Growing Up Asian and Female

Growing Up Asian and Female

For many women my age, gender seems to have become less important as a factor in their lives. In the United States, a woman has served as Secretary of State and women speak about 'having it all.' Many women are the primary breadwinners for their families. If there is sexism in the culture, it is very subtle, and it is extremely unfashionable to tell a young woman that she cannot do something simply because she is a girl. However, sadly, this progressive attitude is very much removed from my own experience. Although I love my parents very much, they still adhered to very traditional values and were somewhat insulated from the progressive ideals of gender embodied in American culture. As a young, Asian female I was expected to defer to both of my parents in terms of my desires and aspirations. Obedience rather than 'testing my limits' was emphasized.

Although my mother is a strong, intelligent woman in many respects, there was no question that my father's will ruled the household. The values of humility were stressed to me, rather than pride in my tangible, intellectual accomplishments such as good grades. Unlike my American friends who were told to be proud of themselves and to love themselves 'as they were,' I still felt a need to prove myself by getting good grades and attaining certain benchmarks of success. Yet because of the fact that I was a girl, I also always felt that my ability to attain the ideal of a perfect child was incomplete.

Like many people who are not Caucasian, I grew up facing prejudice because of my race and appearance. I felt uncomfortable whenever any type of Asian history was discussed in class -- bad or good -- because people always looked at me. If I did well in school, people said it was because I was Asian; if I did poorly, it was seen as a reflection upon all of the other Asian students. I often found myself in the position of defending my culture and my identity. But while there is much that I do love about my culture, the attitudes I grew up with regarding gender I could not defend. Thus, I felt as if I needed to balance my desire to be a feminist with my desire to be a 'good' Asian girl in so many ways.

It is not simply a question of my inability to model the ideal of the 'good' Asian girl, either. On one hand, the cultural stereotype suggests that Asian women must not be aggressive and opinionated, and must be less knowing about sex than their male counterparts. On the other hand, there is also a very idealized version of a highly sexed Asian woman, a kind of 'geisha' stereotype. In contrast to the U.S., in many Asian countries it is not unusual to see very sexual advertising featuring women in high heels, bright lipstick, and scanty clothing for everything from household products to television shows. Women who are smart and accomplished feel pressure to be extremely thin, look good in tight clothing, wear high heels, and to constantly create a pleasing visual spectacle -- even when they are just enjoying themselves in a casual and relaxed fashion. Women must always justify their existence with a show of extreme femininity -- they can never simply be themselves.

There is a paradox that Asian women can never satisfy: on one hand, within the family the perfect Asian woman is supposed to be childlike and girlish and to know nothing about sex. On the other hand, the images of the mass media suggest that the ideal Asian woman is hyper-sexualized. No matter how a woman behaves, there is always a sense of guilt and of being incomplete because there is no way a single woman can embody both images. Even people from outside the culture tend to see Asian woman in terms of either of these two stereotypes.

In my relationships with men from my culture, I have often found that there is a high level of expectation regarding how women are supposed to be: women are assumed to be able to anticipate the needs of men, and to put everything aside because of their profound gratefulness that they have a boyfriend. I realize that not all men are like this, but I have found many are, given how old stereotypes die hard. After all, consciously or unconsciously, we all tend to model our relationships with the opposite sex upon the ways we saw our parents behave. No matter how hard I try, sometimes it is difficult to conceive of a different way to have a relationship with a man, in contrast to the very patriarchal relationship of my mother and father.