"Wimpy Asian Men." What?! Get a load of this!

The picture shows a beautiful man called CD (and, no, this is not CD as in Chang-dae, my hiking leader; he's beautiful in his own ways, but not in this - sorry CD, I mean Chang-dae).
Once a male student asked me: "Bianca, what do you think about Asian men?" The question came at the time when I had crushes of various intensity degrees on at least 3 Asian, read: Korean men - no students, in case you're wondering. I wanted to say: "they are hot," but being the serious teacher that I am, I responded primly (and truthfully): "I don't really distinguish between Asian and Caucasian. Men are men, there are all kinds of 'em in every nation." Then he proceeded to say: "When I lived in Vancouver a white friend of mine (a girl) told me that the stereotype about Asian men in general is that they are wimpy, small, unmanly." To pretend that I was not aware of that stereotype would have been unfair and dishonest, so I told him: "yes, some people think that and they will probably continue being uneducated and prejudiced; he shouldn't care about what such people think." The student, btw, was a hunk if I've ever known one. I wanted to tell him that, but it wouldn't have been appropriate.

Ever since he asked me that question, I find myself glancing at Korean hunks on the subway, in restaurants, coffee shops, around my classroom, (hehehe). Lots of drop-dead gorgeous male population in Seoul. Of course, there are many kottminam (mega-metrosexuals dressed in pastels who who don't do a whole lotta good for the shattering of the wimpy image),; however, even in their case if you strip all that pink off of them (you wish!), unwind silk scarves and pull off zirconia-studded oversized sunglasses, you're left with tall, good-looking, broad-shouldered males. You can get even more of them if you disrobe that funeral procession of Korean salary men clad in black from head to toe, with their oversized (but usually very empty) shoulder bags. It's not too bad of a look but when you see so many that the inside of the subway car looks all dark and you think the electricity is out, you start perceving as a uniform. I am always reminded of old documentary films about China that featured working class all clad in navy blue loose suit-like outfits rushing to work on their bicycles.
Where did the stereotype come from? The answer is probably more complex than the one I'm going to give, and I don't pretend to be an expert on the topic. It has to do with racism, too, with the wicked white supremacists' ideas of race and physical strength. On the more practical level, perhaps the early Asian immigrants in North America came to the continent after weeks or months of travel, from poor regions, underfed and sickly, looking weak, not speaking the language, intimidated, humiliated... Although Caucasians are still in general taller (I don't have any statistics, - too lazy to google this early in the morning and to uneducated to know it for a fact - I'm just judging by the number of really tall people I know back home and here in Korea), the gap has been rapidly narrowing due to better nutrition and the overall improved living conditions.

I was at a party in Hongdae last Thursday. It was a launch party for a new little 'neighbourhood guide book" called "Napkin" The party was at a bar called "the 7th Heaven," a place that welcomes everyone regardless of their nationality, race or sexual orientation. I wish that people who still buy into that steretype could have been at the party. There were so many good-looking men, including CD, the long-haired dreamboat (see the pix and drool, ladies and gents), and a bunch of hairdressers and stylists.
I know what you might be thinking now. Yes, I know all about beauty being only skin deep and the inner beauty that really matters, and the beauty being in the eye of the beholder, blah, blah, blah. We acknowledge other talents, natural or acquired, why not beauty? It's just unfair to beautiful people: we praise brains, intellectual and artistic accomplishments, but we are very stingy in acknowledging the merit of beautiful people. Is it that we think that something not struggled for but merely received as a gift at birth is not worth a praise, - or are we simply envious? Mozart was born a musical genius and we still admire him, no one cares that music came to him like talking to an ordinary Joew. You may be thinking that I've fallen of my horse for comparing the unique Mozart with a beautiful but ordinary person. You may be also saying, beauty withers and dies, music is eternal. It's all true! Then, what about Helen of Troy? Her beauty is immortal. Its legen lives on and on. What about all that "carpe diem" and living in and for the moment credo? They say that it was the poor who invented that little slogan: "money can't buy you happiness." Is it also the not so beautiful (and the ones who do not feel that way) who came up with "beauty is only skin deep."

If we can admire beautiful animals, flowers, furniture, food etc. without a trace of embarassment, why is it different with people? I am not talking about celebrities, whose looks are the only subject of many publications and I am not asking for a world-like, Mozart-like recognition. I talk about people who inhabit your and my world, like CD and a lot of that crowd at the party. So, here's to beauty.
P.S. Yes, I've changed my hair and I have gone all shallow; from now on I'll be writing only about clothes, beauty products and beautiful people. It's my blog - so, sew me.