Dr. Asian Rake is a dating consultant and a full-time professor at a top research university. Currently based in Singapore, he guides select clients to improve their lifestyles. To learn more about him and his services and products, visit www.asianrake.com.
This article was originally inspired by fellow columnist Rochelle Nguyen's
article, which was in response to a letter written in reaction to her original article entitled, "Five Reasons Asian Girls Like White Guys."
It's also taken me about a month to write because I wanted to ensure that I wrote dispassionately with a cool-head and because business got really busy
recently.
I agree almost entirely with her original piece. Her main point was that Asian men lacked certain personality traits that kept them
from being as dominant in social interactions as white men. I actually concur with her on this and am actively working to help empower Asian men in this
respect. And I agree with almost everything she wrote in her follow-up article. Everything, that is, except the following.
This is from the
respondent's letter. No doubt, a non-native English speaker wrote this, as it's ungrammatical in places with spelling errors.
"Yes you have at some some clue in this, it is true you are brainwashed by white beauty standards, a social illness that has hurt so many women. And of
course there are plenty of asian men are also big, muscle, tall, athletic PLENTY! you have been deprived."
This is Rochelle's response to the paragraph.
"Oh please, this one is a no brainer. Even the leading men in Asian cinema can't compare to the leading men of Hollywood. Where in an Asian film can
you find the charismatic and dominant equivalent of Brad Pitt in Fight Club? Can Jackie Chan or Jet Li compare? Or better yet, those ladyboys that have
feminized themselves that seem to plague Korean media? I do agree that there are Asian men who are big, muscular, tall, athletic, etc, but it's easy to
say that there's more white guys who have those attributes. White culture is totally obsessed with being alpha men. Football players, wrestling,
bodybuilding, etc. Do you really want to argue that there are more Asian men than white men that possess those characteristics? And you say I've been
deprived?"
I realize it may be unfair to use Rochelle's writing here as fodder and stalking horse for my own points. This paragraph
seems more like an exception to the rest of her piece. In any case, I'm using it as an example of a typical perspective on the physical appearance of
Asian men.
I don't normally like to wade into such minefields as racial prejudices. On such topics, reasoned argumentation often gives way to
emotional appeal.
However, given that the readership of the Amped Asia site includes many Asian-American men, I wish in this article to help
disabuse Asian men of self-limiting negative stereotypes and misconceptions regarding their Asian masculinity and heritage. This is to begin in some small
way to cut off the limiting beliefs that American and other Western societies impose on Asian-American men.
A Message to our Asian-American Sisters
First, allow me to go on a preliminary tangent and speak to our Asian-American sisters to explain why
their Asian-American brothers are so caught up in this topic.
It's much easier to accept criticism about something you have the power
to change. Critiques of your social skills or your fashion sense are relatively easy to swallow.
However, when someone says something like
"White men are bigger, taller, more muscular, and more athletic than Asian men," this strikes at the root of Asian men's identities. Yes, with
work, an Asian man can and should become more muscular or athletic.
But without radical surgery, an adult male usually cannot change his
height or shoe size. Such categorical assertions will and should, if we want masculine Asian guys, generate a outrage from Asian men.
As
Asian-American men, moreover, we will feel a sense of betrayal when our Asian-American sisters fail to understand us or support us. We grew up alongside our
Asian sisters, were raised by Asian mothers and aunties, and share a common Asian heritage with our Asian female counterparts. We view them as part of our
"in-group." So when they perpetuate stereotypes and misconceptions about us, we feel a sense of betrayal.
Perhaps this is misplaced.
After all, they are just echoing what the media and other sources of social influence have fed to them.
There are even some Asian-American
brothers (some of whom run some Asian-American websites trying to make Asian-American guys into better Asian men) who also perpetuate the view that Asian men
in Asia are effeminate and weak, that Asian-American men should in some sense repudiate their Asian heritage, and that American culture is more masculine and
produces men superior to what traditional Asian culture produces.
So we can't put all the blame on our Asian-American sisters. Sometimes,
too, we as the sons of Asian immigrants, engage in self-perpetuating stereotyping practices. We, too, self-Orientalize. We ought to acknowledge our own
complicity in the current, sorry state of affairs. But it sure would help if our Asian-American sisters would understand.
Written by Editorial Staff