The four ancient beauties of China

For my Paradigm shift projects, I decided to focus on the shift on the standard of beauty from Ancient China starting from Ming & Qing Dynasty to the modern China now. There has been so many changes to the standard beauty of China especially due to social media and influence from other countries. In the past, people were considered beautiful without surgeries but now, more and more Chinese people are getting plastic surgery as well as starting to look Western or Korean instead of the Chinese look.

I decided to start covering from the Ming & Qing Dynasty because there are four women who are famous during the ancient times for their beauty. The first woman was Xishi and she lived in the Ming & Qing Dynasty. There are actually a few more dynasties after the Ming & Qing Dynasty where there are more beauty standards for women.

This specific shift is significant enough for me to merit close investigation because even during the different dynasties, the beauty standard changed according to how  the Dynasty was doing whether bad or good. There were also relation to due to two philosophy: Daoism and Confucianism. Now in present day, due to the advanced technology of plastic surgery and the social media influence from both Asian countries and Western countries, Chinese women are beginning to change their looks. No longer do they want to look like the typical Chinese woman, to the point where they would get multiple surgeries. They would also do their makeup that are similar to Western countries in order to look “exotic.” Also a majority of women who opt to get plastic surgery would go to South Korea because since the technology is advanced and it is cheaper price wise.

Fan Bing Bing is a popular Chinese actress in China

This shift needs to be explored and understood because while it is a major change compared to the ancient times, it is just how the world is today with all these advanced technology and social media. In the past, women were more likely to be at home instead of being outside. So even if a woman was known for a beauty, not many people would’ve seen her due to her being at home. But now, women are always outside their house and of course they would be worried about how they look in someone’s eye. Social media like Weibo and Tik Tok are two of the most popular social medias in China. These social media  influence people on how they look even while posting their pictures. Chinese dramas is another influence since most of the female leads are above average and if someone is average, people would leave comments saying she is ugly. This shows how beauty is viewed pretty strongly and usually women that are prettier gets more attention and jobs may be easier to find as well. As a result, people would get plastic surgery. If you have read my passion blog, you will know that South Korea has an influence too because of the Hallyu Wave. Due to that, more people are preferring Korean looks more because there are so many celebrities that are good looking and majority of them are considered natural meaning no surgery.

Even though there is more to be researched, I am eager to find out more about this topic and share it!