Rufus R. Noble Asian beauty influences are everywhere. All of it is based on Asian beauty.
As a child, I knew that I was different. However, it wasn’t something I felt embarrassed about. I loved sharing my culture with non-Asian friends. It also brought frustration, especially when popular content creators, bloggers and YouTubers attributed Asian practices to non-Asian inventions. Asian beauty trends are not just cultural exports but long-standing techniques that deserve to be respected and honored.
In 220 CE, Gua sha was recorded for the first time in the Chinese medical text Shang Han Lun. It detoxifies the body and promotes oxygenated blood to circulate better. According to the Chinese text Liji, Chinese women used warm rice water to wash hair and skin in the 17th century. The Compendium Materia Medica contained many floral-based formulations to improve the skin. To keep their skin young, the imperial consorts of China used a variety of floral essences and nourishing masques.
China experimented with serums and essences in the early days of modern medicine. But 14th-century geishas from Japan and Korea invented double-cleansing. To help with makeup removal, it was first done with rich camellia oil and then jodu (ground mak beans that contain naturally-occurring Saponins) mixed with water. The Geishas are also believed to have used silk scraps to cover their faces in flower water, similar to the sheet masks we use today.
Japanese cosmetics became more popular in Asia by adopting Western culture and fashion. The 1897 first Shiseido essence was released. Shu Uemura was the inventor of the first cleansing oil, the Shu Uemura Cleansing Beauty Oil unmask, in 1967. This was followed by DHC’s famous Deep Cleansing Oil 1995. SK-II was established in 1980 with its Facial Treatment Essence. Amorepacific, a K-beauty conglomerate, was the first to release the ABC Ginseng Creme in 1966. This product served as the basis for its 1997 brand Sulwhasoo. Amorepacific also produced the brands Mamonde and Laneige, Etude House and Innisfree from 1990 to 2000. These now-famous products remained under the radar of the U.S. for a while. Access to these products was limited if you were not near the Asian beauty niches.
My mother is a Chinese immigrant, and I am a child of the cultural revolution. It was a time when everything that had to do with capitalism, traditional Chinese culture (like cosmetics), was to be expelled. She kept a very strict beauty regimen. I was instructed to wash my skin with a clean cloth and moisturizer.
My older sister, still in elementary school, brought me lightweight Japanese sun milk, Majolica Majorca mascara and My Beauty Diary sheet masks infused with sweet-scented essence. My parents did not approve of these cosmetics, but they delighted me. Everything was beautiful. My sister bought sheet masks at a Chinatown grocery shop and is still with me. I kept those masks in my closet for special occasions and was never certain when I would be able to use them again. My masks were not meant to be shared with non-Asian friends. I considered those masks to be little treasures that people like myself made for them. It was something I’d never felt before: the sensation of being seen.
In the early aughts, interest in Asian beauty began to grow and reached the mainstream by 2010. Online K-beauty retailers like Peach & Lilly, Glow Recipe, and Soko Glam began to appear, promising to offer the best Korean beauty products. K-beauty influencers and bloggers had the chance to discuss skincare basics and cosmetics chemistry on Asian beauty forums like Reddit. Michelle Wong of Lab Muffin Beauty Chemistry and Jude Chao of Fifty Shades of Snail were both powerful K-beauty influencers. They could be found posting reviews, analysis of ingredients, and explaining basic skin biology on the Asian Beauty subreddit.
In 2016, I began to create my skincare routine. There were many videos and articles on the internet about reviewing, trying and reacting to “12 step skincare routines.” K-pop and K.dramas began to gain huge fan bases in the U.S. With it; their dewy makeup routines gained popularity. Slowly but surely, Asian culture was not a niche.
It was an odd phenomenon to witness at the time. Non-Asian friends who thought my snail serums were slimy in 2015 asked about hydrocolloid patches in 2017 and rice sleeping masks. Everybody started preaching the benefits of multi-step, extensive skincare regimens. It wasn’t only small areas of the industry that started to stock Asian beauty products on their shelves.
It was a surprise and a delight to see Missha and makeup. Rem at Target. When I saw non-Asians gathered around sheet masks and essences, the K-Beauty or J-Beauty sections at Sephora gave me a strange feeling of pride. The first time I saw a compact cushion foundation at CVS was in 2001. The U.S. beauty scene was being transformed by Asian beauty culture. I felt like a child again as I held my first sheet mask with joy and pride. As Asian beauty became more mainstream and the influence of Asian culture grew, I felt uncomfortable with the silent co-opting in the beauty industry.
