Massive insecurity fit.

[camwyn]

Had one today. I was reading this article about the phenomenon of 'Yellow Fever' - i.e., the way some American white guys go gaga over the prospect of Asian girls simply because they're Asian, usually Japanese, rather than for any reason to do with who they are or what they're like. Just as I was smiling to myself and thinking about the stereotypical Annoying White Wolf MUSH character, the Green-Eyed Lesbian Asian Schoolgirl, something hit me between the eyes. It started with this bit:

"I’ve definitely seen one too many dorky white-guy musicians who play "Oriental fusion" music, wear their hair in a samurai bun, and have Chinese characters tattooed on their pecs – all in the interest of aligning themselves with "ethnicity" in some way."

From there my mood rapidly went downhill - not into 'bad mood' territory, but into 'oh dear God noooooo' territory. By the end of the article, even though it was specifically about American men and sexual/romantic interest in Asian women because of perceived attributes associated with their ethnicity, I was mentally going through my entire wardrobe and wondering how many of the Chinese-inspired items I could get rid of before I looked like a total pretentious snot. VicMage.Asia suddenly looked like nothing but yet another Westerner hopping up and down excitedly and going 'oo, oo, exotic! oo, stuff from Asia is twenty times cooler than stuff from the West, automatically! oo, as a total outsider who's never had anything to do with the cultures involved I can still write about this stuff and portray it and be thought of as wonderful!'. I mean, geez, I've got a replica terra-cotta crossbowman from Qin Shihuangdi's tomb on my computer desk - next to the little red horse carving, with the big ol' poster of Zhanyinbao the Bodyguard on my wall and a bunch of Chinese bamboo brushes and a freakin' chop - I must look like some kind of utterly and totally idiotic Asian culture fangirl who's too stupid to recognize that she's on the outside of her chosen culture-of-obsession (Chinese) and always will be, no matter what she tries...

Didn't help that I'd made up my mind about five minutes before to get Hunan beef from Empire Szechuan, the local good Chinese restaurant (there are others nearby but they're kind of eck), then drive to the nearest Asian market and come home with chocolate mochi ice cream. Which I did, but I spent my entire time in the store with my head down, even though I normally wander through the aisles happily thinking 'I recognize that! And that! And I know what those are for! Oooo, LIVE FISHIES FOR DINNER! I didn't know you could cryovac that!'. For the record, green tea mochi ice cream balls ain't as impressive as chocolate ones, but they're still okay even if the long ride home got 'em a little melty...

*sigh* I dunno. I'm gonna hide behind my Cantonese phrasebook and try not to think about it before touching VicMage.Asia again. I know it's good, it's just... I'm terrified someone actually Chinese will look at it and smack me upside the head for being a pretentious little git, or someone Japanese will look at it and choke over what I did with that part of the setting, or... I'm just ... It keeps coming down to this massive fear of being seen as pretentious. Of being a poser. Of not even ever being AWARE of the fact that I'm a poser.

I'm gonna go freak out now, okay?

Comments

[swisscheesed.livejournal.com]

Well, you're not dating anyone based on their ethnicity are you? Just because I like furniture from Ikea and like the taste of pickled herring doesn't mean I'm terminally obsessed with the Swedes. It's an aesthetic and culinary preference.

[swisscheesed.livejournal.com]

Admittedly however, some people overdo it, like a very annoying ex-co-worker who had to pronounce words like "Kyoto" the correct way and loved to make Japanese girls go "tee hee." Drove me up the waaaallll.

Eeeeeu.

[camwyn]

No. nononono. Definitely not dating someone based on their ethnicity; the one time I tried asking an Asian guy out was in high school, and it was because he was the only guy on the schoolbus who was anything other than a moron headed for a lifetime of sexual harassment charges. (I do not have happy memories of that schoolbus, unless you count the day I implied to one guy I'd knife him in the crotch.) He was into science fiction and other such things almost as much as I was, and that was the part that mattered. Got shot down, but yanno, I tried for the right reasons. I sure as hell wouldn't try for someone based on their ethnicity now. That's just cheesy as hell.

As for other stuff - I try not to overdo it. At least, I think I do. It makes my teeth hurt when my dad insists on pronouncing 'karate' (I'm taking lessons from the Isshin Kenpo instructors at what used to be the local YWCA) the way Mr. Miyagi did in the movies. Other than occasionally asking Na, our office's chief accountant and a native of Shanghai, how to say 'die horribly, you evil machine' in Mandarin... okay, and the occasional purchase of clothing from chinasprout.com (not very often now that I've found I can't fit into any women's tops smaller than XL)... I try not to be obnoxious about it. The trouble is that every so often, like today, I freak out and don't know *what* constitutes obnoxious fangirlism on my part, and what's simply a strong interest.

I'm so tired of this. I just don't want to be a dork or a poser or an otherwise blatantly moronic person when all I really am is strongly interested. I'm afraid I won't know where the line is, and next thing I know I'll have offended someone, somehow.