Survival Guide for Asian American Women
What are you complaining about? You Asian women are supposed to be the smart, successful exotic beauties that all the men are lusting after. What more do you want?"
That's the reaction I typically got when I used to gripe about the problems of being an Asian woman in America.
Sad, isn't it, that even fellow Asian Americans believe that we're flattered by our stereotypes? Most Asian American women I know don't like being seen as eager to abandon their heritages and embrace anything western, be it beauty standards, culture or men.
Asian American woman with secure identities would be delighted to trade the supposedly advantageous stereotypes for:
having non-Asian men stop approaching us as though we're on the prowl for a sexual partner.
having non-Asian women understand that we aren't out to seduce their boyfriends or husbands.
having Asian men understand that they comprise our preferred pool of dating and marriage prospects.
having everyone understand that we love our Asian faces and cultures and haven't the least interest in trying to pass ourselves off as anything less.
If the Federal Trade Commission established a Don't-Stereotype Registry like the Don't-Call Registry, mine would be the first name on it.
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Unfortunately, there is no such registry. So AA women like me face a lonely struggle that begins in our teens and continues into our thirties and forties. What are we struggling for? To be seen for what we are, not for what some people fantasize about or fear or suspect. Ironically, it's the most secure Asian American women who suffer the most angst in our youth as we struggle against insidious social pressures to doubt our own beauty, cultural values and men.
What's wrong with just taking the easy road and accepting the role insinuated on us? Sadly, some Asian women do just that. They learn too late that it takes them ever farther from family, other Asians and, ultimately, their own self-respect. It's the easy road down to second-class status.
That's why I'm writing this Survival Guide. For most of my teens, twenties and early thirties I struggled with the pressures that American society brings to bear on Asian women, especially the most ambitious and talented ones who aspire to success in the mainstream business world. We are the ones who face the brunt of American preconceptions in predominantly non-Asian settings. I was constantly whipsawed between a barrage of unwanted attention from presumptuous non-Asian men and the hostility of women threatened not by my actions but by the stereotypes in their heads. The blow that almost finished me off was the baffling distance maintained by Asian men who, it turned out, had trouble believing that I wasn't one of those creatures with weak, media-based self images.
So, for all you proud young Asian American women, here are the coping strategies I developed to make myself properly known to all the right -- and wrong -- people.
1. Learn to wear eye makeup correctly.
Nothing suggests an Asian female with a weak self-image like overdone eyes. Making up Asian eyes correctly calls for a subtle blending of earth tones while avoiding bold strokes of blue or green, colors suggestive of caucasian eyes. Rightly or wrongly, the wrong eye makeup marks you as someone trying to distance herself from her racial identity. This will make you a target for the wrong kind of male attention and hurt your chances of being taken seriously by the kind of quality men you would like to attract.
2. Don't dye or curl your hair.
Like overdone eyes, dyed or curled hair suggests someone who is alienated from her Asian roots and is desperately seeking acceptance from the white world. I know that many girls who do this are just fashion victims who don't merit this harsh judgment, but it's reality. Changing your natural hair color or texture will only add to your struggles to distance yourself from stereotypes.
3. Speak or learn an Asian language.
A trait often (and, again, unfairly) associated with a second-class mentality in Asians is the refusal or inability to speak an Asian language. Obviously many Asian Americans who are second, third or fourth generation grow up with little or no opportunity to learn their ancestral languages. But as long as a majority of Asian Americans can speak an Asian language, our ability to speak an Asian language -- or at least a sincere show of interest in learning it -- will be seen as a test of our cultural identity.
It's best to acquire at least some degree of Asian language ability before getting to college. Those Asian Americans who hope to establish their bona fides by taking Asian language courses will be regarded with suspicion, especially if they evidence other signs of a weak identity. Having at least a rudimentary ability to read and speak an Asian language will establish you as someone with pride in their Asian heritage.
