NU Asian Spring 2015

→ Table of Contents Letter from the Editor + Staff

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America is in the Heart

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#racetogether

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Diaosi

06

Q&A with Anupama Chopra

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Asian American Golfers at NU

10

Asian American Studies Strikes Back

12

Asian Hip Hop

15

Fresh Off the Boat

18

Breaking down Asian Stereotypes

20

Body Shaming Experience

22

Fashion Bloggers

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NUASIANMAG.COM | 01

Letter Dear Readers,

from t

he Edit

The past year has produced a lot of discourse about Asian and Asian-American culture. On campus, the Asian American studies program celebrated the 20th anniversary of its famous hunger strikes, drawing attention from many student groups and publications. From television to Youtube, “Fresh Off the Boat” and music video “It G Ma” have garnered both support and disapproval for their takes on Asian-American culture. Yet there is much more to Asian culture than what is known or portrayed. There is a context and history for everything. To better understand, we have tried to delve deeper into the connections between the past, present and future.

ors

The theme of this issue is the Asian and Asian-American presence in pop culture. We wanted to tell the stories of Asian-Americans who were dealing with the complexities of navigating two different cultures. We also wanted to examine Asian culture and cultural adaptations that were gaining popularity across the globe. Cultural appropriation can be harmful, but thoughtful adaptations can create new ideas and modes of expression.

We are incredibly lucky to have worked with writers, photographers and designers who each approached the topics with an open mind and thoughtful consideration of the topic and sources involved. The staff have worked to capture and explain the different perspectives and stories behind what is often collectively known as Asian or Asian American culture. We also thank our guest contributors for their valuable time, effort and insights.

Most of the stories in this issue lead to a similar conclusion, an ending without a definitive answer. We will always continue to seek answers to the question of what an Asian American identity is from different angles, but really, the most important thing is that we keep asking.

As always, we thank you for your support as readers and hope you will continue to join us for the issues to come.

Katherine Hyunjung Lee & Joanne Lee Editors-in-Chief

STAFF

Editors-in-Chief Katherine Lee Joanne Lee Creative Director Annette Hong Designer Lisa Rhee Editors Melissa Shin Mark Kim Elizabeth Kim Megan Pan

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Web Director Katie Fang Photography Director Katherine Yao Photographer Phan Le Business Director Suyong Won

WANT MORE? Read about student identity and campus life on our website: nuasianmag.com Follow us on Twitter @ nuAsian or search us up on Facebook as NU Asian Magazine

Contributors Rosalie Chan Stephanie Chang Shaina Fuller Minho Kim Estelle Lee Hyunjee Lee Jee Young Lee Jerry Lee Danny Dongmin Na Stephanie Yang Rohan Zhou-Lee

A Northwestern University and NU APAC publication

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learning about the asian american diaspora First published in 1946, Carlos Bulosan’s “America is in the Heart” tells the stories of the Filipino-American immigrant population in the early 20th century. Rohan Zhou-Lee shares the lessons gained from the book.

By Rohan Zhou-Lee

W

e all grow up being judged if we haven’t read Tom Sawyer or The Great Gatsby.

In high school we are taught an American history that doesn’t quite paint the whole picture. We aren’t educated in the words of Uchida Yoshiko, whose autobiography Desert Exile tells about the open persecution of Americans who happened to be Japanese during World War II when they were forced into internment camps. We aren’t taught about Him Mark Lai, who catalogues his Chinese American experience in San Francisco’s impoverished Chinatown, entitled Him Mark Lai: An Autobiography of a Chinese American Historian.

We do not learn how to look at British colonialism and misogyny through the eyes of Kamala Das and her autobiography Enthe Katha (My Story). We are not encouraged to learn about our Asian and Asian American heritage, and so we run the risk of historical erasure.

The words of the great Filipino writer Jose Rizal, who bravely and openly criticized the Spanish government through his writing, come to mind: “No history, no self. Know history, know self.”

This is why I read Carlos Bulosan’s America Is In The Heart, an autobiographical journey of the poet’s life from the Philippines to the United States.

