AsianGirlProf's (Mis)Adventures in Dating

A few years ago, there was an emergence of Asian American chick lit, with the release of books such as Kim Wong Keltner's The Dim Sum of All Things, Blossom Kan's China Dolls, and Sonia Singh's Bollywood Confidential. These novels are modeled after Sex and the City and Bridget Jones's Diary, but with Asian female protagonists. They center on 30-something-year-old professional women who enjoy designer shoes and fancy martinis, and who create adventures for themselves dating a bevy of (mostly non-Asian) men. Not exactly an original formula, and as the titles indicate, these books are also generally poorly written. Several of my Asian American girlfriends told me that I should have ridden that wave and written my own chick lit novel as a way to vent my dating frustrations. Too bad I was busy writing my dissertation (pesky scholarly work of intellectual value) and missed that boat. I guess I'll have to settle for writing my own Tiger Mom novel before that storm passes.

Still, given that every other aspect of my life is hopelessly boring, I probably should write about my experiences circulating in the dating pool. That way, even the worst date won't turn out to be a total waste of time, so long as a good story comes out of it. I can't promise that my writing will be any good, either. I don't have that breezy writing voice that's most suited for this genre, and I'm perhaps too self-conscious about exploiting ethnic stereotypes for the sake of entertainment. But at the very least my stories will come from the perspective of a 30-something-year-old professional woman who can't afford the shoes she covets, who will often prefer a beer over a martini, and who tends to (either on purpose or not) date nerdy Asian men. Doesn't exactly sound like juicy blogging fodder, but might be a fun experiment anyway.

Once I figure out where I want to begin, I'll post Chapter One!

I want to have this man's babies.

So that's Alex Wong, the standout contestant on this season's So You Think You Can Dance. The show first featured Wong when he auditioned for Season 5 and totally wowed the judges, including Ms. Debbie Allen (as in "You want FAME? Well FAME costs. And right here is where you start paying in SWEAT." Debbie Allen), who could only respond with a "Shut. Up." While Wong's contract with the Miami City Ballet kept him from competing that season, he's now returned to totally dominate Season 7.

The guy has an adorable face and killer abs. (Seriously, just look at those abs.) And he's a crazy skilled ballet dancer, as his win at the Prix de Lausanne clearly indicates. But what sealed the deal for me was this performance from this week's episode:

alex 9 @ Yahoo! Video

I. Cannot. Stop. Watching. This. He is hitting it so hard, and with so much commitment and abandon, that the audience goes completely batshit. And to expand on the judges' exaltations, the fact that this guy is primarily a ballet dancer makes this hip-hop performance all the more awesome. Even I, a total non-dancer, can spot when a hip-hop dancer isn't accustomed to the lines needed for lyrical dance, or when a tap dancer is missing the hip action needed for latin ballroom. Wong just kills a genre that's totally outside of his own. (It's really clever, too, on the part of choreographers Tabitha and Napoleon D'Umo, to highlight Wong's versatility by slipping in the ballet bits into this routine.) I cannot wait to see what Wong has in store for the rest of the season.

I realize that Alex Wong would probably be more interested in making out with his dance partner tWitch than with me (not to make prejudiced assumptions, of course), and his physical agility genes would probably be shamefully diluted if mixed with my flabby ass genes, but seriously, I would carry this man's child. Or many children, to produce a friggin' Von Trapp family of dancing Asian babies.

Stuff White People Like: Chinese Parents' Edition

I was watching tv with my parents a few nights ago when we stumbled upon the Discovery Channel, which was broadcasting a marathon of Man Vs. Wild, starring Bear Grylls. Though I generally have no interest in the wilderness or how one would survive in it, I kinda love the show. I excitedly described to my parents some of Bear Grylls's nastiest antics: finding drinking water by squeezing it out of fresh elephant dung, hollowing out a camel carcass to use as shelter, and drinking turtle blood (pictured). Coincidentally, the episode we happened to catch was a countdown of Bear Grylls's 25 favorite moments, so my parents got a condensed helping of the show.

As they watched Bear Grylls (how awesome a name is that?) deliberately fall into a frozen lake, jump out of airplanes and eat giant exploding worms, they offered their commentary:

Mom: What is wrong with this crazy man? Why would he do these things? Does he want to die?

Dad: It's all fake! If he was actually risking death, they wouldn't show it on tv.

Me: Well, that Crocodile Hunter guy died, and I think they eventually showed it on tv.

Mom: That guy was stupid, too.

Dad: Why is it always stupid white men who like to do these stunts?

END.

