Lunar newsletter: The fox eye challenge, lockdown pregnancies and why Chinese people seem to eat ‘everything’
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The “fox eye challenge”, a social media trend inspired by celebrities like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, celebrates almond-shaped eyes, lifted at the outer corners to smouldering effect. On TikTok alone, #foxeye has racked up tens of millions of views.
The desired look is achieved by shaving off the eyebrows after the arch and redrawing them, before applying a heavy-handed cat eye with eyeliner. This makes the face appear narrower, while creating the illusion of upturned eyes.
Kim Hee-jae, a student at University of California, Davis, in the United States says she has been mocked in the streets by strangers for her eye shape and finds it amazing how opinions have changed so swiftly.
“The fox eye thing itself is probably just an aesthetic, like a beauty trend, not racism. But it doesn’t mean that we [the Asian community] don’t feel slighted. They used to insult us for that.”