White or Asian...Banana??

I met this one Korean guy named Josh at my church on Sunday, and after having a conversation with him, I was really surprised by what he'd told me. Josh was born and raised in America, so he was pretty Americanized. He can not speak Korean and he does not like Korean. Because he is Asian, people usaully ask him where he was from (ethnicity) when first meeting him, and he told me that he often felt offended by this kind of question. He said he grew up in American and therefore he considered himself not only an American citizen, but also a "white" man. I found this really interesting. When I was in high school, I did see a lot of Asians who are born and raised in the states and they do not "act Asian" at all; however, I have never heard from any of them saying that they themselves are "white." Therefore I went on and asked Josh what he thinks about "white privileges" (I just simply thought that it would be interesting to hear from a non-white person his point of view regarding to white privileges). Not surprisingly, he denied the existence of such thing as white privileges and said no one in America holds unearned privileges or advantages.

Josh told me that some people think whites are being treated better than any other ethnic groups, and he said this kind of thinking is just simple wrong and should be discarded. He stated that if one examine carefully, one can see that some people (not necessarily whites, but any other races) are being treating better only because they work hard and they "earned" and "deserved" it. I remembered one of the privileges stated in the reading, which was "If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live." I told Josh about this one particular privilege, and he strongly denied it by saying anyone who works hard enough and saves enough money will be able to purchase housing at a place desired. He considered such thing as white privileges as ridicules and insisted that they do not even exist.

Josh is an Asian himself, so I am not quite sure if he has ever experienced white privileges before. However, the "whiteness" he expressed through the way he talked and through his point of view on white privileges truely suprised me. I did not know people other than whites can also reflect such a strong sense of whiteness. Josh also showed to me that whiteness is not just about white people, it can also be how one thinks of himself or herself. It kind of sounds like your skin does not have to be white for you to be a white person. This relates to an interesting term for very Americanized Asians--Banana, which means some Asians are really just "yellow" on the outside, and white in the inside.

Patriarchy and Women Robots

Last weekend I was invited to join a movie night by one of my friends. We saw the movie "The Stepford Wives" with Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick. The main theme of the movie is about all the men in this one town turning their wives into a woman who is "perfect beyond belief." These men from the movie killed their "real" wives and replaced them with a woman robot designed by themselves. The woman robots in the movie are capable of doing anything. They are good at cooking, taking care of children, serve their husbands, cleaning, and they are of course, capable of making a perfect house wife. This was not my first time seeing this movie, I watched it a while ago (before I take the Women Studies course), and I didn't even realize how many important concepts this movie displayed until I learned them from this course. Concepts/ideas such as patriarchy, women robots, femininity, body images, and male dominant.

In main settings of this movie took place in this one tiny town where all the men are rich with well respected social status and power. Their wives (the woman robots) only listen and do the things ordered by their husbands. They did not express a single opinions of their owns (partly because they simply can't since they are robots) and were 100% obedient to their husbands. The men controled everything in the movie, they even appeared to be owning their wives' lives (by making decisions on their own to murder their wives and replace them with robots). This is a demonstration of patriarchy and male dominant where men are the ones with all the power to do things. One more interesting I noticed from the movie was that most of the male characters were played by white men, I don't believe I saw any black or asian male characters in the movie.

Furthermore, this movie emphasized the perfect body images that is believed should be obtained by females. The female robots in the movie are all very tall and thin with huge breasts. They also talk softly, wear skirts, and have long beautiful hairs. I didn't feel it when I first watch the movie; however, when I watch it again the second time, I felt a strong sense of sexism and it is kind of giving women lessons on how they should be for men, which made me like the movie less (even though Nicole Kidman did stand up in the end of the movie and defeated all the corrupted men and saved her family).

Standard of Beauty

I have been pretty busy with school and other stuff ever since the beginning of spring quarter. Therefore, I didn't have much time for web surfing and to check what kind of blogs were on the home page of "Yahoo" (Taiwan). Finally, last weekend, after finishing my biology readings, I decided to take a break and "catch up" with what was going on on the internet. Not surprisingly, even after a few weeks, the blogs on the home page were still sharing about the same topic: how to lose weight. It shocks me how even a 15 years-old girl was talking about her weight losing experiences as well. I discovered that girls who write these kind of blogs are usually under weight already. They would post their personal information such as their height and weight on their blogs to show their progress. Most of them have an average height of 5 foot 3 but all of them weigh only around 100 pounds. One other interesting things I found out about these bloggers is that they usually write, "I will keep trying hard to lose more weight" or "Going to get rid of another 10 pounds by next month" as their way to end the blog entry. It seems to me women or even young girls can or will never be satisfied with their appearences and body images.
I often wonder wonder what would the motivation to lose weight be for a young girl. Could it be because she wants to fit in with rest of the girls around her? or because of her seeing other adults or friends doing so? or could it simply be because that is the kind of thing she is taught to do by the media (such as advertisements and celebrities' images). I realize that on "Yahoo" (Taiwan) home page, most of the products being sold are about how to make a girl's body look thinner. Products such as "skinny lotion," weight losing tea, and even clothes (the advertisement lines for clothes are usually "It will make you look 10 pounds thinner) are all very popular. It is almost like anything that is related to weight reduction is adored by females of all ages. This is closely related to the topics we have discussed about in class- like how the ideal image for a woman is tall and thin, and how that is why models always have to try so hard not to eat in order to keep their weight low. I don't really know when this started, that calling someone skinny or thin is accepted as a compliment, and there seems to have an equal mark between attractiveness and thinness. It is kind of sad for me to see this type of standard for beauty building up for women and young girls, and the struggles they are going through in the attempts to achieve such standard.