Showing posts with label eye. Show all posts
Obsession with Beautiful Eye Bags
While most Western women spend ridiculous amounts of money to conceal or get rid of the puffy bags under their eyes, Korean women consider them a sign of beauty and resort to a variety of cosmetic procedures in order to get them.
Aegyo Sal, as the bizarre baggy-eyes trend is known in Korea, should not be confused with the saggy or dark purplish eyebags caused by lack of sleep and aging, those are considered unattractive pretty much everywhere.
The trendy feature refers strictly to the slight puffiness of the lower eye-socket which has to match the color tone of the skin. Contrary to general beliefs and perceptions, Korean women find these little pockets of fat under the eyes cute and believe they give them a more youthful look by brightening the eyes. Ever noticed how a person’s eyes become puffy when they smile? The Koreans have, and they’ve come up with way of creating that illusion of a bright joyful facial expression without actually smiling – the aegyo sal.
Photo: Facebook
There are a number of ways women can get the coveted aegyo sal look either permanently or temporarily. Aegyo plastic surgery is one of the most popular options, but they can also opt for different dermal fillers and even small rubber bands taped tightly under the eyes. Also, a simple search on YouTube yeield nearly 1,000 aegyo sal makeup tutorials for women who want something less drastic.
These artificial eye bags can be seen on some of South Korea’s most popular actresses and singers, to the average women on the streets, and it doesn’t look like the trend is slowing down anytime soon. “Traveling to Asia, I saw so many girls with puffy eyes. I remember one morning; I barely had any sleep so when I went onto a shoot for work, the girls commented on my puffy eyes. I felt so embarrassed, but then I realized that they were complimenting them,” Michelle Phan, a popular Internet beauty and makeup guru writes on her site.
Photo: Net Ease
Eye bags happen to the best of us, so the next time you’re looking in the mirror and feel bad about your puffy eyes, just imagine you live in Korea.
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Photo: Weibo
Iris Implant Surgery to Change Eye Colour
People unhappy with the way they look have been using plastic surgery to change their appearance for years, but now they can take their obsession to a whole new level by changing the color of their eyes through a controversial procedure known as artificial iris implant.
Pioneered by Dr. Kenneth Rosenthal, as a way to correct various eye defects (heterochromia, ocular albinism, etc.), the artificial iris implant procedure is now also being advertised as cosmetic surgery for people who want to permanently change the color of their eyes. The artificial iris is a thin, non-toxic prosthesis made of the same ophthalmic grade silicone used in intraocular lenses. Since the fake iris is very flexible, it can be folded and inserted into the eye through a peripheral corneal surgical incision about 2.8 mm long, and unfolded over the natural iris.
According to the website of BrightOcular, the company behind the increasingly popular cosmetic eye surgery, the procedure is “short, safe, and painless”, taking about 15 minutes for each eye. The surgery has a purely cosmetic purpose, it does not fix vision defects, so patients will still need to wear refractive instruments to correct their vision. Unlike other laser-based procedures that remove a layer of melanin from the iris in order to permanently change its color, BrightOcular claims their iris implant can easily be removed in case of complications or if the patient so desires.
Photo: BrightOcular
46-year-old Angel S., an unemployed freight worker in Chicago, got artificial iris implant surgery in 2012, changing his dark brown eyes to light grey, a color he had always been crazy about. Angel says the natural color of his eyes depressed him so much that he would often refrain from looking in the mirror in the morning, because seeing the dark eyes made him think it was going to be a dark day for him. After seeing someone’s grey eyes in a candy store one day, he knew that was the color he wanted for himself, so he started researching his option and eventually flew to Rio de Janeiro to get an artificial iris implanted.
Why didn’t he just have it done in the US, you ask? It wasn’t cost related, if that’s what you’re thinking, it’s just that the procedure has yet to get FDA approval. According to Dr. Gregory J. Pamel, a corneal and refractive surgeon in Manhattan, there are no approved devices to cosmetically change the color of the eyes in the US. BrightOcular implants are currently performed in India, Turkey, Mexico and Lebanon.
Dr. James Tsai, an ophthalmologist and a glaucoma specialist at Yale University, says safety claims made in online discussions are “misleading as well as inaccurate”. He cautions that artificial implant surgery can cause elevated pressure inside the eye that can lead to glaucoma, cataracts and corneal injury, as well as reduced vision or blindness.
