Yesterday, while leaving work, I saw something that pushed my Judgmental button. It was a couple walking in front of me on the sidewalk. I couldn't see their faces, but from the back it was apparent that one of them was a young Asian woman, dressed casually like a college student, petite and thin with a simple chin-length bob. The other was a tall man in a gray suit. From the tone of his skin peeking out of the jacket, I surmised that he was Caucasian. His hair color was very odd -- the best way I can describe it is Trump-like, pale brown with spreading blotches of white, as if he was in the middle of a dye job and had lost interest and wandered off.

Anyway, what really got me about this little scene was that the man had his hand on the crook of the woman's neck the entire time, from when I joined them in front of my building to the end of the block, where I crossed the street and they turned right. He even changed hands at one point, when pedestrian traffic going the other way forced him to move around to her other side. Now, you may have never seen this particular maneuver -- people in my family do it to each other on occasion, as a joke, and it is very annoying -- but done in sincerity it is disturbing with its faux affection and overtones of control. Seeing an older white man hold a young Asian woman by the back of the neck all the way down 50th Street actually alarmed me enough that I took out my earbuds just in case she was quietly squeaking "Help" to passersby. But at the corner he turned her around to face him (by the neck, again -- gah) and she threaded her tiny pale arms around his waist, and I turned away.

Throw in the usual wigwaf sensitivity (although in this case you have a rare sighting of O'Wigwaf -- Old White Guy With Asian Fetish) and you have the perfect storm of Things that Make Rebecca a Bigot. This vignette was on my mind when I read this Marie Claire piece on Asian trophy wives:


Other, more adept writers have already picked to pieces this column, which reads like the kind of half-assed paper I would throw together for a cultural studies class the night before it was due. It's so haphazardly written that I find it hard to form a coherent response to it, other than, "Yes, there sure are a lot of Asian women married to older white moguls." And yes, the trend does creep me out for reasons I cannot entirely pinpoint, although if I'm honest with myself I'm sure it has something to do with competition and prejudice within one's own demographic (in this case, educated young Asian females). From the Marie Claire piece:


Yeah, I'm too cynical (or pragmatic?) to believe that all of those bonds are predicated on True Love. I fully admit my prejudice when I say that my instinct is to go more with a combo of Lust (on the O'Wigwaf side) + Opportunism (for the Butterfly). I totally and utterly reject the rebellion suggestion -- way to perpetuate a stereotype, Ms. Ying Chu -- in fact, my mom often brings up Mr. Wendi Deng as the income bracket to which I should aspire (I think my dad just wants a homeboy from my grandparents' village, wherever that is).

Perhaps inadvertently, the author exposes my own tendency to stereotype by race. I am way harsher on Julie Chen (who's had massive plastic surgery, btw -- that's a whole other area of my prejudice) and Wendi Deng than on white women of similar pedigree who marry white tycoons. And that's unfair, because it's not like Chen and Deng arrived on a boat no speakee English. There's no reason to believe they are any less Americanized than I am, and, frankly, it's insulting to them to call into suspicion their ability to relate to their husbands on an equal level. I'm not saying that Ying Chu is the only one who's thought this, but it is really offensive to call Chen, Deng, and most of the other Asian wives and girlfriends she cites in her piece "trophies" and "comparisons to concubines" just because of their significant others. In fact, why is any woman a trophy just because she is with a successful man, especially when she herself is considerably accomplished?

(Gee, who would've thought a poorly-considered Marie Claire trends piece would help me to become a more fair and balanced person?)

I have friends who are in White Guy-Asian Girl couples. They all know and bemoan the wigwaf archetype. It's tough for them, because if you didn't know them personally, and you didn't know that their relationships consist of so much more than "I spent a year in Japan teaching English," then what's stopping you from seeing them on the street and making all the assumptions we've made before? Nothing. We've all done it. My friends in the aforementioned White Dude-Asian Chick combos do it all the time, perhaps because they are self-conscious about perpetuating the stereotype.

I'm self conscious about it, too. If I date a white guy, will people see me as a fetish object? Will he? Then again, if I date an Asian guy, am I just another guai-guai/Sanrio-loving/"tee hee" girl (my Asian girls know what I'm talking about)? Perhaps the problem is the fear of being identified merely as a girlfriend archetype and losing my sense of individuality.

Racialicious' Latoya Peterson, guest-blogging at Jezebel, poses some interesting questions that my friends and I have discussed before:

Is a white man dating Asian woman acting out a fetish?

Is an Asian woman dating a white man acting out a fetish?

If two people mutually fetishize each other, does that make it okay?

Vickie Chang, in a nuanced 2006 Village Voice story on "Asiaphilia," gives a good example:

I was the 10-year-old girl swooning and singing along with Rivers Cuomo over the three-chord riffs of Weezer's "El Scorcho," that song about half-Japanese girls that do it to him every time. Oblivious to its implications, I was pleased that the man in the Buddy Holly glasses had a penchant for Asian girls because, you know, that way I actually had a chance.

