It’s easy to judge. As humans, we are taught to appraise: right from wrong, pro from con, good from evil. But once you step outside of this black-and-white territory into the murky gray of scalability, the “correct” answer is not so clear.

I believe women much more so than men are socialized to hone these powers of judgment unfortunately to be critical of one another’s choices: hairstyles, clothing, body shapes, occupations, relationships, personal life decisions.

As a Korean-American, I grew up in the Midwest in the 1980s and my experience was similar to many other Asian-American women of my generation: I had few Asian-American female role models and friends, I felt marginalized by my majority Caucasian peers, the impact on my self-image was profound and I had a difficult time reconciling my racial and cultural identity.

From my adolescence through college and young adulthood, my identity pendulum swung from a Barbie/Madonna wannabe to a militant uber -Korean and finally a content, self-assured, self-actualized Asian-American woman.

Or so I thought.

What I realized was how judgmental I was and how difficult it is to extricate one’s own bias for the sake of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. The experience of making this film made me look at how I define myself not only as an Asian-American woman, but as a human being.

Like I said, it’s easy to judge. But it’s more difficult to examine the deeper motivations for why a young woman would go through a complicated process such as cosmetic surgery which affects her physical, emotional and psychological being in such a profound way.

For those out there who perceive double eyelid surgery as ‘just’ a personal choice based on individual aesthetics or for those on the other side of the chasm who perceive it solely as a form of racial self-hatred, I can attest that it’s a much more complex, multilayered debate than that. I’ll wager my film’s budget (however painfully small that it is) that it’s never what it appears on the surface.

The challenge of finding a willing main subject proved to be indicative of a cultural stigma that exists within the community. Eyelid surgery is pervasive yet no one talks about it publicly. Information is passed around privately about which doctor is the best, what types of procedures are available, healing time, pricing, etc. But the fact that it took me almost one year to find a woman willing to go through the surgery on camera, allow us unfettered access to her life and admit openly to having the surgery shows that the subject matter is still taboo, or at least that an honest discussion is somehow shadowed by judgment.

After spending time with my subject, despite my initial preconceived ideas of who I thought she was and by what I believed she was motivated, I became acquainted with her history, the recognizable generational, cultural and language barriers that bisect her relationship with her mother, her self-perception and her life goals. And it became quite clear that nothing is ever as simple as it appears.

I now see that the roots of body image and self-perception of any woman, but particularly a woman of color, cannot be extricated from her race and the history and evolution of her people amidst her cultural backdrop. It’s easy to say that a woman seeking cosmetic surgery has only her superficial appearance in mind, but that self-perception is influenced greatly by how we are seen and how we see ourselves in the broader scope of our society.

I believe the more important issue is to critique the societal pressures and impossible standards by which we women are constantly measured.

So yes, it’s easy to judge. But each woman has her own story to tell. And even though I still occasionally fall back into old patterns of behavior when I see someone who wears make-up differently than I or someone who has had this or that type of cosmetic surgery, I have to take a step back and try to see the world through her eyes and remember that beauty is not just skin deep.  It's deeper.