just like a real model!" They seriously went on like that for five minutes.

Meanwhile I stood there thinking "I love this country."

I got to see the inside of the Mode Gakuen design school, which by later this year will move into a shiny, brand-new, spiral-shaped skyscraper. Rei brought me into a classroom which was strewn with clothing, fashion magazines, and makeup kits. Other students there were applying the finishing touches to their own models. I saw one other caucasian model there, a tall French girl with bright red hair, who I thought looked much more like a model than I did.


Rei's project was to design a magazine cover. Her theme was "fall fashion: play with color." She dressed me up in this absolutely ridiculous outfit: black heels, purple tights, a red minidress, a purple turtleneck, a blue belt, a blue scarf, a green beret, and blue nail polish. I looked like an oompa-loompa princess. I had to stifle laughter when I saw myself in the mirror.

"Okay, let's go to the photoshoot location!" She announced.
"Great! Where is it?" I asked.
"In a park about 15 minutes away from here."

Outside????

I turned heads the moment, and I mean the moment I stepped out of the building. I was a living, walking blob of color-saturated gaijin, an oompa-loompa princess walking through the middle of downtown Nagoya. Moreover, Rei got us slightly lost on the way there, so probably a couple hundred people saw me and tried to pretend they weren't staring.

When we got to the park, a professional photographer was waiting with his assistant who had a large suitcase of equipment. Rei posed me by a tree, arranged my clothing, and told me to give a "cute little smile." As the photographer started snapping pictures, it wasn't hard at all to smile because we were starting to attract a crowd. People strolling around the park stopped to watch the "photoshoot" and many of them whipped out their cameras or cell phones and started to take pictures of the scene. I tried not to laugh as I imagined strangers with photos of a very silly-looking me on their cameras.

It was the most awkward, bizarre, and totally fun day I have ever had in my life- totally worth skipping two classes for. Now that I'm back in America, I'm sure I'll never have a day like that again.

About once a day someone asks me why I decided to major in Japanese. I'll rattle off my memorized response about how I love foreign languages, and Japanese people, and I've always had an interest in Asian cultures, blah blah blah. But that's not the real reason.

The real reason is because the Japanese think I'm a model.

Mwahaha.