So according to this article off Slate, there is apparently “no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women.” Of course, this is a study done via speed-dating events with subjects who attend Columbia grad school in New York fucking City. Maybe not totally representative, perhaps?

Jezebel disagrees with the findings too. According to Moe:

“There are a few reasons some dudes prefer Asian women, and it starts with the fact that they are very rarely unattractive, and they are even more rarely stupid, and they are even more rarely than that fat. They have really nice skin and they’re not afraid to tell you yours looks bad.”

Well, I won’t argue otherwise, but I will say that there are a whole boatload (full of refugees!) of reasons why an Asian fetish definitely exists, starting with cultural representations in American media. Whether it’s across-the-board hotness (something I kind of doubt to be honest) or notions of subservience (more likely), this is not just a made-up phenomenon. I don’t need to recount every instance of being asked “Where in Asia are you from?” or each instance of being hit on via a “ni hao ma” to prove my point.

I’ll post more on how annoyed I get by all this ridiculous stuff later, but any reader thoughts on the topic of yellow fever? Sometimes I question whether I’m being overly sensitive but even most of my non-Asian friends seem to agree that it exists.

I don’t know if there is a happy medium between meritocracy and diversity, but I hope that this is indicative of its possibility. I’m a pretty staunch proponent of affirmative action, especially when it comes to race (and to a lesser extent socioeconomic status, which is great for low-income kids but not fantastic in terms of racial diversity). Surprisingly, my opinion on the subject is more controversial than my support of mandatory HPV vaccination or same-sex marriage, and I find myself having to justify this viewpoint all the time, even at Harvard and even to my liberal-minded friends. As an Asian American, it seems particularly contradictory for me to take on this view since it’s against my self-interest. So here’s an explanation:

When I started high school, my mother had a plan in mind. That plan involved straight As, perfect SAT scores, and eventual admission to UC Berkeley. Surprisingly, I managed to deliver on the latter without either of the former. But while scores of second-generation Chinese teenagers would’ve killed for my position, I would’ve killed my mother if she forced me to go there. Berkeley’s population, with 42% of students identifying as Asian, was too similar to my alma mater where the student body was 48% Asian. I already lived in a city with the highest proportion of Asian residents in the country. The prospect of spending college in the same minority-majority illusion of my first 18 years was hardly appealing.

Besides, while the children of my mother’s friends were mostly science or engineering majors (stereotypical but reality), I aspired to freelance for New York magazine, toyed with the idea of a sex column, and dreamed of attending journalism school. I wanted to write for the American public — and the public was white, black, and brown, in addition to yellow. And so Northwestern was in, Berkeley was out.

But I never made it to either. Though I initially gave Cal a chance, our love affair (some would call it an arranged marriage) ended abruptly when my 14-year-old self first saw the campus during a February downpour and decided that flipping burgers at In-N-Out would be preferable to the gray prison before me. Four years later, I’d be at another prison — not Northwestern but one that was brick-fortified and ivy-covered. Harvard, however, was redeemed by an inmate population as colorful in personality as it was in skin tone. Best of all, my mother couldn’t argue. I got a plane ticket out of California; she got the pride that came with Crimson parentage.

Nowadays, there are a lot of things I miss about the San Gabriel Valley, where signs came in both English and Chinese (not that I could read the latter) and dim sum was just a short drive or walk away. Boston couldn’t be more different from home. Besides Sunday morning conversations with my mother, I hear Cantonese maybe twice a year here — each time because I’ve made a rare venture into Chinatown. With only one other undergrad hailing from Monterey Park, California — a good friend of mine, thankfully — I find myself in the new position of a minority. But I don’t mind. At Harvard, just about everyone is a minority in some respect.

As much as I complain about how unhappy Harvard makes me sometimes, I question if I’d be more satisfied at a place like Cal. Berkeley is a fantastic academic institution — one I’d recommend to just about anyone, but it’s not the place I’d go to meet people different from myself and it’s not somewhere I’d like to see my little sister at, if only because I think she needs to escape the same high school bubble I was caught in. Admittedly, Harvard is in the enviable position of having an abundance of applicants who are both diverse and equally qualified. Not every school is quite so fortunate, but that’s not an excuse as to why diversity should be lacking, especially since the initiatives at UCLA seem to bring about very tangible results.

