I'm riding the bus and I've been down this street a hundred thousand times before. I don't want to look out the window so I watch the people clinging to the poles, handles and headrests around me and am glad I have a seat. As we're lurching along toward the next stop, everyone is flinging themselves toward the door and the crush of the herd in the aisles makes me feel hot and sick. So I train my eyes on the advertisement under the plastic slip covering mine and every other seat in the bus and try to zone out.

The spokesmodel for Huamei Aesthetic and Plastic Hospital has beautiful cheeks. They're tall, pulling her face and her smile up gently so that her pleasant appearance spills over her lips and curves over the architecture of her face. But this is no Angelina-Jolie-type bone-structure. Those cheeks are round and smooth – they remind me of fruit. When I see an especially cute child, I often get the same impression. In fact, her eyes are a bit wide like an infant's. Her nose is the last thing I notice. It is not remarkable. It fades away into the general impression of her face. But it's a good nose. It's a universal nose. It's probably an expensive nose.

The driver slams the brakes and I'm jolted back into the world. I wonder if her beauty is a get-out-of-riding-the-bus-free card.

Maybe Lady Gaga was on to something

I'm from the US, land of the free, home of the brave and number one in the world for cosmetic surgeries. Vanity dominates the cultural landscape of American values. What could I possibly have to say about attitudes toward beauty that would be unique to the case of China? What could possibly save me from hypocrisy here?

To make a point here, I'll admit to my own vanity. I over-value physical beauty and it leads me to want to be pretty and to take actions that cost me time and money in order to improve my physical appearance. I have, in the past, spent well over 100 dollars on a cut and colour. But I recognise that while having a nice personal appearance (IE: hygiene and health) may help me in an interview, beauty alone says nothing about my skills or competence and I have faith that potential employers recognise that as well—especially if they want to avoid a lawsuit. In a tight job market, I'd rather spend my money on new experiences or more education to gain an edge (hence the fact of my being in China).

In China, a young woman's money may be better spent on a new face.

"Being good-looking is capital"

Awhile back, I read an article that stuck with me. Writer Paul Bacon lamented the plight of one "bucktooth girl," a young Chinese woman who was reportedly passed over by 21 potential employers in the space of a week, a problem thought by family and friends to be caused by her buckteeth—a problem for which the only remedy would be cosmetic surgery.

"The extreme reaction of some of her friends alarmed, but also slightly amused me," he writes. "Yet, as I read on through other articles, I began to see the issue of cosmetic surgery amongst female job hunters is no joke."

It's true. As China's numbers steadily rise to meet America's in almost all respects, it shouldn't come as a surprise that we're seeing the same with regard to plastic surgery. International cosmetics brands, taking the phrase "the future is a Chinese woman" to heart, are all clambering to get a firm grip on the Chinese market. Lancome's executives and the makers of Botox would probably agree: Chinese women tend to take beauty very seriously.

Theories are a dime a dozen here. The more interesting and convincing among them follow: the "Post-Mao Novelty Theory" (women taking on beauty as a personal project), the "Change Breeds Insecurity Equation" (women seeking to "fix" their insecurities through plastic surgery), and the insightful, but incomplete "Compressed Courtship Phase Conjecture" (women maximizing their chances of finding a mate while they are "still" young and beautiful). But Dr. Wen Hua, PhD, thinks she knows why we see this particularly among younger, job-seeking women. I caught up with Dr. Hau and asked to her illuminate her perspective on this.

"As an anthropologist, I think that it's important to hear the voice of those women and to understand—from the point of view of those women—the reasons behind their fears and choices," she explained. "Many Chinese women view an attractive appearance as a set of tangible and portable personal assets that are convertible into financial or social capital."

Or, as one subject in her 2008 study summarily surmised, "Being good-looking is capital." Here, the cliché "beauty is your duty," originally popularised by Vogue Magazine during the war effort, takes on new meaning — the job market is a battlefield. If you have any sense of duty toward yourself or your career, get thee to the doctor.

I wonder where this sense of deep insecurity comes from. I put the "it's all in their heads" theory to Dr. Hua but she doesn't think this a helpful way of looking at it. "To understand women's fear," she tells me, "we must understand gender and body politics in today's China as well as China's larger political economy. This is the context within which women's anxieties are grounded."

In laymen's terms, there is something real going on here, something big. But bigger even than biology? "From my point of view, beauty and the quest of beauty is more than a natural problem. It is related with both biological adaptation and social-cultural construction.

"[Beauty] can give them an edge in the job market, where occupational gender segregation and employment discrimination based on gender, appearance, height and age widely exist."

Maybe "Ms. B" really would get a bang for her buck if she went under the knife. Huamei girl probably thinks so.

To Bucktooth Girl: Selena Gomez wants to know, who says you're not beautiful?

As both a woman and a border-line hypocritical American here, I think my salvation lies in a tiny but important cultural distinction: in the United States (leaving aside the rhetoric of hygiene and "health") beauty is mutable and its inconsistency means it can only be a stand-alone virtue. In other words, under normal circumstances beauty in America can only be an end in and of itself.

Preference for youth and naturally large breasts aside, conflicting notions of what is beautiful arise all the time in America — people disagree about Julia Roberts' smile or Jennifer Aniston's chin or Amanda Seyfried's eyes or Bruce Willis' hair (or absence of it). Beauty, male or female, means vastly different things to different people.

On the other hand, white skin, a double-fold eyelid or a nose with a high bridge (Western-esque features, yes, but that's a different story) are almost universally considered most beautiful to a near-majority of Chinese. Mouth, teeth, chin—the smaller the better. A "goose-egg" shaped face is the sought-after standard in beauty to the point that surgery to "shave" down the jaw-line, a painful procedure that requires several sessions, is considered by many to be no more extreme than breast enhancement.

You may be thinking to yourself that I'm still in hot water here —"Women everywhere are victims of their own making," is a refrain I've heard before from our readers. The more sensitive among you may argue that while sad or even depressing, this is still only an issue of self-confidence, not body politics (or the body politic for that matter).  However, even when the pursuit of beauty is an end to confidence or admiration, when held against the Chinese situation, American beauty's most salient feature emerges: its relative worthlessness. In America, there are many accessible avenues to admiration and a myriad more to confidence. Importantly, that goes for men and women alike. I'm just not convinced that I could say the same for China.

The pretty problem

As an American woman, I can be rest assured that whether or not I am beautiful only really matters if I'm applying to work someplace that has a specific requirement (and knowable method of assessment) for beauty. Unless I'm applying to work at Hooters the difference between my standards and my potential employers' is irrelevant – or it  should be, both ideally (say most Americans), and legally (say our non-discrimination laws). That is, there is no set bar and the stakes are only as high as I make them.

In China, there is a bar. And ever since the reform and opening, the stakes have kept pace with the rate of change. Beauty is worth something here. And for Chinese women, especially young job-seeking women, not being pretty is a problem. 

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Keywords: Chinese beauty standards importance of beauty in China how to succeed in China Chinese women in the workforce