This isn’t really my line of research, but in helping an East Asian Studies major with her thesis, I ran into this beauty trend on the internet: “big eye contacts.”
As you can see, the contacts really change the appearance of the eyes, giving the wearer more of the look seen in anime characters.
While these contacts are made by companies like Johnson and Johnson (makers of Acuvue), they aren’t available for sale in the US; they are, however, readily available in East and Southeast Asia, as you can see in the commercial below.
What’s interesting for me about this phenomenon is that here is a good example of a globalized aesthetic trend that isn’t emanating from the West; the “big-eye” beauty trend is instead a style grounded in Asian cultures.
For more on this trend, and where I first heard about it, see this post by a Global Post reporter based in Thailand.
