DR RENEE LIANG
When you don’t fit the mould, there’s freedom to be found in non-conformity.
Celebrating freedom in non-conformity.
Many of us find our way into the beauty world during our teenage years. For paediatrician, writer and theatre producer Dr Renee Liang, growing up in Auckland in the 1980s meant shoulder pads and spiral perms.
“I wheedled my mum into taking me to the hairdresser and was devastated when my obstinate Asian strands shook off the perm within a day,” she recalls. “That was just one in a long string of beauty ideals I failed to pull off.” While the exclusion from the mainstream beauty ideals hurt, Liang soon found freedom in not having to conform to narrow beauty standards. “Maybe the attitude that they didn’t apply to me was a way of coping, but after a while that became freeing. I could do whatever I liked,” she says.
As a second-generation Chinese New Zealander, Liang has seen Western and Chinese beauty standards shift, evolve and overlap over the years. “Chinese beauty standards are now very close to Western ones – worse even, if you look at how stick thin you have to be to ‘make it’ as a performer or model in Asia,” she explains. “The classic beautiful Chinese woman is petite and dainty. There is also an emphasis on having fair skin, which is probably more due to ideas about class than Asian women wanting to look ‘white’.” One difference, she adds, is that in Chinese culture, personal qualities are also key to attractiveness. “A demure demeanour for example, and an engaging personality.”
And while the representation of Asian women in Western media has increased over the decades, the visibility is still deeply rooted in damaging stereotypes.
“Asian actors, especially women, are still largely festishised and typecast,” she says, adding that this fetishisation is also an aspect of the beauty industry that frustrates her today.
“Make-up artists and hairdressers get excited to ‘emphasise my natural look’ – which usually results in me scrubbing the bright red lipstick and dramatic blusher off the moment I get to a bathroom.
“It’s just not me,” she says. “This pigeonholing of Asian beauty annoys me as much as the idea that all Asians are socially awkward and unfashionable.”
“ASIAN ACTORS, ESPECIALLY WOMEN, ARE LARGELY TYPECAST.”
As a paediatrician who works with adolescents, Liang has seen how the pressures of beauty ideals impact the younger generation. “Restrictive and limited ideas of beauty, and how they are tied to ideas of worthiness and achievement impact hugely on our young people,” she explains.
The Youth19 study reports that mental health has worsened since 2012, with nearly a quarter of young people experiencing depression in their lives. It’s a statistic that disproportionately affects young women, Māori, Pacific, Asian, gender-diverse, and those from low socio-economic backgrounds, she adds. “There are lots of stressors including uncertainty about the future and climate change, but the fashion and beauty industry targeting of this group is unlikely to be helping.”
As she’s grown older, Liang has moved from outright rejection of mainstream beauty, to realising it is a tool to play with. “I treat it like a costume – donning make-up and putting together a ‘look’ if I have to play a particular role in a particular setting. My daughter sees me putting on my ‘face’ and intuitively understands it’s role-play.”