Pearls are a girl’s best friend

24/11/14

There are a few sharply dressed, Mafioso type looking guys hanging around the pearl factory. Two of them are leading our group and showing us around, though I am a bit unclear as to what exactly is their position at the factory. The women sorting the pearls are also well dressed and elegant. A contrast to the previous factory we visited (a sock factory) where the workers were more casual.

Upstairs, they have arranged some snacks and tea for us. Baskets sit on the floor filled to the brim with different qualities of pearls. I think there is a Q&A session going on, but I don’t really pay attention. I peek into the room next door- it appears to be the room where important business transactions take place. Everything shines in the room with the glow of polished wood. The tables and chairs are all carved with intricate designs. Leather couches and a glass coffee table are on the other side of the room over an expensive rug. The sock factory had cement floors layered with dust and leftover bits of thread with supplies packed in a sort of organized mess around the shop.

Sock factory

Our “guide” cracks open some mussels for us and invites us all to dig out a pearl from the gooey mess. There is something phony about his demeanor that I don’t trust. Maybe it’s the Mafioso get ups, but I don’t feel comfortable here.

When we arrive at the pearl mall, everything becomes clear. The sketchy fellow offers us 50% off everything in the store. Our visit was a marketing ploy to get us to buy their stuff. The worst part is it works. Almost everyone in my class walks out of there with at least one small gift to bring back to family and friends. Some slightly remorseful because they know they walked into a trap but at the same time thinking how the gift will be enjoyed by someone important in their life.

I don’t know anyone who wears pearls.  I have no use for them. They are not really my colour or my style. So I sit outside and wait.

Pearl Factory

During the cultural revolution, women were expected to wear uniforms with straight, short hair, no makeup and no jewellery. Any type of adornment or self-beautification was viewed as petty bourgeois and frivolous (Ip, 2003). Yang (2006) refers to this period as the era of “beauty fear” which attempted to suppress the concept of beauty in the name of equality. In the Post-Maoist era, this fear was transformed into a “beauty fever driven by the commercialization” of the mid and late 1990s.

During this period, Western influence transformed beauty standards from “the communist ideal of woman as producer into the neo-liberal image of woman as consumer” (Xu & Feiner, 2007). Cosmetic surgeries increased throughout Asia, with some of the more popular surgeries being double-eyelid operations, nose lengthening, jaw-reshaping and breast implants (Zhang, 2012). In the words of Bordo (1993),

the “beauty system” is controlling the bodies and the checkbooks of women by placing high social importance on physical appearance, setting up impossible beauty ideals, and then providing products and services to “fix” the imperfections.

 Although eyes, nose and face shape are all important aspects of beauty, skin tone appears to be particularly significant and a lot of emphasis is placed on having “fair” skin. There is a saying in Chinese “Yi bai zhe san chou” that translates as “one white skin covers three ugly qualities” (Zhang, 2012). Meaning that having good skin can compensate for other perceived drawbacks or flaws. Fair skin is prized because along with representing symbols of youthfulness and fertility, skin is also an indicator of class and status. Rich and privileged women from urban areas can afford “fair” skin whereas rural peasant women are more likely to have darker, rougher skin due to their work conditions and lifestyles.

Skin whitening products

photo credit: Hope Hickli

The high value of skin tone can be seen in our buddies who mostly wear very little makeup, preferring a more natural look, but will usually spend a lot on expensive facial creams to keep their skin glowing. Skin whitening creams line store shelves and you have to be careful buying lotions and face washes because many skin products contain whitening elements.  That being said, simply having white skin is not enough to be considered beautiful. The term “fair” skin implies skin that is also unblemished, smooth, bright and porcelain-like.Skin, like pearls, is more valued based on its luster, shape, colour and lack of blemishes or imperfections.

During our visit of the pearl factory, we learned that perfectly round, high quality and valuable freshwater pearls are extremely rare.  I don’t remember the exact number but google tells me that perfect pearls consist of only 0,0025% of a yearly harvest while the slightly imperfect, but still really expensive ones make up 3%. The rest are crushed for use in cosmetics and medicines. For most of us, we are the 97% - still beautiful, but imperfect and therefore, judged by the beauty industry to be of less value. But I think they got their grading system all wrong, the really valuable ones are the ones that are unique.

Ip, H.-Y. (2003). Fashioning Appearances: Feminine Beauty in Chinese Communist Revolutionary Culture. Modern China, 29(3), 329-361. DOI: 10.1177/00977004032

Zhang, M. (2012). A chinese beauty story: How college women in china negotiate beauty, body image, and mass media. Chinese Journal of Communication, 5(4), 437-454. doi:10.1080/17544750.2012.723387

Yang, X. (2006). From Beauty Fear to Beauty Fever: A Critical Study of Chinese Female Writers Born in the 1970s. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Oregon). Retrieved from ProQuest

Parfumerie

Random ads for a clothing store with inexplicable translations...