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Let's take a not uncommon situation: You haven't had a chance to learn your ancestral language and are asked point-blank if you speak it. My answer to that is unequivocal: say that you do. This may seem dishonest, but is justifiable in the face of the suspicion leveled fairly or unfairly against any Asian American without Asian language skills. If you are asked to prove it, say you don't like being tested. Your interlocutor may suspect you of lying, but it's better to be suspected of lying to assert your affinity for Asian culture than to be seen, unfairly, as trying to distance yourself from it.
4. Cultivate Asian male friends.
There's nothing wrong with making friends among males of other races, but understand that it may be at the expense of future relationships with Asian males. This is especially true if you are in a non-Asian environment in which Asian females are given social access denied Asian males. If you fall into the trap of hanging out with non-Asian males in an environment that subtly discrminates against Asian males, you will be branded a sellout, even if your relationships with the non-Asian males are purely platonic. That brand is more or less permanent. Not fair? Life isn't. If it were, you wouldn't be reading this Survival Guide.
Making Asian male friends -- even with those you don't find suitable for romantic interest -- will validate you with other Asian males. When the time comes for you to enter serious relationships, your Asian male friends will vouch, explicitly or implicitly, for your standing as an Asian American woman with pride in her Asian identity. If you haven't managed to cultivate Asian male friends who can validate you in this way, you will have to overcome lingering skepticism from future Asian romantic prospects. As a matter of fact, I would advise against trying to start up a relationship with a serious prospect unless and until you have first managed to cultivate strong friendships with Asian males. Again, we're talking social reality here, not principles of fairness.
5. Put American pop culture in its proper place.
Stereotypical roles for Asian men and women are so inextricably linked to images fostered by the mass media that an Asian woman who seems immersed in American pop culture will be automatically suspected of having adopted stereotypical images about herself and other Asians. Intelligent Asian Americans tend to view pop culture with a healthy dose of irony and skepticism.
An Asian American woman too immersed in pop culture can send the wrong signals. For example, the common tendency to use the names of white actors and celebrities as synonyms for physical beauty would be alienating to Asian Americans with healthy self images. So instead of saying "he's a Brad Pitt", be familiar enough wiith Asian pop culture to say "he's a Russell Wong". Say "Toshiro Mifune" or "Chow Yun-Fat" instead of "John Wayne" or "Tom Cruise". These seemingly trivial cultural references can play an important role in establishing you as a woman with a healthy racial identity.
Lest you be tempted to use American popular culture as a reference for anything in the real world, remember that it is the creation of media conglomerates trying to profit from caucasian (and to a lesser extent, hispanic and black) fears about being overweight, malodorous, underloved and uncool. If you're smart, you will use the mass media for what it is: an excellent gauge of American insecurities and fantasies.
6. Upgrade your body instead of your wardrobe.
Being well dressed and well-groomed is an asset. Becoming fixated on fashion trends and beauty treatments is a liability. It's common knowledge that many young Asian women cross that line into the domain of high-maintenance fashion victims. Sadly enough, they confuse lavishing all their free time and money on clothes and beauty salons with self-respect and personal maintenance.
From my own experience I know that young women often fall into this trap out of a wish to fit in with what appear to be the most desirable cliques. Designer labels and expensive manicures are seen as membership badges for an exclusive sorority. At an age when life seems to pose so many questions and provide so few answers, this fixation on surfaces seems at least to offer a clear and attainable ideal. It also seems to jive with all the alluring messages with which we were bombarded by magazines, TV and the movies. In other words, it's an all-too-easy trap to fall into.
It's a trap that goes beyond wasting your time and money. It can literally ruin your life by discouraging healthy attention and attracting the unhealthy kind. Intelligent, eligible men regard "high-maintenance woman" as a euphimism for a self-centered quasi-prostitute seeking a sugardaddy. Unless a man has more money than he knows what to do with and is in the market for a mistress, he will stay clear. And rich older men are generally too shrewd to see such women as anything more than short-term recreation -- that is, unless they're very very old or very very repulsive and in desperate search for any kind of human companionship.
