Face Enhancement in East Asian Cultures

            As I have mentioned in previous entries, face is the amount of social value that others attribute to you if you live up to the standards of your position.  What I want to address in this posting is how members of an East Asian culture maintain their face. In particular I want to focus on how East Asian’s maintain their face by means of consuming brand name clothing.

            The way in which we present ourselves based on our clothing can say a lot about us. For example many members of the Western world dress in a way that seems to exemplify their uniqueness while not dressing too far away from the norm. While reading the text I noticed a stat that seemed very surprising to me, over 50% of the sales from brand name companies such as Louis Vuitton occur in East Asia. When it comes to face, people are more concerned with how others view them than with how they view themselves.

            When I read this stat I began to reflect upon instances I remember when family and friends went to China to work as teachers and the amount if material, name brand goods they would return with. Many of our family friends would end up purchasing more than double the items they would leave with, and end up shipping the majority of the goods home.  One instance in particular that I can remember, was a friend was buying tons of The North Face winter jackets, since they were costing her relatively little. Although many of the goods were most likely knockoffs, it fits with this phenomenon that many people from East Asian want to “dress to impress” as a way to keep their face high. If everyone wanted to wear brand name goods to maintain their face, there would surely be those who weren’t able to afford it, and thus a whole new business comes into place to make the knockoffs.

           

            There seems to be quite the market in East Asia for brand name clothing, and so much so that there are now just as many if not more knockoffs being made in order to meet the needs of all members of the society. This can be quite evident when we visit large cities for example, New York City. We can visit Chinatown, where there are many street vendors trying to sell you items that they insist are real designer brands, but most likely are knockoffs. I was able to experience this twice while visiting NYC. After the late shows are over, many street vendors come out with bags and bags of “designer” handbags. Although 50% of many brand name sales occur in East Asia, many Americans still wear brand name clothing, but for more of a different reason. When I wear name brand clothing it is usually to feel better about my self. We often hear the expression “dress well, play well” meaning that dressing well will increase our self-esteem, which in turn usually makes others see us in a positive way as well. East Asians tend to wear brand name clothing for the sole reason of increasing or maintaining face.