My parents may have a point. Bear Grylls, Steve Irwin, the two guys on Dual Survival, just about every contestant on shows like Survivor-- It does seem like white people, and white dudes in particular, take delight in throwing themselves into environments in which humans aren't meant to exist, getting themselves injured, and eating lots of really gross things. Not to say that Asian folks don't have tendencies to do some crazy shit. Martial arts are pretty crazy, especially when taken to the level that THIS Chinese dude has. The Japanese have perfected the art of producing television shows featuring people who like to hurt themselves. And let's face it-- Half the "gross" stuff that white people eat on these stunt challenge shows like Fear Factor is probably standard cuisine in many Asian countries. (For the record, of that list, I've only had durian, stinky tofu, and fugu.)

But while all cultures may celebrate their own brands of crazy, I wonder if the type represented by Man Vs. Wild is a particularly white Anglo-American thing. Does the scenario of a lone dude combatting the hostile wilderness and defying death appeal to the standard frontier myth that has basically driven white men to "discover" new lands and conquer them? Does Bear Grylls satisfy some fantasy that white men have to maintain in order to feel powerful in this supposed post-feminist, post-racial, post-modern world?

I dunno. What I do know is that I love watching a white dude piss into a tube of snake skin and drink from it as a means to hydrate himself.

Sex and a City of Hot Asian Men

Last night, a good friend of mine hosted a Sex and the City party, in which we wore our cutest shoes, drank girly cocktails and watched our favorite episodes of the series. Revisiting the series reminded me of how neatly it manages to encapsulate the thrills and frustrations of being a single woman. The "A Woman's Right to Shoes" episode points out how much money I've spent on friends' weddings and baby showers, and dares me to register for gifts so that all those bitches have to validate my life choice of getting a PhD. (After all, the 8 years I took to get the degree is longer than the duration of any of their marriages so far.) I also can't help but applaud when Carrie goes on her rant after being dumped via Post-It note. As a woman whose last long-term relationship ended with the guy breaking up with me over the phone and then never talking to me again, and as as single gal who recently went on a date that ended with the guy giving me a Christian side hug, I also think that an ending that is thoughtful and decent shouldn't be too much to ask for. I guess the fact that so many women could relate to the show, in spite of its fantasy-creating glamour, is what made it successful.

But as much as I relate to the show, and as much as I've caught myself in conversations where somebody says, "Oh, this is like the SATC episode where...", there's also something incredibly alienating about watching it. Part of it is class, of course. I don't know anyone in their 30s who can live the kind of lifestyle that these women do on the show. Plus, there's the show's unbearable whiteness of being. The four leading ladies are white. All their friends are white. All the passersby in the background whenever they go shopping, eat at trendy restaurants, or attend club openings are white. They all end up with white men (unless you count Charlotte's Jewish husband as non-white). And with the exception of a few men of color (like the truly drool-worthy Blair Underwood), all the men they fuck are white.

And this is what truly bothers me: Not once in the entire series or subsequent films does any one of the ladies date or fuck an Asian man. (Samantha does spend one episode lusting after her South Asian yoga instructor, but the entire episode is also about the fact that she CAN'T fuck him because he's taken a vow of celibacy. Of course.) The lack of Asian beefcake on the show is not so surprising. Asian men don't get represented as sexy or desirable in American popular culture, and perhaps the most famous Asian man who has circulated through American media in recent years has been, lamentably, THIS GUY. And THIS GUY is not much better. Latino men have the macho Latin lover stereotype going for them. African American men, stereotyped as having big penises, produce catchphrases like, "Once you go black, you can't go back." Asian men, however, are small and anemic computer nerds who wouldn't know how to navigate a woman's body with a map and a flashlight. Asian men have no place in the world of Sex and the City.

As an Asian woman who has known quite a few hot Asian men, and who's always looking out for my Asian brothas, I present the following evidence of what the makers and viewers of Sex and the City have been missing out on:

Daniel Henney

Daniel Dae Kim

Naveen Andrews

John Cho

Sendhil Ramamurthy

Victor Basa

Russell Wong

Hidetoshi Nakata

Aaron Kwok

Rick Yune

Archie Kao

Johnny Tri Nguyen

Takeshi Kaneshiro

Holy hotness. What heterosexual woman of any ethnicity wouldn't want to tap some of that? Here's what I propose: If the Sex and the City movie franchise were to end in a trilogy, the last installment should feature no men BUT hot Asian men. That's my idea of a thoughtful and decent ending. In fact, I'll volunteer to write the screenplay. And work as the casting director.

Ew.

This may be the most horrifying video I've seen in a long time:

The fact that Katie Holmes has no stage presence and can't hold a tune to save her life is the least of my problems with this routine. Any attempts to display sexual attraction between these two makes me throw up in my mouth. I have the distinct feeling, too, that Katie Holmes has been rehearsing this routine in her bedroom since she was a teenager (the amateurish performance just screams high school musical), around the same time that she first dreamed about marrying Tom Cruise. Gross. And yet, as if I were watching a train wreck, I can't look away. This video may almost be as bad as "2 girls 1 cup." (Don't go looking for that video if you don't know what it is. Seriously.)