First published in 1946, it begins in his early childhood, and the reader sees how the poor are kept poor through the aristocratic corruption and bureaucracy of the upper class. Bulosan’s father loses his land not because he is indebted, but because the landlord sells it without informing the family.

At an ambiguous age, Bulosan joins the countless men and women who pile into the storage sections of ships and barges to sail across the Pacific to the United States. His immigration takes place during the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese from entering the States except for a few male labor workers (my great grandfather was one of these who came under false papers in order to find work, also known as a Paper Son.) Only Filipinos were al-

lowed to enter because the United States occupied our country.

Throughout the rest of the text, there is endless suffering for him and the Filipino immigrants.

Like nameless and countless others, Bulosan finds seasonal labor in Stockton, works fish canneries in Alaska and, with only a few dollars in his back pocket, finds housing with a handful of fellow Filipinos by renting cheap rooms. He writes about the open discrimination towards Filipinos, who are referred to as “brown monkeys.” He nearly loses his life when he and a friend are kidnapped by drunk men, tied to trees, stripped and beaten, all because his friend had a relationship with a white woman.

What struck me most in these pages, was that countless people have no names, no memoirs, no catalogues other than the fact that someone’s arm was cut off in the fish cannery, or that someone was sexually assaulted in a train cart. They represent hundreds thousands of other people, who don’t even have words written to their experience. Their history is erased.

And yet, Bulosan remains hopeful because “the human heart is bigger than the world.” He joins and founds various activist organizations dedicated to securing immigrant rights, collaborates with other groups, even as tuberculosis claims one of his lungs and he can barely move. Though he was once illiterate, he learns to write in the States and develops his political voice. There is a particular passage that still grips me, a quote from his brother Macario: “We must live in America where there is freedom for all regardless of color, station and beliefs…. It is but fair to say that America is not a land of one race or one class of men. We are all Americans that have toiled and suffered and known oppression and defeat, from the first Indian that offered peace in Manhattan to the last Filipino pea pickers….

America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world…. America is also the nameless foreign-

er, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree.

America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities is closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body.

All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate—We are America!” (188-189) When I finished this book, I realized that all my ancestors, including my unnamed Filipina greatgreat-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, who went to Barbados and married my unnamed Scotsman ancestor, made great sacrifices to come to this so-called New World, a grandiose start to centuries of oppression. People like Bulosan fought so hard, and their work is still incomplete, because we are not taught this history.

So what’s this multi-ethnic alumni doing writing this? I’m writing to each of you, to encourage you to know your history, to learn about the Asian American Diasporas, to realize our rich and powerful heritage, and to be aware of the oppression that we have all faced.

I say this because Bulosan’s writing taught me a valuable lesson: that while history can be misconstrued, poorly taught or not at all, the truth in our roots can teach us a very unique form of self-love.

Because Bulosan taught me to love each of those unnamed people, my ancestors, and my communities, I have learned to love myself more than the education that tried to erase who I am.

ABOUT THE WRITER Rohan Zhou-Lee, class of 2013, is currently a playwright and ballet dancer in Chicago. Their recent play, The Soldier’s Home, is being produced by CIRCA Pintig, Chicago’s premiere Filipino theater company. An alumni member of Kaibigan and Thai Club, they were also the first non-gendered Mr. Panasia (2013.)

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#Racetogether : more than a hashtag?

What went wrong with Starbucks’s #racetogether campaign? One writer weighs in on the company’s attempt to promote dialogue about race, looking closely to find out what it takes to have a thoughtful conversation on race and diversity.

By Rosalie Chan

Photo by Katherine Yao

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n March, Starbucks announced a new initiative. Instead of misspelled names, customers could find the words “Race Together” written on their cups, and while having their daily dose of coffee, they had the opportunity to talk about race with their baristas.

