Another post on Asian men

I though the following two posts from the aforementioned discussion thread were also interesting. The second was a rejoinder to the first.

I don’t think it is true at all. Asian American men may have certain qualities (nerdy, short, etc) in greater numbers than other races, but this does not mean that being Asian American in itself puts them on a “lower rung.”

If that were the case, then we should see a proportionate number of Asian leading men, sex symbols and heartthrobs in movies and on TV… but we don’t. When was the last time you saw a young woman put up a poster of a hot Asian actor in her room?

Now, whenever this subject comes up, people often toss around the following counter-examples:

• Bruce Lee. Sorry folks, but he’s been dead for over thirty years now. What’s more, he was more of an action hero than a sex symbol. It was usually the teenaged boys who put his poster up in their rooms, not the girls.
• Jackie Chan. A funny and talented gent, but again, not generally considered to be a sex symbol.
• Jet Li and Chow Yun Fat. Once again, chop-socky martial artists. Some women find them attractive, but they’re not usually regarded as heartthrobs. When was the last time you saw them on the cover of Tiger Beat or somesuch magazine?

Asian men and attractiveness — again

Came across another discussion thread in which the subject of Asian men and their lack of attractiveness came up. I thought I’d post a brief excerpt from that thread:

There have been countless papers and books written on these subjects. For issues of Asian American men being considered “inferior” compared to men of other races, you might want to read the play David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly and the criticism surrounding it (it’s a story about a white man who falls in love with an Asian man pretending to be a woman; based on something that actually happened). Frank Chin has quite a few things to say on the subject, and although many of his views are now outdated it’s interesting to read his opinions on how he considers Asian American culture to be traditionally masculine and how he thinks it’s been emasculated by American stereotypes of Asia as submissive and silent. Much of what he had to say was in response to Maxine Hong Kingston (author of The Woman Warrior), whom Frank Chin despised for supposedly distorting authentic Chinese culture and perpetuating the stereotype of the Asian male as either violent and overbearing or inept and powerless. Actually, you might want to do a search on articles about Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club – there are plenty of articles criticizing how it panders to the Western expectations of Asian cutlture. And of course, Said’s Orientalism is good background reading on Asian stereotypes in general. You might also want to read Yellow by Frank Wu, and War Without Mercy by John Dower (the latter talks about Japanese stereotypes during WWII). I also recommend Re/collecting Early Asian America, which gives a good overview of early Asian Americans in Canada, the US, and South America and how the stereotypes we are familiar with now developed over the course of history. The Chinatown Trunk Mystery is also an interesting read, particularly in light of the VTech shootings – it talks about an unsolved murder of a white woman supposedly committed by a Chinese man back in the 19th century, I think, and how American society reacted to it at the time.

Lauren Tewes, Love Boat Cutie

I’m on a bit of a nostalgia kick, so I decided to rent some DVDs of The Love Boat from Netflix. I have got to say that your cruise director, Lauren Tewes, was a real cutie. Very pretty in a sweet wholesome sort of way. She never became a real sex symbol or superstar, but that’s because she didn’t have that kind of appeal. Instead, she had a much more wholesome, down-to-earth kind of beauty and likeability.

It’s unfortunate that Ms. Tewes ruined her life for a while with cocaine. What a terrible shame.

E-mail

I just wanted to repost the following amusing excerpt from Larry Bailin’s book, Mommy, Where Do Customers Come From?

How about email? I am going to go out on a limb here and say that if you are not using email at this point in time, the rest of us are just waiting for you to die. Anyone that is not using email, especially in their business, will soon just vanish. We won’t be able to hear you or communicate with you. You will eventually just cease to be. So, get with the program or move over and let your competition communicate with us in the way we want… the way we demand to be communicated with. Get it? Got it? Good–now go get a friggin’ email account.

Darn. Darn. Darn.

I was waiting for a phone call last night. It never came. I thought she might call tonight instead, but that didn’t happen.

Dang it. That person can be so darned frustrating at times. It would be a lot nicer if I knew where things stood.

Rats. Rats. Rats.

It’s so hard to find intelligent women. It’s even harder to find women who have solid character and who are basically attractive. It would be so much nicer if she would show a bit more encouragement though, especially since she’s the one who first contacted me.

Darn it.