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"  Here&amp;#039;s a story to make your blood boil: TV personality Julie Chen, currently a host on the daytime show\u00A0The Talk, revealed on her show this week (during a segment where hosts revealed dark secrets, ooh!) that early in her career, she had plastic surgery on her eyes to enlarge them. Why&amp;#039;d she do it? Oh, because a series of xenophobic sleazebag dudes told her she had to in order to have a career in entertainment. Cool.\u00A0 While working at an Ohio news station at age 25, her boss told her that she was going to have a hard time making it because of her ethnic background. &amp;quot;He said, &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s face it Julie, how relatable are you to our community?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; she explained on the show. &amp;quot;&amp;#039;How big of an Asian community do we have in Dayton? On top of that, because of your Asian eyes, I&amp;#039;ve noticed that when you&amp;#039;re on camera, you look disinterested and bored.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Shortly thereafter, she sought representation from an agent who echoed that statement, telling her flatly, &amp;quot;I cannot represent you unless you get plastic surgery to make your eyes look bigger.&amp;quot;\u00A0 The surgery, called a blepharoplasty or double eyelid surgery, is common in Asia; many patients have it to look &amp;quot;more energetic,&amp;quot; to adhere to a more Western standard of beauty or to improve their job prospects. Clearly, they do it with good reason:\u00A0Ultimately, Chen buckled and had the surgery, conceding that her career did improve after doing it. &amp;quot;It got me to where we are today,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not going to look back.&amp;quot; While it&amp;#039;s great that she&amp;#039;s unencumbered by regret and doesn&amp;#039;t look back, maybe we can look\u00A0forward\u00A0to a time when black people aren&amp;#039;t lightened on magazine covers, Asian people don&amp;#039;t have to have surgery on their eyes to appear more ostensibly Western, and institutionalized racism isn&amp;#039;t interwoven into the very fabric of the entertainment industry. That&amp;#039;d be great.\u00A0 Photo via\u00A0Getty Images Follow Sam on\u00A0Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/news/a15583/julie-chen-plastic-surgery-eyes/>