Some applauded Starbucks on its attempt to initiate conversation about race relations in the U.S., but most people called out Starbucks on the various problems with this campaign. As Twitter users criticized Starbucks, the coffee chain quickly found itself in hot water for this initiative. It then ended the campaign on March 22 as “originally planned,” according to CEO Howard Schultz. Some criticized the campaign as a publicity stunt that took advantage of recent incidents that sparked nationwide conversation about race, such as the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. The press release from Starbucks on the Race Together Initiative stated: “Despite raw emotion around racial unrest from Ferguson, Missouri to New York City to Oakland, ‘we at Starbucks would be willing to talk about these issues in America,’ Schultz said. ‘Not to point fingers or to place blame, and not because we have answers, but because staying silent is not who we are.’”

When Michele Enos, assistant director for Campus Inclusion and Community, read about the campaign, she had many questions about it.

“It’s hard when a corporation does work like this,” Enos said. “Do they want to have a conversation about race or have a hashtag to promote Starbucks? Are we doing more harm when forcing baristas to have these conversations?...Instead of using their money and power to get at systemic racism, they’re putting the burden on individual baristas.”

Others criticized the discomfort the campaign could cause for multiple different parties. Not only did the campaign have potential for slowed coffee lines and conversations about race that could quickly go wrong, it also put pressure on baristas, es-

pecially people of color, to talk about race with strangers.

“The problem is it’s not so easy to have a discussion on race,” said Timothy Calkins, clinical professor of marketing at Kellogg.

“Many customers didn’t want to engage in a big racial discussion at Starbucks. Employees were uncomfortable, too.”

Calkins wrote a commentary on this campaign in Fortune in March. He said the campaign did not work because Starbucks tried to take a stance on a controversial and complicated issue.

[Dialogue on race] “needs to be more than a hashtag.”

Stacy Tsai

“On the surface, it was a good idea, but they took the brand to places you really don’t want to go,” Calkins said. “Generally brands try to avoid controversial issues.”

In addition, Starbucks is not the best space to have a conversation about race, Communication sophomore Xiomara Contreras said. Contreras is involved in Sustained Dialogue, and she says that to talk about difficult issues like race, there must be safety and trust.

“At Sustained Dialogue, we let everyone know this is a space created for dialogues and discussions to talk about issues that are scary to talk about,” Contreras said. “We’re not going to judge you, and we’re just going to ask questions...You can make that space anywhere with friends. There’s a level of trust. Spaces like that where you value ground rules are really good.” Weinberg freshman Stacy Tsai also believes that the setting of Starbucks is not ideal for this type of dialogue, as the conversations would only scratch the surface of racial issues.

“It’s not the right place for dialogue, and it’s not giving race and inequality the proper space to be examined,” Tsai said. “Having vague conversations with a sprinkle of race involved takes away the importance of it

and makes it superficial.”

Tsai said she trusts that Starbucks was well-intentioned and was not just starting the Race Together campaign for publicity, but she does not think it was an appropriate move.

“It needs to be more than a hashtag,” Tsai said.

Although Starbucks ended the Race Together campaign, Schultz said they will continue Race Together activities, such as holding open forums, hiring 10,000 disadvantaged youth over the next three years and opening new stores in minority communities. According to the letter from Schultz that announced the end of the campaign, “The heart of Race Together has always been about humanity: the promise of the American Dream should be available to every person in this country, not just a select few. We leaned in because we believed that starting this dialogue is what matters the most.”

Racial discrimination certainly continues to be a relevant topic for dialogue today, but so are the socioeconomic inequalities that come with racial disparities. In many corporations like Starbucks, people of color make lower wages and are less likely to be in executive positions. At Starbucks, 40 percent of workers are people of color, and workers make approximately $10 an hour, or $20,000 a year, according to ColorLines.

On the other hand, only 16 percent of Starbucks executives are people of color, and they make about $10,000 an hour, according to ColorLines. Also, the opening of a Starbucks in a community is usually an initial sign of gentrification.

Enos said that it is not enough to talk about race relations, and people need to learn that they themselves are part of a larger system.

“To have a productive conversation, people must understand the systems of power in space,” Enos said. “We need to talk about the power dynamics in the room...In good conversations about race, people need to understand it’s bigger than their everyday beliefs and actions.”

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Photo by Katherine Yao

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屌丝 ‘Diaosi’ the underdog TURNS mainstream Say hello to the diaosi. They are young, poor and unattractive. Don’t expect them to meet you outside because they prefer to stay home and play video games all day.

