Big Brother host Julie Chen Moonves talks candidly about her double eyelid surgery

“Big Brother” and “The Talk” host Julie Chen has previously spoken about how her early career as a broadcast journalist was put in jeopardy due to her non-Western looks, and now she’s speaking candidly about the surgery she underwent on her “Asian eyes.”

During a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s “Andy Cohen Live," she told the host, “It was something I had thought about when I was younger, and I never thought I would be presented with an opportunity or a reason to have it done.”

She continued, “You know, in the Asian community, a lot of us girls growing up, we would cut scotch tape and we would put it over our eyelids and then open our eyes to make them look bigger, to have that crease.”

“The double eyelid as it’s called, and when this agent said to me, ‘If you get this done, you’re going from Dayton, Ohio to a top ten market for your next move. No question.’ I was like, I presented it to my parents, and they were like, ‘Well, let’s do it.’ My parents were so supportive and once I got the green light from them, I mean, the guy even gave me which doctor to go to in Los Angeles.”

When pressed by Cohen, she said she didn’t have any regrets in undergoing the surgery to “Westernize” her eyes.

This isn’t the first time Chen has spoken openly about her surgery. In 2013, during a segment on “The Talk,” she spoke about the surgery and the impetus to get it done.

“My secret dates back to — my heart is racing — It dates back to when I was 25-years-old and I was working as a local news reporter,” she said at the time.

“I asked my news director … over the holidays if anchors want to take vacations, could I fill in? And he said, ‘You will never be on this anchor desk, because you’re Chinese.’ He said, ‘Let’s face it Julie, how relatable are you to our community? On top of that, because of your Asian eyes, I’ve noticed that when you’re on camera, you look disinterested and bored.‘” 

Let’s all just take a moment to let that casual racism wash over us.

She continued in the segment from 2013, saying, “And after I had it done, the ball did roll for me,” however she did wonder aloud if she had “given in to the Man.”

Back then, Julie faced a wave of criticism from “The Talk” viewers for going under the knife, something she addressed a week later during a segment on the show, per The New York Post.

The outlet reported she said, “It was comments like, ‘Way to give in to the Western standards of beauty.’ ‘You’re denying your heritage. You’re trying to look less Asian. Guess what? I don’t look less Chinese! I’m not fooling anybody here. That’s number one.”

“Number two: half of us Asians are born with the double-eyelid. My mother was born with it. My father has one lid that was creased, one lid that didn’t get its crease until he hit his late teens. I have one sister born with the creases, one sister born without it, so it wasn’t denying my heritage,” she continued.

She added, “It’s kind of like if someone gets a nose job and gets the bump taken out, and some people say that’s an ethnic bump. Are you denying whatever your heritage is? No.”

However, not all Asian American news anchors are jiving with Julie’s choice. CNN and former “The View” cohost Lisa Ling told Zwivel that on top of the pressures put on women in media for looking youthful and beautiful, Asian women have an additional pressure: to look more Western. 

“In some countries, one in six Asian women have had work done on their eyelids," Ling told the outlet. "That makes me really sad. The whole look of Asian women is changing and that is very troubling." 

“I just think it’s sad when women feel that kind of pressure,” she concluded.