Asian-American Men and Looks

Sooner or later every Asian-American male blogger makes a post about race and gender and the American mass media. (This post defines "Asian-American" as Americans from East Asia, of course, because Asian-Americans from South Asia have a similar though separate set of concerns and issues.) Obviously, I've touched upon it over and over in a series of posts, but I don't know if I've ever dealt with it directly, perhaps because I've been focusing on poetry as opposed to television or film.

I've been thinking. I'm going to use American Idol's William Hung as an example for this post, since I've talked about him before, and there's a better than average chance that readers of this blog will know who he is. Most Asian-Americans don't like William Hung. But why? What's bad about William Hung?

One response may relate to the fact that he's basically one of the few Asian-American male figures in popular entertainment out there. He serves as a symbol for all Asian-American men in the United States, because there are so few represented in mass media. I like this answer. Under-representation is bad, and Asian-American men are underrepresented in all forms of media -- be it television, film, magazines, or even poetry, though the poetry world has been changing rapidly in poetry over the past two decades. As discussed before, I predict the continued rise of Asian-American poetry.

More questionable, to me, is the answer that William Hung embodies negative stereotypes. I mean, what does that mean? My concern is that Asian-Americans are bashing the "William Hungs" of the world at least partly for being physically ugly. That is, "ugly" by the superficial standards of mass media. But lots of Asian-Americans look like William Hung. Many of us are not all that good-looking by the standards that many corporations have defined beauty. On average, Asian-Americans tend to have rounder faces, smaller eyes, less facial hair than Americans of other races. Asian-Americans also tend to be shorter and have a different complexion than Americans of other races.

Equally questionable, to me, is the answer that the William Hungs of the world are bad because of the way they "act" -- as if the way someone acts can ever be completely separated from the way someone looks. On American Idol and afterwards, Hung acted polite, naive, straightforward, reserved, and calm. His attire was acceptable but could be improved upon. His English was ok but not perfect. In short, he acted the way that a lot of Asian-Americans, and a lot of people, act in general. Very common and not decked out with bling.

My fear is that Asian-Americans' critique of William Hung also reflects a self-hating desire to look and act more like Gap, Abercombie and Fitch, Old Navy models, etc. That's not going to happen. William Hung will never look that way, no matter how many stylists or voice coaches the entertainment world gives him before they abandon him to oblivion once the fad wears off, if it hasn't already. Nor should it happen, one could argue. We should be happy with the way we look and accept ourselves for who we are. Asian-Americans should not try to simply imitate the look, attire, and behavior of any other race -- some imitation can be good, but it should be an adaptation into what may become ours, not a refutation of what is there.

Lots of Asian-Americans are children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. For some Asian-American men, I think that the William Hung issue may reflect an anxiety to separate ourselves from the identities of our parents and grandparents. If an Asian-American man happens to be an immigrant himself, he may want to break away from the whole identity of the Asian past as well. There's a tension there, which the mass media (especially television and film) worsens by not presenting enough possibilities as to what and who an "Asian-American man" can be.