Avoid asking them job-related questions at all costs, unless you want to remind them about the dark prospects of their future. And yes, they are likely to be single.

By Stephanie Yang Translated into English as “loser,” the term diaosi was originally meant as an insult referring to Chinese millennials, especially men, who do not earn enough to afford their own houses or cars. Diaosi love to spend their time indoors, usually playing computer games or surfing the Internet – alone. Indeed, the survey conducted by the Internet portal Sohu in 2013 demonstrates that only one in three diaosi males had a significant other.

Despite its negative connotations, the term diaosi has now gone viral among the Chinese Internet community. What is ironic about its popularity is that the term has now been reclaimed as a self-deprecating label rather than a way to denigrate others. According to Sohu’s 2014 survey, more than 64 percent of Chinese in their 20’s have identified themselves as diaosi.

Kate Guo, the president of the Chinese International Student Association, suggests that the slang term may have emerged as the antithesis to another popular term, fuerdai, or “second generation of rich people” in English. “I think when my friends use diaosi, they are trying to self-mock or self-deprecate… or just trying to say they are nor as ‘fancy’ or ‘successful’ as others,” she said. “Fuerdai are notorious in a way that they are ‘stylish’ and show off their fancy life. So maybe diaosi is perfect to distinguish oneself from those trends…I think modesty is always favored in Chinese culture.” Indeed, Han Han, arguably the most popular blogger in China, said he is “an authentic diaosi on the rural outskirts of Shanghai who started from scratch with no power or connection.” Despite his celebrity status, he identifies with ordinary citizens.

The fact that an increasing number of Chinese youths now refer to themselves as diaosi hints at something greater than just a reclaimed Internet slang term: the emergence of diaosi as China’s next mainstream cultural phenomenon, and a way for youths to find pride in their humility.

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Photo courtesy of Anupama Chopra

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Q&A

WITH ANUPAMA CHOPRA Anupama Chopra is a famous film critic, author and film reporter who successfully established herself in the Indian film industry through her critically acclaimed reviews on Bollywood films and her publications about Indian cinema. A Northwestern alumna, she received her master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism in 1991. While studying at Medill, she won the Harrington Award for magazine writing. Chopra has been a host for several film critiquing shows for national television channels in India, and she develops some of her work through her own Youtube channel called Film Companion. She is currently the director of the upcoming Mumbai Film Festival.

By Estelle Lee

EL What made you determined to go into film journalism, which was rarely taken seriously by the mainstream press during the time when you were deciding your career?

AC Basically, I was seduced by the film industry.

I finished my bachelor’s degree, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So my professor suggested that I work with magazines for movies and figure out what I wanted to do. Since then, the movie magazine basically gave direction to my entire life. I decided that I wanted to do [film journalism] in a more serious way, which is why I came to Northwestern to learn how to really be a journalist.

EL What are some of the most challenging parts of working in the film industry?

AC For me, the most challenging part has always been that I am not just a critic but also a film reporter. After [doing] this for 20 years, you develop relationships with people and you have to go back and review films. You have to be truthful to how you feel about them, so it is always extremely tricky to not let the fact that you know people get in the way of writing how you feel about a film.

EL Transitioning from a film journalist to the host of a film critiquing show seems to have been a big change in your career. What made you decide to step out of your writing desk and stand in front of the camera? What was that like?

AC That wasn’t easy. Actually, it wasn’t even an idea that I had, but the people who worked at NDTV 24/7 reached out to me first and said they [would] train me [for the show], and that is really how it started. Now I have been [hosting shows] for eight to nine years.

EL Recently, I watched an Indian film called “3 Idiots” and coincidently, your husband, Mr. Vidhu Vinod Chopra, was the producer of that movie. Indian films have been steadily gaining international attention. To what characteristics of Indian cinema do you attribute this international attention?

AC I think, finally, the West has kind of woken up to how big this cinema is. Our movies have really trave-

led; they touch and speak to many people and nationalities all over the globe. I think what has changed is, of course the marketing and infrastructure, but the traditional form and the traditional storytelling of Indian cinema, which is the song and dance and sort of high emotional pitch sounds. [These elements] speak to people.

EL What do you think is the biggest barrier or obstacle that the Indian film industry has to overcome in order to establish international popularity and status?

AC Obviously, language is a barrier, but I think some of the biggest struggles are the stories themselves and the actual scripts. We do not yet have schools like they have in the West for script writing.

I think this is very critical [in developing the Indian film industry].

EL If you had to choose three of the most important films from your list of “100 Films to Watch Before You Die,” what would you choose?

AC Well, if I am telling somebody to get an introduction to Indian cinema, then I would ask them to watch Mother India, Mughal-e-Azam, and probably Pyassa. Or if I want to be little more populist, I would probably choose Sholay.

EL Lastly, what advice do you want to give to aspiring journalists or students at Northwestern University?

AC There is a wonderful thing that Charles Bukowski said when he was asked, “What great advice would you give to someone?” He said, “Find something you love and let it kill you.” I think that is the fundamental thing, to find something that you truly love. I think it is really important to stay passionate, and to keep pulling yourself into uncomfortable situations. Otherwise even if you love it, you might get bored. Imagine the hours of life that you put into work, and if you spend half of your life doing something that you don’t care about, that would just be sad.

NUASIANMAG.COM | 09

Champs :

NU ASIAN

the rise & success of

Asian American Golfers at Northwestern The Northwestern women’s golf team has had a successful year. Freshman Hannah Kim was named Big Ten Player of the Year as well as Big Ten Freshman of the year. Five of its members, including Kim, were selected to either First Team or Second Team All-Big Ten. The five All-Big Ten selections are a program record for the Wildcats, but there’s another interesting catch: seven of the eight golfers on the team are Asian.

By Hyunjee Lee

Photos courtesy of Northwestern Athletics

Meet the 2015 Big Ten Champions!

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W

aiting for freshman Sarah Cho to finish her round, the rest of the Northwestern women’s golf team experienced a flurry of emotions as they talked about the shots they had missed and the ones they had made. The points were coming down so close--they nervously and excitedly awaited the results, knowing that they had a chance of coming up on top to claim the 2015 Big Ten Championship title. Finally, the results were in. The women’s golf team, which consists of seven Asians out of eight total players, came home as the 2015 champions.

Among the seven Asian members on the team, there are Korean, Japanese and Thai.

The high percentage makeup of Asian golfers does not pertain only to the Northwestern team. As of May 11, six of the top 10 players on Rolex Ranking, a comprehensive world ranking system for women’s golf, and the LPGA Official Money List, were Asian, according to the official LPGA website.

“What’s really great is we’re super open to learning about each other,” Junior Kaitlin Park said. “We’re not all the same type

of Asian but we get along really well.” The team has one non-Asian member, Senior Katie Wooliver. “Even though she’s from a suburb in Ohio she doesn’t really notice that we’re all Asian,” Park said. “We have a tighter bond than I see in other teams.”

However, this has less to do with the highly Asian composition than the individual players, according to head Coach Emily Fletcher.

“The girls are great,” she said. “It’s not necessarily because of the high number of Asian background players we have.”

Fletcher said region might be a factor in the team’s mostly Asian composition.

A lot of recruitment happens on the west coast where there is a high concentration of Asians.

Competing as an Asian golfer, Park, hailing from Orange County herself, said it does get quite competitive just because of the high number of Asian athletes competing. She does not necessarily feel the pressure of having to represent her country but this does not mean that she distances herself from her Asian American identity.

“Although I wasn’t born in an Asian coun-

try, I really pride myself on being Asian American,” she said.

Sophomore Kacie Komoto said the large number of Asian golfers helps her to develop as an athlete herself. She can watch professional players built like her and see how they execute certain techniques. “It’s different from watching sports where the women just have body types that are not like mine,” she said. Although it was mostly her dad who influenced her and got her started with golf, she found role models among Asian professional golfers. “There was a Michelle Wie thing going on,” said Komoto, who looks forward to possibly playing on tour after college.

Despite the existing Asian presence in golf, Park said she would love to see more Asian athletes in sports in general.

“They shouldn’t be held back because they’re Asian,” she said. In order to maintain the Asian presence, individuals need to get started with sports early on, while they are students. “I think people should at least try a sports team in high school and not be bound by having to study. I’m a student athlete, too,” said Park.

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Photo by Phan Le

2015 The Birth of Northwestern’s Asian American Studies Program Following “Asian American Studies Strikes Back,” an event that celebrated the 20th anniversary of a series of hunger strikes for the establishment of the Asian American Studies Program, writer Minho Kim delves deeper into the department’s past and present.

By Minho Kim For 23 days, Northwestern University students staged rallies, chants, speeches, and a hunger strike.

In April 1995, Freda Lin was at the center of the protest as the vice chair of the Asian American Advisory Board, the student-led organization that started the protest. On the first day of the strike, with a megaphone in her hand,

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she led the crowd chanting, “No program, no peace,” from the Rock to the Rebecca Crown Center. The protesters occupied the administrative building and demanded formal conversation with Henry Bienen, former president of Northwestern University.

Northwestern’s Asian American Studies program was not created by the university through its own initiative but rather stemmed from a group of students who decided to protest against an administration that was apathetic to establishing a new ethnic studies program specific to Asian Americans. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the hunger strike that paved the way for the creation of the program in 1999.

Grace Lou, then President of AAAB, said she first saw the program’s potential when she led a student-organized seminar on the history and politics of Asian America. It was a small class heavily based on discussion in which about 15 students were enrolled. Thanks to the diverse

issues that they discussed in class, the course attracted students of many different races.

“It served a purpose for the students and the university because they got a chance to understand the large segment of unknown history,” Lou said.

The momentum for the strike built up after Lin and other leaders of AAAB attended the annual Asian American Conference held in Evanston. Lin said she was upset that Northwestern did not have a program that existed in many other institutions, especially in the West Coast.

As AAAB wrote the proposal for a new Asian American Studies program, some of its leaders prepared for the protest, anticipating rejection from the university.

Their proposal was simple: hire one tenure-track professor for the ’95-’96 academic year and eventually create a program with at least three professors with tenure. It included the signatures of more than 1,200 students and

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letters of faculties who supported the program.

However, what the administration offered— temporary programs taught by visiting lecturers—was far from a sustainable program.

“We submitted the proposal to let the administration know that this can be an academically viable program, not just a mental health support group,” Lin said.

Lin said that she was most frustrated at the lack of public knowledge about Asian America.

It was a challenge for her to convince others that Asian American Studies is about America, not Asian countries, and is therefore a different program from Asian Studies. Nonetheless, AAAB gathered support from different student groups such as Latino and African American student groups as well as the LGBT student group. By forming an alliance with other minority groups, AAAB demonstrated that it was not only a few Asian students who wanted the program.

In the end, more than 60 students participated in the serial hunger strike that continued in the form of relay.

“This was before the Internet, social media and even email,” Lou said. “Organizing people required real conversations, persuasion and sometimes uncomfortable arguments.”

After gaining momentum, the protest started to receive national attention. Two weeks af-

Photo courtesy of The Northwestern Daily

1995

ter the first day of the hunger strike, students at Columbia University, Stanford University and Princeton University demonstrated their support through sit-ins and fasting. The Chicago Tribune and local TV channels also covered AAAB’s protest.

However, not everyone in Northwestern supported the protest. A conservative student group ridiculed those who participated in the hunger strike by delivering pizza to the Rock and eating it in front of the strikers.

Although the African American Studies majors and the department faculties supported the strike, they had mixed feelings toward the new ethnic study program. Lin said because the university always gives only a small amount of resources to ethnic studies, they worried that a new program could take away their share of the tiny pie.

There were also conflicts within AAAB. Other leaders in the Board who did not lead the protest but who were in charge of other issues felt that the protest encroached on their space inside the group.

“It reflected how young we were,” Lou said. “But it’s also true that a lot of people who worked behind the scenes didn’t get enough recognition that me or Lin received.”

Lou emphasized that there are other people

who deserve recognition, such as students who pushed for the program before them.

“We were just piggybacking off the momentum started by the people before us,” Lou said. “Likewise, after I stepped down, it was the people after us that carried the torch.”

People after her did carry the torch. Although the hunger strike was necessary to show the university how much the students wanted the program, the program was mostly shaped and designed by conversations between the student-led committee and the administration.

After a long tug-of-war of negotiations, Asian American Studies was finally created as a minor program in 1999.

Since then, Asian American Studies has grown into a program that offers more than 20 courses taught by four core faculty members, a director and several lecturers. To this day, active student participation remains integral to the program. It was the students who organized Asian American Studies Strikes Back, which celebrated the 20th anniversary of the hunger strike.

Jinah Kim, assistant director of the Asian American Studies program, said that the program would die out unless the movement continues. Maintaining the energy and enthusiasm that created the program is a challenging task

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(Continued) for the Asian American Studies community.

Kim also said that the program is the study of the interaction between different peoples. The program provides students the chances to pon-

“One of the things that we all try to do in Asian American Studies is to encourage and develop routes for our students to connect what they learn in the classroom to things that are happening outside of them,” Kim said. “We are

rarely get at Northwestern unless you actively seek it out,” Luong said. “Professors in this department will try to talk to you personally without you putting the first step forward, which is inviting and beneficial to underclassmen who are

der the dynamics between different identities such as gender, race and socioeconomic status, and how these power relations work for or against them. Because Asian American culture includes many different people with dissimilar languages and customs, a state of solidarity is an incomplete project that its members continue to work towards.

“The power to be able to tell stories about ourselves in the ways that we want to tell others empowers us when entering the world,” Kim said.

However, Kim emphasized that the goal of the program is not to make people comfortable to talk about sensitive issues such as race and class.

While talks on race and class are inherently uncomfortable, Kim believes that we have to bring about and be engaged in those conversations.

teaching them to become leaders of thinking and talking about race outside of the classroom.”

Weinberg junior Kevin Luong is an Asian American studies minor majoring in political science. According to Luong, the classes taught him that he could practice a significant amount of activism through academia: by teaching and learning the ideas and histories that are often forgotten, the faculty and students are not only changing the discourse inside the academia but also impacting society.

Luong said that Professor Kim convinced him to minor in the program. He was attracted to both the small but vibrant community that enabled profound discussions as well as the close attention he could receive from faculty members.

“One-to-one attention is something that you

not acclimated to the college atmosphere.”

The struggle of the Asian American Studies community is not over. In an interview with The Daily Northwestern, history professor Ji-Yeon Yuh, the first hire for the Asian American Studies Program in 1999, said that faculty would submit a proposal to create an Asian American Studies major before the end of 2015. Kim said another struggle comes from claiming and maintaining the program’s own color and space inside the university. Ethnic minorities, Kim said, should refuse to participate in “the university’s story of diversity … (as) happy minorities.”

“As a Midwestern school, we are very privileged to have what we have here in Northwestern,” Luong said. “But that doesn’t mean there is no more work to be done.”

Photos by Phan Le

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Photos courtesy of Anne Chen

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(Top) Michelle Lin, Anne Chen, Felice Su man the petition booth.

(Bottom left) Jen Abellera, Eric Salcedo, and Rob Yap speak at the rally.

(Bottom Right) Dave Kan poses before painting the rock yellow.

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SeoulRebels blogger and Northwestern graduate Shaina Fuller writes about YouTube phenomenon “It G Ma,” and the forces behind Japanese and Korean hip-hop culture.

By Shaina Fuller On January 1st 2015, “It G Ma,” produced by Korean rapper Keith Ape, was uploaded to Youtube by Korean hip hop label Hi-Lite Records.

Ape, formerly known as Kid Ash, is a part of The Cohort, a group of rap artists under Hi-Lite Records who made their debut in 2013. It G Ma is a clever romanization of the Korean phrase meaning ‘never forget.’ Jayallday and Okasian, two Korean rappers from Hi-Lite, appear on the track and two Japanese artists, rappers Loota and Kohh, are featured on the song as well.

“It G Ma” increased the visibility of Asian hip hop in a way no track before it has, operating like the “Gangnam Style” of hip hop. Like the ridiculously popular Psy single, “It G Ma” has a music video that is a key factor in the popularity of the song. Of course, there are several important ways that the popularity of single differs from the Gangnam Style craze.

The internet blew up over “It G Ma.” A simple hashtag search shows that Black Twitter is primarily responsible for the song’s explosion. “It G Ma” also spread quickly by fans of trap music, a genre created in the South. Early on, many of the tweets mentioning the single were directed at a @CHRT_JAYALLDAY, handle of Jayallday, the rapper on the first verse of It G Ma. People were tweeting at JayAllDay left and right with all kinds of hype about the song.

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Mediums for spread of Korean Hip Hop Vine in particular has been central to the song’s rise in popularity in America. One Twitter user shared the link to “It G Ma” on Soundcloud and stated, “I found the whole song to that vine lmao”. Now months later, hundreds of #itgma Vines can be found online.

In fact, while Youtube has been central to the spread of music globally for the last 10 years, now social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Vine and Reddit are facilitating the spread of Asian music to fans in the West. Similar to Asian dramas, full episodes of Korean hip hop music shows like Unpretty Rapstar and Show Me the Money can be found online with English subtitles.

Amongst many label and artist-specific blogs found on the internet, sites like HipHopKr.com provide American fans with an English source for all the latest news, interviews and music from Korean artists. HipHopPlaya, the Korean equivalent of XXL mag, is an online community and a major source for hip hop news, music videos, music and mixtapes. Releases from American hip hop artists are featured on HipHopPlaya too.

Gaining promotion and exposure wasn’t always easy for Korean artists.

On the hip hop news source Oogee Woogee, Korean-American artists Snacky Chan and Danny Chung discussed the shift of power within the music industry from managers and companies to artists themselves doing what they refer to as ‘indie’ or ‘grassroots’ promoting with the rise of the Internet as a major self-pro-

motion tool. “It G Ma” is a perfect example of this - a single rapidly spreading thanks to a free download on Soundcloud and Twitter. Chung uses the term “independent hip hop” in reference to this phenomenon.

In the video, Chan says that before the birth of ‘independent hip hop’ in Korea since the mid 2000s, the only outlet for artists to get exposure was through television.”Seems like the only place you could really promote yourself effectively was on TV and all the companies had that locked down,” Chan said. He claims that it was hard to get on these shows unless you had personal connections to the manager of the station. Chung chimes in saying that it wasn’t really about your music or your talent but who you knew. Chan appeared on Season 3 of Show Me The Money.

In an interview for the Korean music blog Seoul Rebels, Korean rapper Paloalto shared his thoughts on Korean hip hop’s increasing global recognition. “The mid and late 90’s were when the rap albums really started being produced.

Skill-wise, there has been general upward leveling. Practically speaking, becoming a rapper was a more profitable musical career,” Paloalto said about the development of the hip hop genre in Korea.

So, what about Japan? What kind of platform does hip hop have in Japan?

So why isn’t hip hop catching on in Japan?

Dexter Thomas, a PhD candidate at Cornell University and an expert on Japanese hip hop, says there’s a whole chapter in his dissertation dedicated to the answer to this question. Apparently, race is a factor. “Mainstream Japanese

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people view black people as completely different from themselves, as completely foreign, but this is not the case for white people,” Thomas shared. “The whole model minority myth functioned on a global scale even before it took root in the U.S.; Japan had it beforehand,” Thomas said. “When you want to believe you’re just like white people, you start to view ‘black music’ the way white people do.” Thomas described how the attempt to be closer to white people than black people, having whiteness as an aim, “turns into this complex.”

Part of this is a result of the economic decline in the late 80s, when there wasn’t a very strong Japanese-American community present in the states. “There are some rich kids who went to the Japanese equivalent of Howard, Columbia, NYU, people who visited the U.S. but mostly not a lot of people going back and forth” