“Ching chong eyes!” That’s what elementary school kids used to call Sophie Wang. It was an insidious racist slur casually thrown around as they mocked her Asian ethnicity while pulling on the corner of their eyes. Upward for Japanese. To the side for Chinese. Downward for Korean.
Wang is now 17 and many years removed from the days when her Asian American identity was reduced to “a single facial feature.” And yet, scrolling through social media posts in recent months has brought those memories flooding back thanks to a new beauty trend: “fox eyes.”
On Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, people from all over the world have been posting videos and photos modeling the look — using makeup and other tactics to emulate the lifted, so-called “almond-shaped” eyes of celebrities such as Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Megan Fox.
Fox-eye makeup tutorials show how to use a combination of eye shadow, eyeliner and fake eyelashes, to get a winged aesthetic. Tips include shaving off the tail end of eyebrows and redrawing them to appear straighter and angled upwards. Others have also suggested pulling hair back into a high ponytail or using tape to further lift the eyes. Accentuating eyes to appear slanted, or elongated in shape, creates a more sultry effect, according to some makeup artists creating the look.