Turning Brown Eyes to Blue – What’s Next?
What’s next?
That’s the inevitable question one asks upon hearing the news that a California company is soon to offer a laser procedure that alters a person’s eye color. Eyes may be the windows to the soul, but they are also much, much more.
A new procedure that involves the use of a laser, takes a mere 20 seconds to eliminate the pigment that makes brown eyes well, brown.
“Anyone who has brown eyes has blue eyes underneath,” says Gregg Homer, PhD, of Stroma Medical Corporation in Laguna Beach, California, where the procedure was developed. Dr. Homer explains that by firing a laser through the clear part of the eye – the cornea – the existing pigment is disrupted. The body in turn digests the pigment and subsequently removes it from the eye.
On the surface, this quick procedure may seem purely cosmetic, but is it really? One has to question the reasoning behind changing our eye color, beyond the obvious aesthetic. Let’s face it: our ethnicity is tied up in our DNA and to some degree, in our eye color. Case in point: though blue eyes may be recessive, they were once equally represented in all Americans born around 1900. This is likely because of the more homogenous society that existed at the time. Since that time, according to this article, blue eyes are much more rare, due in large part to America’s immigration patterns and the increasing growth of children borne of interracial couples.
Based on this reality, one may then wonder if people would choose to change their eye color for reasons more related to race, ethnicity, and the desire for being perceived to be a part of a particular ethnic or racial group. If this is indeed the case and reasoning behind why someone would choose to alter their eye color, could skin color be far behind? It may seem like a stretch but to those who choose to change their physical visage for the reasons stated, there’s nothing to say that they wouldn’t alter their largest display of ethnicity if they had the opportunity. In other words, the opportunity to “override” one’s existing coloring in order to gain cultural, professional or social favor is likely appealing to a significant segment of the population.
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