How should we speak about eye shapes? I spotted this story today on the Web, and it made me think. Is it wrong to refer to Asian eyes as slanted? Or Western eyes as round? Both terms are wrong, graphically, but we use them all the time. This is not a PC question because I don’t give a sheep about PC. But what’s your take on this brouhaha in the USA, at a TV station that hired a Japanese-AMerican anchor as part of a new news team?
The headline was entitled: KSTP-TV exec answers for his ‘slant of a person’s eyes’ remark
and the brief news item read: “My whole approach is that viewers out there don’t look at the color of someone’s skin or the slant of a person’s eyes,” said KSTP-TV G.M. Ed Piette. This quote regarding the hiring of anchor Kent Ninomiya started out so nobly before it veered into Prince Phillip territory. “OK. Wow. Ouch,” said Mae Cheng, national president of the Asian American Journalists Association, when she heard it. “It’s insensitive. This would be one instance where I hope this would not happen after Kent’s there a while.” Various forms of the word slant are “very stereotypical adjectives [describing] Asians and Asian Americans,” Cheng said. “There are other words that could have been used.” For example, Piette could have referred to the shape of a person’s eyes. Around the office Piette is known as a fast talker – guess his mouth ran away from him? Piette just laughed. “If in fact there are those out there who feel I offended them, I certainly apologize. There was no intent to do that; and I stand by my actions, which were to hire this individual because of his journalistic credentials.”
In the eye of the storm… comments and past experiences?
As an aspiring writer, I often find that when I’m describing personal attributes, I try to be as specific as I can. The eyes of Asians, as with the eyes of any human being from any category, vary from person to person. I wouldn’t say “almond shaped” or “slanted” is rude or insulting, but I would say it’s imprecise and doesn’t really tell me anything, as people from every nation in the world have “almond shaped eyes”. Also, people from every nation in the world have epicanthic folds, so again, it’s imprecise.
I prefer to describe the eye shape in as much detail as I can, and drop a homeland reference in:
“His dark eyes, large and round, pierced the icy darkness as he pushed the malamutes to mush on into the night. He ignored the sweet memories of his childhood that kept pushing their way to the surface in the silence of the Alaskan road. Korea was a lifetime ago.”
You’ll find really great ideas for describing eyes at, of all places, makeup websites. Google search makeup for Asian eye shapes, and you’ll find out that there are dozens of Asian eye shapes.
