I am an avid consumer of makeup tutorials, but I treat them as I do Binging with Babish's videos (which feature inordinately complex home-made dishes inspired by film and TV): they're purely for entertainment, and not particularly useful in my day-to-day life.

The thing is, I don't usually wear makeup (though this is largely due to laziness more than anything else, as I enjoy it a lot when my friends sit me down and slap their fancy products on my face). I do, though, distinctly recall a phase in my elementary-school years when I really wanted to wear makeup all the time, and so whenever I got the opportunity I would sneak out my mom's blush and literally cover my cheeks with the garish pink-red, which was an unfortunate stage of my life. But another reason why I never really wear makeup is because my eyelids have always perplexed me.  On the few occasions in middle school when I'd wear makeup for dance recitals, I'd put on eyeliner, open my eyes fully, and realize that the eyeliner that I'd painstakingly drawn had vanished. IT WAS VERY DISTRESSING.

Ethnically, I'm Han Chinese, and I possess the monolid-esque (technical term being 'epicanthic fold') eyes that are standard for us. I do have double-lid creases, though that's not like a consistent part of my eyes -- ever since I can remember, I've had days where I wake up with creases over both eyes, only to discover a few hours later that my right eye's crease has all but disappeared. For visualization's sake, I'm attaching some images!

My left eye, which is more consistent, has a similar crease to this:

Tzuyu (TWICE)

My right eye, however, usually looks more like this:

Dahyun (TWICE)

For comparison, here are Astrid Berges-Frisbey's eyes, where her crease is broader and more structural -- her face in general has a more prominent browbone and nose bridge, which is pretty common for most white people and affects the shadows/creases of her eyes:

(Just wanted to note that the first two videos below are linked to specific timestamps!)

Most of the makeup tutorials I watch are by white YouTubers, so their advice generally wouldn't apply to me even if I attempted their looks. But recently, I discovered the channel of this adorable kpop-star Suhyun (AKMU), and she has pure monolids! Her very first video has a moment to which I relate greatly+ (from 2:28 to 3:00, subtitles available), when she starts putting on her eyeshadow/eyeliner. I highly recommend watching the snippet that I linked to, because she's adorable, and also because it showcases perfectly the kind of difficulties I face when putting on makeup. My eyes aren't as extreme because I have creases, but it's very very similar.

Some quotes from the eyeshadow segment that really got me:

Quote

"I just drew it...but...where did it go?"

(She opened her eyes to examine her handiwork, and it wasn't visible. )

And:

Quote

"You might say, 'You call this thick makeup your daily makeup?' But it cannot be helped... It's the sad reality of monolids."

If I'm being honest, I don't 100% understand why this happens. What I do know is that even pure monolids still have creases, just not visible ones -- so I presume that when we put on eyeshadow/eyeliner, the crease swallows up the makeup to a degree. I watched a video here+ (from 0:25 to 0:57, subtitles available) which does a better job explaining the stereotypical 'Asian eyes' and the epicanthic fold, and it's also helpful because it provides pictures. (Note: the video title also puts 'Asian eyes' in quotation marks because obviously not all Asians have monolids/epicanthic folds -- the video is mostly referring to East Asians, particularly from China, Korea, and Japan.)

Why am I making this blog post? Good question. I don't really know.  I've been thinking about this a lot recently, after I specifically started seeking out East Asian makeup artists (unfortunately, there are not that many, I think). On a phone call to a (male white) friend I was excitedly explaining all my new discoveries about monolids and makeup and the differences between his eyes and my eyes, and when I finished, he said, "I have never in my life thought about eyelid creases until now." My little sister (now nineteen years old) was telling me the other day how she was really glad that she got a Chinese senior, E, to do her makeup, rather than a professional, because "E is far more familiar with my eye structure than most professional makeup artists will be." And I think it's just a really interesting subject, though that could just be me!

I'm going to end by linking to a video+ by a YouTuber called Elaine Park where she does her makeup. There's no particular point to this, I just think she's cute.

Thank you for reading! And please feel free to share your thoughts! I am by no means an expert on this -- most of my thoughts are from personal experience.