Trendy Asian beauty routines’ cultural history gets erased in America, and some are fighting back

Gua sha has gone viral on TikTok but how many know of its roots in Chinese traditional medicine, or pimple patches’ and cushion compacts’ Korean origins?

Asian-Americans working in beauty feel hurt and offended by brands’ whitewashing, and say people may misuse products if they don’t know their origin stories

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Western brands should recognise the rich history of the Asian beauty products and routines they promote, such as pimple patches (above, from Starface). Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 12:15pm, 6 Jun 2021Updated: 7:45pm, 7 Jun 2021

YouTube is full of videos promoting 10-step skincare routines, and supermarkets are stocked with serum-soaked sheet masks – all while gua sha results go viral on TikTok. But do you know the origins of these products and practices? Maybe not. And that’s a problem.

As beauty routines like these surge in popularity in the United States, their rich Asian history often gets erased or the products are whitewashed, which is harmful to the communities who created them.

Charlotte Cho, co-founder of Soko Glam, a company that specialises in Korean beauty products from sheet masks to cleansing balms, has been helping to introduce Korean beauty to the US for almost nine years.

“As time goes on, I think people are forgetting that these innovations are coming from Korea,” she says. “A lot of the Western and American brands are adopting these ingredients and products into their own product line, but oftentimes the way in which they introduce a product doesn’t shed light on the origin story of the innovation that they adopted from.”

It’s important to not only understand but to celebrate the origins of Asian beauty tools, says Chen Lin, CEO and founder of Pink Moon, which sells tools for gua sha , a practice rooted in traditional Chinese medicine [TCM] , as well as other wellness products.