Written by Alicia Lee, CNN "Ching chong eyes!" That's what elementary school kids used to call Sophie Wang. It was an insidious racist slur casually thrown around as they mocked her Asian ethnicity while pulling on the corner of their eyes. Upward for Japanese. To the side for Chinese. Downward for Korean. Wang is now 17 and many years removed from the days when her Asian American identity was reduced to "a single facial feature." And yet, scrolling through social media posts in recent months has brought those memories flooding back thanks to a new beauty trend: "fox eyes." On Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, people from all over the world have been posting videos and photos modeling the look -- using makeup and other tactics to emulate the lifted, so-called "almond-shaped" eyes of celebrities such as Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Megan Fox. Fox-eye makeup tutorials show how to use a combination of eye shadow, eyeliner and fake eyelashes, to get a winged aesthetic. Tips include shaving off the tail end of eyebrows and redrawing them to appear straighter and angled upwards. Others have also suggested pulling hair back into a high ponytail or using tape to further lift the eyes. Accentuating eyes to appear slanted, or elongated in shape, creates a more sultry effect, according to some makeup artists creating the look. But to Wang and other Asian Americans, the "migraine pose" that sometimes accompanies these images -- using one or two hands to pull the eyes up by the temples to exaggerate the result -- is far too similar to the action used to demean them in the past. Emma Chamberlain, an influencer with 9.8 million followers on Instagram, was recently criticized for posting a picture that showed her striking this pose while sticking out her tongue. Her fans rushed to defend her, commenting that those that felt offended were "overreacting." Chamberlain later deleted the picture and apologized, saying it wasn't her "intention" to pose in an "insensitive way" and that she was "so sorry to those who were hurt by it." But the damage had already been done. "They mock my eyes then say ching chong call me a dog eater and then call me a ch*nk. Like why would you think I'd be fine with Emma's post?" one person tweeted. "Obviously if she gets to do slant eyes whilst getting praised but it's my natural eye shape and I'm getting discriminated (of course) I'm mad." "It's a new trend that brings out old stereotypes and old taunts," Wang said in a phone interview. "Because it makes people like me feel uncomfortable and (to) some degree annoyed, it's time to talk about it." 'Beauty is freedom': The North Korean millennials wearing makeup to rebel against the state What people don't understand, Wang wrote in an op-ed for student-run newspaper Stanford Daily in July, is that the gesture has "racially-charged historical weight," referring to past satirical depictions of Asians in Western media -- cari
