[Allene7]

My husbands best friend is from Taiwan and he always complains about how his mom makes him do "eye exercises" to try and make his eyes more open looking. Apparently his mom even complains if they're watching a movie and one of the actors doesn't have eyes that are wide enough and so then she says she doesn't like that actor/actress because of their eyes. His dad also just recently got a surgery done to get a fold in his eyelids. I had seen a documentary a few years ago about a girl who used to use double sided tape on her eyelids to give them that fold. The documentary didn't really explain much aside from the girl saying that she hated her eyes and felt ugly and never wanted to be seen without the tape on her eyes, and how all her other friends do it too.

So my question is, what exactly happened that caused eyelids/eyes to be such a big deal? What caused this feeling of needing a fold to be pretty and having wide eyes to look good? Also, when did this start? At what point in history and why exactly is it still such a big deal? Is it more of an older generation thing? My husbands friend doesn't really seem to care about eyes at all and finds his mom rather annoying. I think that people can be just as beautiful without folds on their eyelids as they can be with them. Same goes for small eyes vs. big eyes. I just don't see anything ugly about it.

I'm just curious to understand so if I've said anything offensive or made any kind of unwarranted generalizations, I'm very sorry.