CULTURE-VIETNAM: Willingly, Women Pay the Price of Beauty

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Tran Dinh Thanh Lam

HO CHI MINH CITY, Jan 29 2001 (IPS) - First-time mother Van knows all about the benefits of breastfeeding, and even the ban on powdered milk advertisements has not escaped her notice.

But despite the fact that she still produces milk, Van prefers to feed her baby manufactured infant formula — and not because she thinks these are better for her child.

“Breastmilk may be better, but I have no time to suckle my baby,” says the 24-year-old mother. But after a while, she admits: “Besides, I don’t want my breasts to become slack.”

Vanity, thy name is the modern Vietnamese woman, or so some observers here say.

Indeed, after decades of being told repeatedly that their physical features mattered little and that the measure of beauty was in one’s commitment to the Party, women in this communist country are now decidedly more conscious of how they look.

Van, for instance, is only one among the many Vietnamese mothers who have ignored official admonitions to breastfeed and are instead bottle-feeding their babies just so their breasts would not sag.

Observers have also noted the rise in women going to cosmetic surgeons — legitimate and otherwise — in an effort to “improve” their features or at least remain young-looking.

Dr Nguyen Xuan Ai, director of the Asia Aesthetic Surgery Institute here in Ho Chi Minh, estimates that the number of women seeking “beauty improvements” goes up by as much as 200 percent year after year. He says that his Institute alone gets about 175 clients per month.

Dr. Ai and other less qualified cosmetic surgeons can perhaps thank Hanoi’s ‘doi moi’ or economic reforms for their booming businesses. Now that a market economy of sorts is in place, many Vietnamese are able to earn as much as they can — and spend as much as they want on a wide variety of goods.

Gone are the years of feeling deprived. Instead, indulgence is in, and so is feeling good about one’s self.

For women, that apparently means looking good as well. “Women of all ages and backgrounds visit us,” says a nurse working at the Hoan My Plastic Surgery Centre. “But women between 30 and 50 present 60 percent of the total.”

Some say the women are trying harder than the men to be more attractive, partly because they now socialise more. But others argue that many of the married women are trooping to cosmetic surgeons in an effort to keep their husbands from straying into the arms of younger females.

Nguyen Thi Mai Huong, 43, cites both reasons — and more — in explaining why she decided to have her an operation to augment her breasts.

“Raising three children has made my breasts less attractive so I decided to have surgery on them,” she says. “(But) making yourself more beautiful is not only for yourself, but also for the sake of your work, your husband and for the people around you.”

Still, others say that the women merely want to copy the look of the actresses in the suddenly popular Hong Kong and South Korean movies that have replaced the old “mass education” propaganda films.

Aside from being young, slender and fair-skinned, these actresses also often have higher nose bridges than the average Vietnamese.

This is why women here and in other Vietnamese cities are flocking not just to clinics but to beauty salons to have their noses “fixed”. Gyms and sports centres are also reporting many women among their habitus, especially after office hours.

Dr Ai, meanwhile, argues that more and more Vietnamese women are having cosmetic surgery simply because now they can afford to do so. “The price of changing your looks is becoming more affordable to the pockets of the Vietnamese people as their spending power increases,” he explains.

Compared to prices in the United States and Japan, he says, cosmetic surgery in Vietnam is “very cheap”.

Yet that hardly means that it would not result in the depletion of the average Vietnamese’s savings. Here in Ho Chi Minh, for example, corrective surgery on the face may range from 500,000 to one million dong (35.7 to 71.42 U.S. dollars), a typical employee’s monthly salary.

Breast implants cost more, with price tags of as much as 30 million dong (2,143 dollars).

But what worries authorities more than such hefty expenditures for what they dismiss as “frivolities” is the proliferation of quack surgeons and beauty centres that perform illegal cosmetic operations. Not surprisingly, cases of infections after surgery and botched operations have been piling up.

Dr Ai, who is one of the only 10 plastic surgeons in Vietnam who have more than two decades of experience, says, “Plastic surgery (in this country) is still young and not severely controlled.”

In truth, of the 300 “beauty institutes” in this city, only 28 have a licence from the municipal department of health. Recently, Ho Chi Minh police rounded up people who claimed they could do “on-the-spot” nose adjustments and breast implants.

Even if she did not avail of such “instant” operations, Nguyen Thi Mai Huong says she knew there were still risks involved in the breast surgery that she went through.

But she emphasises that she went under the knife only after spending a year looking for a “reliable” and experienced plastic surgeon.

“I am well aware of the possible side effects brought by cosmetic surgery,” she says. “But everything has a price, especially for beauty. The important thing is to be informed and not to rely on rumours and advertising.”