Asian brothers have bemoaned for a long time the stereotype/fact that Asian girls prefer every race but their own. Discounting all of the valid, substantive reasons people of any racial combination get together, I think there is some truth to the preference, and it has something to do with the unfair emasculation of Asian men in American culture (here's a tip: girls like their men sensitive, but not more than they are. If you don't know where that line is drawn, watch (500) Days of Summer. If you are as moony as Tom, then even looking like Joseph Gordon-Levitt isn't going to help you get the girl).

In the end, it's hard to explore completely your motives, and his motives, for why the two of you are together. It's impossible to control whatever conclusions other people reach about it. Every relationship, regardless of race, gender, income, education or any other demographic category, is based on a unique alchemy of physical attraction, compatibility of interests and the absolutely undefinable chemistry of personality.

But I'll tell you one thing that's easy to spot: a wigwaf. I'd hazard a guess that every Asian girl has encountered at least one at some point in her life. Since my blog is public, I won't add my own testimony (you can ask me about it sometime), but it hews pretty closely to the following illustrations. From Chang's Village Voice piece:

But as Christina, who's Filipino American, stood listening to the music, a full Amstel Light in one hand, she was approached by a thirtysomething white man in a collared shirt, the top tactically unbuttoned to show off a gold chain that made him look like something out of South Beach. He put another full Amstel in Tina's other hand. She smiled and thanked him.

Then he looked at the rest of us, all Asian.

"You're by far the most attractive women in here," he said. He pulled out his wallet and asked if we'd like drinks. "I really shouldn't be doing this," he said. "I just bought a house on the golf course."

We declined.

"You know, I just got back from Bangkok," he went on. "The women in Thailand are all gorgeous. You're all gorgeous! It's just that whole area."

That whole area? Bangkok? Thailand in general? Southeast Asia? The greater Asian continent?

Jen at Disgrasian, in rebuttal to Marie Claire's assertion that "Asian women are not only submissive Suzie Wongs and geishas, we're also fucking brain-dead, too" (Disgrasian's paraphrase), writes:

The complications of sexual politics notwithstanding, fetishists are easy to spot. They come at you with their prayer-bead bracelets and their suspiciously in-depth knowledge of your "culture." They come with transparent dating histories, and many of them are more than happy to offer up that their last eight girlfriends have been Asian and unabashedly expound--based on their dating experience alone--on the fundamental difference between, say, Korean women and Chinese women. Fetishists tend to talk about you like you're only a member of a larger group; e.g. instead of saying, "I really like your shiny hair," they'll say, "I really like Asian girls' hair." And, frankly, they're creepy, like noticeably-remarkably-right-off-the-bat-creepy, like konichiwa-ni hao ma-what are you?-as-an-opening-line creepy, and stalk-you-on-Facebook-where-they-have-381-friends-who-all-happen-to-be-Asian-women-creepy, and follow-you-to-your-car-in-a-parking-garage-after-you've-shared-two-minutes-riding-an-elevator-together-creepy. It's not rocket science, people.

Seriously. And I'd add that we don't just have wigwaf-dar, we (and by "we" I now mean women in general) have creepazoid-dar. Don't think we can't tell.

When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer. Then Pilate asked him, "Don't you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?" But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge—to the great amazement of the governor.

"What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?" Pilate asked.
      They all answered, "Crucify him!"

"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate.
      But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"

Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

They came to a place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!"

In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.' " In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

-excerpted from Matthew 27

Rembrandt's The Three Crosses, 1653, third state


Today I woke up and thought about my job, what I watched on TV this week, what I'm going to do tomorrow. Nothing wrong with that, but today is the day chosen as the anniversary of Jesus Christ's death. It looks so oddly normal for such a momentous day of remembrance -- maybe a little quieter here in midtown for those who took time off to attend a Good Friday service.

I'm looking outside my office window, 32 floors above West 51st Street, and I'm thinking about how two thousand years ago (give or take a few years), it was late afternoon in Jerusalem and Jesus had spent the night in a Roman prison for crimes he did not and would never commit. That morning he had appeared in what can generously be called a kangaroo court, and around this time of day he had gone through so many rounds of mockery and beatings that I wonder if his ears had grown desensitized to the vitriol and his skin numb to the barbs by now.

The Bible reports that Jesus stayed mostly silent and unresponsive during the worst and last day of his life. As a child I assumed it was holy piety that helped him maintain his dignity; now I wonder if it was his mind and body simply shutting down to protect itself from what was happening to it.

It's said that when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. I wonder, during Jesus' final agonizing hours, whether not just his own life, but the lives of all humanity, drifted through his mind. Did he focus on the angry faces and voices immediately surrounding him? Could he picture the future, a landscape dotted by manmade structures taller than the tallest tree, filled with corporate con men who'd make the tax collectors of his day look like petty thieves, terrorists whose power over the global psyche could scarcely be imagined, and murderers and molesters committing all sorts of atrocities while wearing holy symbols? And people like me, who claim to be his but spend more time thinking about anything and everything else, like a kid who forgets her parent's birthday? Knowing all of this, the prolonged antipathy and apathy toward his sacrifice two millennia later, what would he think?

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

He thought, It is all worth it.

They are all worth it.