If you're looking to upgrade your look in a way that will attract the right kind of attention, take the time and money you devote to clothes and beauty salons and invest it in regular workouts and healthy outdoor recreation. A trim, active body has lines and movement that not even the most expensive dress can fake. A healthy face has a radiance that no beauty treatment can simulate. A woman in good shape commands not leers from old leches but true admiration from other healthy, attractive people.
7. Show interest in other Asians.
In a white-majority social milieu, it's all too easy to focus on Whites and overlook Asians. Many Asians are more reserved due to cultural conditioning and the social disadvantages of being a minority. This is especially true for Asian males in groups of strangers.
The course of least resistance would be for you to ignore the Asian male and devote your attention to white males. You are unquestionably under subtle but insistent pressure to just that. But if you give in to it, you will not only reinforce stereotypes of sellout Asian females in the eyes of the Asian male, but also in the minds of the non-Asian males. Even if it ultimately turns out that you have more interest in one of the non-Asians, it is not to your advantage to be seen as having bought into a majority-centered social pecking order. You will be cheapened in the minds of non-Asian men and written off in the mind of the Asian male and his acquaintences.
In every social situation, make a special effort to engage Asians in conversation. Enjoy that empowering bond of being a majority of two Asians in a white gathering. It is far better for your long-term social prospect to look as though you have a natural affinity for other Asians than to look as though you want to avoid them. Just remember that no one of any race respects a person who avoids members of her own race.
8. Cultivate a taste for Asian cuisines.
Of all cultural affinities, food is the most visceral and intimate. Any Asian woman who shows no special love for Asian foods will seem unaturally detached from her own roots. It doesn't matter how much you profess to have grown up only with western foods. No one will believe that your alienation from Asian food is just a matter of taste. Everyone will assume that you are a sad half-person without a sense of identity. That's true even for non-Asians who may initially seem gratified by your apparent immersion in western culture.
If for no other reason than to put yourself in the company of other Asians occasionally, visit an Asian restaurant at least a few times each month. Get more mileage from this act of cultural pilgrimage by pressuring non-Asian acquaintences to join you on pain of being written off as boors. If you can't get them to do so, you don't have their respect, no matter what they may say.
9. Display Asian art and cultural objects.
Don't settle into a new dorm, home or office without putting up at least a few pieces of Asian art or culture. You will earn respect from both Asian and non-Asian acquantences as someone who takes pride in her cultural heritage. An Asian person esconced in a setting whose decor is entirely western in motif will seem pathetic to anyone with an aesthetic or cultural conscience. In other words, the more cultured the people whose respect you seek, the more importance you should place on displaying Asian cultural objects. And I'm not talking about the kind of kitsch that non-Asians call Asian. I'm talking about art or objects that real Asians consider worth displaying.
10. Become knowledgeable about Asian history.
Pride in one's heritage isn't possible without knowledge of the history of one's ancestral homeland. Most Asian Americans reach adulthood with a grossly distorted and minimized concept of the role Asians have played in the building of human civilization. A eurocentric history education underpins the shame or indifference many Asians feel toward their identities.
You don't have to become a history professor to begin seeing the distortions in American historical perspective. To see the absurdity of the notion that civilization was born in Egypt and perfected in Greece and ancient Rome, just pick up any of thousands of books on the history of China, Corea, Vietnam, Cambodia or Japan. Once you see that many of the most important strands of human progress were actually spun in Asia, you will find it impossible to feel like a marginal member of the human family.
Genuine pride can't be faked. If you want it to radiate from your eyes and each of your actions, visit a library or bookstore and start learning how the earth was really won.
No one said being a proud Asian American woman is easy. But taking the easy way out as a young woman will guarantee you a hard life of progressive alienation from all that is important to you. Start up the high road when you're young and your life can be all that you hope it will be.
