The after care directions were easy. sleep with eye shields on for 2 weeks so you don’t accidentally rub your eyes. I put in antibiotic drops several times a day for the same 2 weeks and for a month after that I just used regular eye drops to keep my eyes moist. The biggest part was not to fuss with my eyes. I took a nap in my hotel room and woke up about 2 hours later. I could see!!! I could read street signs on the street below. 24 floors below.

I called my friends from the hotel room ecstatic! I went back to work two days after with no problems but trying to push up my non existent glasses for the next three months. Now when I wake up I can see the clock next to me! I can wear really cool eyeliner and makeup and people can actually see it! Medically the risks are very minimal and if you do not get the correction you want you can do it again.

The Lasik clinic in Vancouver BC that I went to offered the pre op exam, the procedure, and three post op exams for $1200. Both eyes and a guarantee that if you do not get the correction you want to your vision then you could get it corrected again for free. I never realized what a difficulty it was to wear glasses until i didn’t have to. No more fogging up the lenses. I have probably saved at least the cost of the procedure in glasses and contact lens costs in the last 5 years since having it done.

My husband’s procedure went the exact same as mine and consequently I have about 5 friends and former coworkers that have had it done because of my success. I would not have ever gotten it done if a friend of mine’s brother hadn’t had it done first. He called me from his hotel room afterwards and cried about how happy he was to be able to see! It was the best money investment of my life. I have a very active life and I can now swim freely with out worrying about contacts and glasses. I would do it again in a heart beat.

Has anyone here considered cosmetic surgery? I’ve always had very noticeable creases underneath my eyes and the look has always bothered me. I started wondering how much it would cost to have the skin under my eyes tightened, and in the process I decided that, if I ever do have cosmetic surgery, I might as well go all the way…which brings me to the following point: I have always wanted to have Asian looking eyes (I saw one show on cosmetic surgery where they called it “cat eyes”).

If I ever have the money to do this (and I should in a year or two, while I’m in college) I want to get it done. Has anyone here fantasized about this or actually done it, or knew someone who did? There is some woman who has had extensive plastic surgery to make her look like her cat and she seriously looks gross. If you want to get the almond-shaped eyes look, you can always pull your hair back in a tight ponytail and not have to worry about pissing away thousands of dollars for a really messed-up looking face.

Ah, yes! I have the same creases, and I have been thinking about it lately. But, I have really mixed feelings about this. Some people still manage to find me attractive despite this “flaw.” I’m sure it looks 1,000,000 times more pronounced to me than it does to anyone else. But then I think, if it will boost my confidence and make me look less tired, maybe I should. If you look carefully and pay attention, you may notice that many people (even models-gasp!) have these same creases. Besides, those little oddities are part of what makes us unique.

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons there were 142,000 blepharoplasties performed in 1999 — a number that has more than doubled in the seven years since the ASPS began to keeping count. And now, thanks to greater availability and a cultural (some argue ingrained) preference for larger eyes, eyelid surgery has become the most popular surgery in the Asia-Pacific region. Demand is highest among Korean, Chinese, and Japanese women, though anecdotal accounts point to rising numbers of Asian men requesting the surgery. “Eyes that are done look better,” insists Silvia Kim, who operates a Korean cosmetics counter in Flushing, Queens.

“The crease brings out the eyelashes and makes the eyes look bigger,” she says, emphasizing the size difference with her thumb and forefinger. Critics of eyelid surgery believe it is a cosmetic cop-out for Asian Americans who want to downplay their race, since all Caucasians and most non-Asians are born with the crease. Still others argue personal confidence is the issue, since an estimated fifty percent of Asians are also born with the eyelid fold. But Asians have been characterized by their eyes more than any other feature by Westerners (think Fu Manchu-style caricatures and slant-eye miming in the schoolyard.

This deep-rooted, racist cultural imagery makes it somewhat impossible not to see the widespread effort to alter this trait as a reaction. as well as a statement about the effects of Westernization on Asian Americans. Those who oppose the surgery fault the pervasive influence of American culture on women’s self-esteems worldwide, especially with the expanding reach of the Internet. Theoretically, globalization of the media over the past few decades should have fostered a diversity of images, the result of a two-way transmission of cultures — and body types.

But some believe the marketing power of Hollywood, coupled with a Western tradition of colonialism, has sown cultural insecurity among Asians and other groups. “It’s terrible that global culture has made the Western standard of beauty so predominant that Asian women feel they have to go under the knife to achieve that standard,” says Dina Gan, editor-in-chief of A magazine, the nation’s widest-circulation Asian American publication.