Still searching for slanted eyes

Are people ever turned off by the search terms via which someone lands up on their blog?

Well, when you've just come home exhausted from work/classes, the last thing you want to know is that five people landed on your blog today searching for some variation of "Why Asians have slanted eyes" or "Asians, tilted eyes". UGH.

First, lest someone land on this post using those very search terms, Asians do not have slanted eyes. And no, people should not get surgery to "correct" this "problem", either.

A less insulting way to say this is that we have epicanthic folds. Or maybe that we are mongoloid. Is the latter pejorative? I don't know, though I far prefer it to being told I have slanted eyes or that I have slits. I know cartoons make Asians look like they have slits that are slanted, and I've seen "Asian" dolls that don't exactly portray us in the most flattering light, but people, these are caricatures. I don't know if there is an English equivalent, but in Japanese, there is actually a term to describe our eyes: 一重。(Literally, "one layer". Does this word exist in Chinese?) Unfortunately, the J-E dictionary I have isn't too helpful. They suggest "single-edged eyelid" or "smooth eyelid" as a translation. Meh.

I have to admit that ever since moving out here from NJ, I hear far less of this nonsense, and less people I meet are inherently or overtly racist, whatever-ist, so I'm not taken aback as much when I hear ridiculous stereotypes about Asians or gays or any other group. I've also become better at tuning out ridiculous comments and not taking things personally. Yet, I guess one can't entirely shake off one's past, because stuff like this still bugs me somewhat. (Ok, more than somewhat, b/c I'm blogging about it.)

Perhaps because there is a whole lucrative industry in Japan that makes money off of such distorted notions of beauty where one can get their eyelids "corrected" via surgery or inserts or other silly ridiculous things. "Look like a Caucasian"; "Look more beautiful" these ads tout. I have no idea how many people do this, but there are ads for stuff like this and whitening skin all over fashion magazines, and if people weren't conditioned to think that Asian eyes were defective or ugly, such a uselessly self-esteem-denigrating industry wouldn't exist.

It also bugs me when my Asian friends say things that indicate that they've internalized this notion of Western beauty as the "ideal". If you ever look at Japanese comics, most of the characters are drawn with more Caucasian-looking features.

Part of the thing that bothers me is that I think people sometimes have no idea how offensive they are being when they say certain things. Some of it is not explicitly whatever-ist. (I'm not sure if "racist" is the right "ist".) For example, when my friend tells me that Asians are exotic-looking, or that she has a little bit of slanted eyes b/c Genghis Khan raped her ancestors (a topic on which I've written a long diatribe about long long ago, so I won't bore people here w/ my vituperative rants), I think she actually believes this and that she's not trying to be mean or offensive, b/c she is otherwise very sensitive. In fact, when I got upset over this once, her reaction was that "slanted" is not a negative term.

True, except that we almost always use this word in a pejorative or negative context, e.g. "slanted views". Plus I grew up around people who used to associate slanted eyes with ugliness. So maybe I'm hypersensitive, but as far as I'm concerned, slanted has negative connotations.

Much as I'd like to think that my childhood experiences are a thing of the past, people are still landing on my blog via search queries like "how to fix slanted eyes" or "why do Asians have slanted eyes".

Sometimes, these inherently ___-ist remarks are less overt, but still equally annoying. On the east coast, two questions I used to get a lot were 1. Do you have an American name? and 2. Are you ever planning on going back to your country? The people asking these questions are usually very nice people and I imagine wouldn't nec. think of these questions as offensive. In fact, I didn't really think anything of these questions until I moved out here and realized that no one asks you such things.

I can be more forgiving about 1. because Chinese people tend to have American names (Whereas Japanese people and most Koreans tend not to pander to people who can't bother to learn pronounce our names. Is it because we are we more vain?). I always found this practice of assigning oneself a more "American-sounding" name rather odd, but to digress a little bit, I think this might be a cultural thing related to how countries teach English. For example, in China, from what I've heard, students are (sometimes? often?) given American names as part of their English-learning experience. When I took Chinese, I was given a Chinese name. But in Japan, people just use their given names in English classes. Maybe it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that this might be one reason Chinese people are more likely to assign random English names to themselves than the Japanese. But really, how hard is it to pronounce Dongxiao? (Dong-shao) Or Xiaohong? (Shao-hong) I suppose some people give themselves English names to make things easier for poor addled white people who can't pronounce such complicated names, but the more people make a practice of doing this, the more people expect that all people with weird names like Anzu or Apricot or Patita have a more quotidian alternative name like Jane or John.

As for 2., 2. used to annoy me when I lived on the east coast and I wasn't as snarky and secure as I am now, but now, I've become jaded enough that I find this question more amusing than annoying. Actually, I haven't been asked this since I've moved out here (though back east, strangers used to ask me this within 10 minutes of introductory idle chatter.), so I don't know how I'd answer that question, were I ever to be asked this, other than my standard "excuse you?" or lately, 甚麼? (said with attitude, like a 北京er) seems to roll off my tongue quicker than anything in English.

I'm not trying to imply that everyone from the east coast is like this. I have many good friends in NY, NJ, DC, Boston, etc., none of whom are _____-ist. But I did encounter this sort of thing far more on the east coast than over here and I'm still reminded of people's biases when I occasionally go visit my home town.

Conversely, it's not necessarily the case that everyone here is more "openminded". Actually most of the people I meet here are transplants originally from the east coast or other areas/nations. Heck, I meet more non-Californians here than "native" Californians. Also, the various ______-isms simply manifest themselves in different ways, so it's not entirely absent here. But generally, people I run in to here have lived in different areas (different countries even), have been exposed to more different cultures, and the fact that they choose to uproot from their familiar surroundings and move out here from wherever already indicates to me a more open mind. (I'm biased, of course, because I did this once upon a time.)

How did I start with a rant about slanted eyes and end up with a comparison between east coast people and Californians? Eh, I don't know, except that I still associate that kind of attitude with my home town, and by association, broadly, The East Coast. Incidentally, the slanted eyes queries all originated from the east coast--Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, New Haven (plus two queries from the Philippines and Bangalore, where I guess people believe that Asians have slanted eyes. . ..).