Dating in New York City – Holding Hans with Brian Hansbury: Fever
Dear Hans,
Why do so many white guys date Asian girls?
Signed,
Egg in the East Village
First, Egg, I’d suggest reading this website where a white guy tries really hard to seem like he’s not looking down his nose at Asian guys while totally in the process of looking down his nose at Asian guys. He espouses all kinds of opinions you can choose to agree with or not. Then I’d read this newspaper article from the early 1990s that seems remarkably relevant today.
Warning: The following is peppered with gross generalization.
All but one of my girlfriends was a regular, run of the mill white chick. Boring, pale, vanilla. The exception was, obviously, an Asian girl. You can read all about her somewhere on my old blog (Serena: scorchedhottub.blogspot.com). She done did me wrong, but I digress. I dated her because she was totally beautiful. After we got together, I was excited by the prospect of exploring home cooked Korean food until I discovered both her parents were white, Irish Catholics. The cabbage was phenomenal and her fridge was always stocked with Harp.
Asian girls are a lot like hot, high maintenance white girls, just way smarter. But, despite this intelligence Asian girls still provide that ditzy vibe white guys adore by maintaining random, gaping holes in their knowledge and carrying an overzealous attitude towards laughter… crazy, crazy child-like laughter (Of all the cultural differences that exist in the world, the propensity for non-American Asian girls to laugh this way is absolutely baffling. It’s possibly one of my all-time favorite curiosities. Is it part of their schooling?). In this way, many Asian lovers fancy themselves as modern day catchers in the rye a la Holden Caufield, Woody Allen or R. Kelly.
Truth is, Asian girls have a lot going for them that doesn’t attract pedophiles/self-righteous protagonists of classic novels.
A rundown of White Girls to Asian Girls:
Asians Whites
Smell Always good Sometimes like feet
Hair Always shiny and sleek Potential for pageant hair
Body Usually thin Mostly fat
Brain Oversized Undersized
‘tude Shit doesn’t stink and it’s true Shit doesn’t stink but it absolutely smells just like shit
Many Asian girls pride themselves on their comportment. I’ve read it on a lot of Myspace “About Me” sections. They consider themselves superior to white girls because they are clean, neat and upstanding. This is just another reason why white dudes might date them.
The other thing is because they are around everywhere in NYC. I have a theory that when you are surrounded by a certain ethnicity, you gain a greater appreciation for their physical features. Of all the races, I am probably least attracted to black girls. Sorry black girls, that’s just the way it is. But after I lived in Crown Heights for a year, I was definitely finding a higher percentage of black girls attractive. This is just the way the world works. Can one truly appreciate a master painter’s works before immersing himself in said painter’s oeuvre?
White dudes date Asian women because they want to immerse themselves in their oeuvre.
Love,
Hans
Tags:Dating, holding hans with brian hansbury
24. March 2009 at 9:32 pm :
dude! there is all kinds of wrong here… while it doesn’t have to do with interracial dating specifically, mimi nguyen runs through some of the issues here (http://www.worsethanqueer.com/slander/hair.html)
30. March 2009 at 4:09 pm :
Of course there is all kinds of wrong here. The biggest problem stems from the question. There is all kinds of inter-racial dating and none of it should involve any other phenomenon than the fact that the two people met and liked each other and it was awesome. My function is to try to answer a silly question. Also, all of my responses are tongue in cheek to some degree. This post was generalization central and I knew that while writing it. I slept through the night knowing that if anyone had a major problem with my post, it was more their problem than mine.
The real answer: White guys date Asian girls because the girl they fell in love with happens to be Asian. And also, sometimes, probably they have some weird fetish.
Did I right any wrongs? It’s not like I set a school on fire.
31. March 2009 at 2:48 pm :
Your column here smacks of western white male fantasy. Not only is it racist, but misogynist as hell. For the concerned and socially-conscious neighborbee readers out there: here’s a necessary perspective offered by Vicki Lee, an Asian American woman who knows better than to “love-is-color-blind” the issue:
http://www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/news/yellow-fever/.
1. April 2009 at 8:36 am :
Dom, have you read any other post I’ve written on here? The only problem here is with you taking me seriously. An argument could be made that whether or not I’m kidding about anything in this post, some of the opinions are still irresponsible. Well, it’s an irresponsible column; a column that weekly dishes out terrible advice while under the guise of a legitimate attempt at offering solutions. As long as you have ideas and attitudes about the world that you believe are the right ones, that’s all that matters. These ideas I wrote in this post are not your ideas and you accordingly disagree with them. Frankly, they’re not my opinions either. They are adolescent at best. They are opinions I posit to shake things up. Obviously it worked.
I would be curious to know exactly which sentences got you going. I mean, I say Asian girls are smart. Well, that’s crazy right there. Not all Asian girls are smart. There are plenty of dumb ones. That’s just the law of averages. Then I say they all have holes in their knowledge. How would I have any idea if that’s true. And isn’t it possible that there are some very smart Asian girls who know nothing about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire? Or 1990s American Football? Or 1980s sitcoms? Doesn’t that smack of an absurd statement to you? How could I, the writer, not have holes in my own knowledge. Did you assume that I was a megalomaniac convinced of knowing everything? Then I talk about how non-American Asian girls sometimes have a different way of laughing. I have seen this with my own two eyes. Is that racist? Is observation racist?
Do you really think I believe Asian girls always have sleek, shiny hair, oversized brains and great attitudes? No, obviously I’m writing that list with a tongue in cheek nod to the fact that people out there believe in these “western white male” fantasies. Notice how I also say white girls are mostly fat, smell like feet and have pageant hair. Do you think I believe that? No. Lighten the hell up, Dom. Or become more intelligent so that when I write really dumb stuff, you can rise above it instead of lowering yourself to the intellectual level of my made up, philistin-ic post. Dismiss my post for the pseudo-intellectual babble that I intend it to be and you’ll have great days, filled with rising above things and lightening up.