Return of the “Geisha”? Chinese Millennials Embrace a Throwback Youth and Beauty Culture

The global beauty and personal care market is booming these days, with worldwide revenues topping $700 billion. And nowhere is that market booming bigger than in Asia, especially in China, which accounts for a whopping 50% of total sales.

In the world’s most populous nation, purchase of anti-aging dietary supplements and anti-wrinkling skin creams has become a veritable obsession, especially among Chinese youth. The trend is starting earlier and earlier, setting off alarm bells within the nation’s mental health establishment.

According to the news magazine Jing Daily, Chinese women as young as 18 are investing in a “holistic” program that includes collagen drinks, antioxidant grape seed extracts and metabolism-boosting powders in a desperate attempt to stay “skinny.”

Other media reports indicate that young female professionals in Beijing regularly spend 20-40 percent of their salary on anti-aging products, especially those designed to keep their skin as smooth and shiny as possible.

How fast is the trend growing? In 2019, women under 30 spent nearly three times more than they did the previous year on eye gels and creams, according to a joint report by two Chinese web marketing sites, Kantar and Tmall.com.

But it’s the youngest women — those still in their 20s and even younger — who have become the biggest consumers of cosmetics and skincare, outspending older women with much higher disposable incomes, the report noted.

And it’s not just skincare, but cosmetic surgery, too. Millennial women in China are so concerned about the effects of physical appearance on their social success that they’re even taking out bank loans — dubbed “face” loans — to go under the knife.

Last year, two-thirds of the women undergoing cosmetic surgery were under 30 years of age. Nearly 20% were younger than 19.  And not all of the face loan lenders are on the up-and-up. Some have deliberately targeted financially vulnerable female university students, requiring them to submit naked photos or videos as collateral for their loan.

According to another published source, “students who defaulted were sometimes blackmailed into performing sexual services in lieu of monetary repayment, or else their photos would be uploaded to the internet.”

“So white that it glows”

The pressure on Chinese women to look eternally young is associated with another disturbing trend — a cult of “Whiteness.” It’s a trend that’s sweeping across Southeast Asia, as traditional Western beauty standards begin to predominate throughout the region.

But it’s particularly noticeable in China where “whiteness” has a long history of association with wealth and royalty and where the cultural tradition of the “Geisha” rivals that of Japan.

Officially, geishas were professional entertainers who danced and sang to entertain affluent businessmen and politicians at banquets and other official events. Women spent years beginning in their youth to train to join the ranks of the geisha, and entry into the profession was highly regulated

But in the West, geishas are often associated with courtesans providing sexual favors to American soldiers, who disparaged them as “geisha girls.” Some prostitutes did adopt the traditional geisha look — a brightly painted alabaster face with dark eyebrows and red lipstick — to attract their clients.

Today’s Chinese Millennials aren’t aspiring Geishas, but the parallels can seem disturbing. On websites and billboards, Chinese models with a modern geisha “look” sell everything from cars to toys.

And the market for skin-whitening pills is booming. The lengths to which young light-skinned Chinese women will go to preserve the youthful complexion of their skin seem absurd to outsiders.

On beaches, young women refuse to sunbathe and while swimming may even cover their entire bodies, including their faces, with protective clothing to prevent the possibility of a suntan.

On social media sites, the slogan “So white that it glows” has become a Millennial rallying cry. Another site, asiaMs.com, declares: “Flawlessly milky skin is to die for.”

Health experts worried

The new anti-aging Whiteness trend has Chinese researchers and health experts deeply worried.

Skin-bleaching products, especially pirated versions that are cheaper and more affordable to financially strapped Millennials, often contain toxic chemicals, including mercury, that are dangerous to the consumer.

As far back as 2002, Chinese authorities established a hotline for skin-bleaching consumers and detected hundreds of cases of skin poisoning, some of them requiring hospitalization.

But antioxidant products billed as anti-aging may not be beneficial, either.

A study released in 2017 found that antioxidant supplements sold in China contained a hidden danger: rather than reversing the aging process, they were likely accelerating it.

Researchers discovered the relationship by studying how oxidants affected worms and human cells at various stages of development. Oxidants, it turned out, had no measurable impact on aging.

