Imagethief

Recently both Howard French’s “A Glimpse of the World” and Rebecca MacKinnon’s “RConversation” blog have reviewed Sheridan Prasso’s book The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, and Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient. Although I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet (perhaps I will pick it for my upcoming Mayday vacation in Bali), I thought I might weigh in with a personal perspective, since, horror, I am a former fetishizer of Asian women!

Yes it’s true. Since I was in university I’ve had the hots for ethnic Asian women, be they Asian American or actual Asians. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Malay, Indian, I was a generalist… It’s painful to admit, and yet strangely liberating. I don’t know where this strange fascination came from. A youth misspent on racy anime? Singapore airlines commercials? The American pop-culture fascination with exaggerated sexuality of all kinds? My dating history is an odd, ethnic pastiche, but Asians are definitely over-represented, and not just since I moved to Asia, a decade ago. I admit this with the deepest respect for all of my ex-girlfriends, Asian, white or otherwise. I loved you all as individual human beings. Honestly. (Except for the loony ones – you know who you are.)

Now let us jump forward to the present day. I have been married to a wonderful Singaporean woman for four years, and together with her for just over eight. (In fact, our anniversary is coming up in May, so I’d better start shopping for presents.) All prior fetishisms aside, the reason why our relationship has worked is that we are so perfect for one another that it is scary.

Having lived in close association with this most mysterious of creatures for eight years, I thought I would take advantage of my experience to disabuse some of my less enlightened white, male compatriots of their preconceptions of Asian women. With my wife as my point of reference, I will now present the actual characteristics of Asian women as I have come to know them. (I realize that using a sample size of one to represent 1.5 billion Asian women represents a statistical stretch at best, and scientific fraud at worst. So sue me; it’s not cold fusion.)

Based on my experience, Asian Women:

• …are fitness nuts who, in the gym, regularly humiliate men twice their size.
• …eat like goddamned horses and never grow fat (see point one).
• …exhibit childlike glee at all bodily functions and belch like longshoremen.
• …sneeze so loudly that it can collapse your skull.
• …are hardened technical divers able to strap on three bottles and clamber around inside shipwrecks under 50 meters of water.
• …are infatuated with power tools and know how to use them. (My wife gets the same look in a hardware store that I get in a guitar or camera store; a look that says, credit limit? What credit limit?)
• …are expert plumbers, woodworkers, electricians and amateur physicians.
• …are effortlessly multilingual in a way that makes me feel plodding and ashamed.
• …are investment whizzes and should take control of all household finances unless you want to die penniless in a stolen refrigerator box.

The stereotype of Asians is that they are “inscrutable”. Based on observing my wife, that’s balls. Asian women are completely transparent. Here is a simple table for decoding their moods. Print and save:

*Caution: Take cover.

I hope this proves useful to the legion of men equally deranged but less fortunate than I.

Honestly, my wife is clearly one of a kind and not representative of anyone except for herself. What I’ve actually shared is the real person behind the “Singapore Girl” stereotype (although she is hot). Needless to say, I love her dearly and I’d be lost without her. For everyone else, here is a photo of her, at her most mysterious and enigmatic.

This post has my wife’s seal of approval. In the interests of fairness, I have invited her to contribute to this space a post on Asian women’s stereotypes of western men. Stay tuned.

Note: This post offers no insight into Asian mothers in law. That is a topic for a completely separate discussion.