Maybe I underestimate how much I would’ve ventured away from the familiar had I gone to Berkeley. Still, for all the autonomy I may have over who I become acquainted with, I doubt that my groups of friends there would be as diverse as they are at Harvard. And though I don’t value my relationship with JB because he’s gay any more than I love CK because she’s black, race — like everything else — still matters. I am positive that my relationships with people of different colors, sexual orientations, religions, etc. shape and influence my world view for the better and that I will be better off when I graduate for having known and loved people who are not mostly white, Asian, or Californian. Perhaps I would’ve met some of them (or their equivalents) anyway, but I know that at Berkeley, it would’ve been much harder to forge a bond with a tongue-ringed five-foot wonder with a Southern drawl and skin several shades darker than my own. And wouldn’t that have been a shame?

I’m walking down Fifth Avenue at 1am in a Chaiken denim skirt and low-cut black top. Not the wisest decision I’ve made in recent memory, but give me a break: cabs on the East Coast don’t take plastic. I’m trying to hurry to the train station as quickly as possible, when a guy — exactly what I want to avoid — starts walking alongside me and chatting me up.

It’s 1am. He’s at least 35. I am so not in the mood to even deal with guys my own age.

After throwing out the typical “you look beautiful/sexy/like the perfect candidate for fertilization”, he asks me to get a drink. I nervously smile, turn him down politely, quicken my pace, and keep refusing as he gets more persistent. Mind you, he is following me the entire time. So maybe three or four blocks into this, he asks, “You don’t like Mexican guys?”

Uh, wow. I almost slapped him. Five times over, since he repeated the question at least five more times. But obviously, there is a limit even to my rashness.

No, dude. It’s not because I don’t like Mexican guys. It’s because I don’t like assholes who follow me at 1am for SIX BLOCKS after I repeatedly turn down their offer for “a good time” where “we both win”.

Is this some sort of trendy tactic to get girls to agree to dates for fear of seeming racist? Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t give my number to a black admirer on the train and he actually asked me “What do y’all Asian girls have against a brotha?” while I was on my way to meet up with a black guy. There is some major irony here.

Look, I know it’s easier on your ego to fabricate a racial bias on my part, but really, please refrain. Superficial things I do care about include: sperm count, net worth, number of Facebook friends. Things I don’t care about: melanin.

I recommend that readers check out DJ Kammy Kam’s latest post, concerning the Western beauty ideals imposed upon African American women. His blog borrows the name of an India.Arie song, “I Am Not My Hair,” for its title. I suppose it’s fitting that he’s now addressing beauty standards by using hair texture as a springboard.

Sometime mid-summer, I sent CK the India.Arie song above. I thought she’d appreciate it, since she’s in the minority of black women who do not relax their hair. I am actually a big fan of her afro. For all its knots and kinks, her locks are infinitely more interesting and lively than my pin-straight mane. Her hair has a “don’t mess with me” attitude, just like her. That same attitude is why she would never douse it in chemicals or straighten it against its will. But CK’s perspective isn’t exactly popular. She’s probably one of a handful of black women at Harvard who leave their hair in its natural state.

“Unfortunately, we live in the United States,” said one friend trying to explain the phenomenon to me. But I found myself unable to relate. At least when it comes to beauty standards, it’s a hell of a lot easier for me to conform to Western ideals than black women. Yellow, after all, is closer to white than any other color. To be honest, I can’t even think of many physical insecurities I have that white women don’t share. I wish my breasts were bigger and my waist slimmer, but I don’t have kinky hair and my skin color is the perfect shade of California tan.

Still, there’s a whole other set of pressures that come with being Asian and a “foreign” look is one of them. The physical characteristic that most significantly separates white and Asian women is the shape of their eyes. That’s one of the few things I can’t change no matter how many visits to the beauty salon. But thanks to cosmetic surgery, Asian women can now widen their eyes or surgically create an eyelid fold if they so wish — it’s an outpatient procedure. It’s also the most popular cosmetic operation in Japan (decidedly the most Westernized Asian country). From an American perspective, it sounds atrocious but in Asia, it’s as commonplace and accepted as … well, relaxing your hair in America. If CK’s afro is what separates her look from the mainstream, then my eyes are the Asian equivalent.

Last week, I woke up from a nap in a cold sweat. I had a terrible nightmare that CK relaxed her hair without consulting me. With a shoulder-length, artificially straight cut, she looked nothing like herself. In the dream, I was so upset that I started lecturing her and demanded an explanation for how she could sell out. In my conscious state, I’m amused by how angry I was, considering that I’m more superficial than she is by far. Between the two of us, I’m definitely the conformist. But maybe that’s why I found myself so outraged. As looks-conscious as I am, I admire her willingness to rebel. She fights a fight I’m not willing to take on myself. And if CK would give up that feisty poof of hair in the face of external pressure, then who will society tame next?