But introducing antioxidants disturbed the mechanism in cells that resists aging and as a result, the cells began aging more rapidly — “unnaturally fast,” said Chen Chang, the lead scientist on the project at the Institute of Biophysics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

Chang has called upon Chinese authorities to curtail the sale of antioxidants and other anti-aging products, pending further research. But her call has fallen on deaf ears. Sales of supplements and other anti-aging products are booming, with no end in sight.

A lucrative market

Western companies are helping to fuel China’s anti-aging “whiteness” trend.

The Chinese consumer market, fueled by the growth of an urban middle class and a new generation of high-tech millionaires, is especially attractive to American cosmetics companies like Estee Lauder that are seeking to reverse their sagging global sales. In 2020, Estee Lauder’s sales in China increased by 40%, compared to 8% growth elsewhere.

The company through its subsidiary La Mer has found innovative ways to reach Millennial women in second and third tier cities that might never visit their limited retail stores in Beijing or Shanghai.

Expensive high-end products, which were originally created for more mature customers, are now being advertised to younger women under the lure of “early anti-aging.”

For example, Estée Lauder’s Advanced Night Repair is marketed to older women in the West but in China it’s being sold to women in their twenties with the slogan “pre-ordering a younger future.”

Companies are also hiring Chinese youth celebrities to help promote their products across multiple media platforms.

One example is the use by SK-II of the post-90s singer Dou Jingtong as the company’s brand ambassador. Jingtong – whose personal style includes a bob and facial tattoo — is promoting the company’s facial treatment “Essence,” a product that claims to enhance the skin’s “natural” rejuvenation process.

But companies like Estee Lauder and Chanel are also fueling China’s skin-bleaching trend. Chanel’s Le Blanc skin-lightening cream is popular in China, as are local knock-off brands offering the same basic product in Chinese language packaging.

Cultural imperialism?

Some Chinese researchers have taken note of the seeming paradox of Chinese women embracing more modern gender roles but remaining fixated on their physical appearance to the point of self-destructive obsession.

But given the popular demand, public criticism is rare.

In May 2018, the Chinese actor Lixin Zhao caused a stir by criticizing the country’s “age-shaming” culture and its impact on China’s film industry.

“Actresses like Isabelle Huppert, Meryl Streep, Juliette Binoche, and Frances McDormand would find their careers doomed in China,” he wrote. “Our screens are only occupied with the ‘young and pretty’ faces that don’t care about artistic depth or other values.”

Prof. Jaehee Jung, in a study published in China’s prestigious Family Sciences Journal, blames the nation’s youth and beauty obsession on the “Internet selfie culture” that has invaded the country despite the efforts of the ruling Community Party to ban websites deemed “offensive” to Chinese values.

Young Chinese women are “endorsing the Anglo-European image of beauty” mostly because of the Westernization of Chinese culture, she argues.

And yet Chinese Millennials increasingly confront a paradox: The skinny White model of beauty is increasingly out of fashion in multicultural America, where the larger curvier bodies of African-American icons like Kim Kardashain and tennis star Serena Williams have become a new societal norm.

Indeed, a backlash of sorts may well be growing.

In 2019, dark-skinned Chinese model Li Jingwen caused a social media stir by posting selfies in which she posed with minimal makeup while exposing her ubiquitous freckles.

Some attacked her photos as “dirty” and “low-grade” and compared them unfavorably to other selfies posted by White-skinned models. But thousands of Wiebo users applauded her decision, saying China needed more diverse images of beauty.

And some Western companies are beginning to change their tune. In July 2020, cosmetic giants L’Oreal, Unilever and Johnson & Johnson announced that they would be rebranding or discontinuing whitening product lines throughout Asia — in response to Black Lives Matter protests.

Yet even this well-intentioned intervention was deemed by some Chinese web users as just another example of unconscionable Western imperialism. “I’m Asian,” noted one Twitter user.  “We use whitening products for anti-aging and skin spot prevention – not discrimination,” she said.

In the end, a combination of factors – China’s ancient class tradition, Western dominance of the Chinese beauty market, and social media driven peer pressure on youth seem destined to keep the country’s “whitening” beauty obsession intact.