Since before my previous post on breast surgery, many people here have noted my comments on the facial surgery many of the models featured here have had, and wanted me to do a post on this phenomonon. Well finally here it is!

My post has been held up by my desire to find some good before and after pics to demonstrate this phenomonon. Well I’ve finally managed to find such pics of perhaps the most internationally successful oriental singer ever: Coco Lee. Amazingly, Coco claims to never have had any surgery! (This is a good example of how you can’t believe Asian models/performers when they say their natural.) I will discuss Coco herself a little more below, but first lets analyze the before and after pics above.The bottom two pics are Coco as she is today, whereas the top two were taken before she had any surgery. Perhaps the most obvious – and for me most tragic – difference is her slilicone chin implant. As can be seen, she always had a fairly prominent chin by Asian standards, but in her desire to look more western, she has made it even more so. So much so in fact that to me it now looks kind of ‘stuck on’. (Still, at least it doesn’t look as ridiculous as Reese Witherspoon’s chin implant – for me her chin looks like it belongs on a witch!). Sadly, this form of surgery is now very common for Asian models and performers, although because most other Asian girls don’t have a chin as naturally prominent as Coco’s, the result isn’t usually this exagerated.

The other obvious thing that can be seen is how different her eyes look. She has reshaped her eyebrows by removing her natural eyebrow hairs and replacing them with tattoos. Less obviously, she has also had some of the fat removed from her eyelids, which once again makes her eyes look a little less classically Asian and perhaps a little bigger. Once again, these procedures are very common for Asian models and performers these days, although in this case the results are actually a lot more subtle than many others and IMHO are quite successful.

What can’t be readily seen from these photos is her nose job. Unlike many other Asian models/performers thse days, she doesn’t seem to have done anything to enlarge her nostrils, so from the front her nose looks pretty much the same as it always has. However, if you could see before and after profile shots (which unfortunately I couldn’t find), you would see that she has had a silicone implant inserted in the bridge of her nose, to make it higher (and once again more western). I find it ironic that so many western women have surgery to make their noses smaller, whereas Asian women have surgery to make them bigger! What a strange world…

Whether you like Coco’s facial surgery or not, it certainly hasn’t hurt her careeer! As stated above, she is probably the most internationally successful oriental singer ever. Indeed, she’s the only oriental singer I can think of who has really broken into the western market (unless you include half Chinese singer Bic Runga, who is very successful in Australia and New Zealand) – somebody please correct me if I’m forgeting someone! She got her big breakthrough in the US by performing “A Love Before Time”, the theme song from the huge hit Chinese film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. She performed this song at the oscars that year, which makes her the first and so far only oriental singer to have performed at the Oscars, as far as I’m aware.

Although her music isn’t exactly my taste (the usual modern dance pop, although she’s released some pretty nice stuff in her home market), she is actually a very capable singer (she has quite a lovely voice), and is a pretty talented dancer and performer. She also has a nice, trim body, which she really knows how to show off – although I can’t stand her chin job, I still find her quite sexy!

She was born in Hong Kong, but she moved to the US with her family when she was only 10. It was there that she won the Miss Chinese America pageant in 1991 – this was before she had all the surgery! Two years later she returned to HK to take second prize in the New Talent Singing Contest there, which resulted in her recording contract. She also came 47th in Maxim magazine’s “Top 100 Sexiest Women in Asia” in 2000. Anyway, here’s some more pics so you can make up your own mind about her:

http://www.cocolee.net/
http://www.actoractressgallery.com/
http://tanhongsheng.tripod.com/
http://www.chinasee.net/
http://en.ce.cn/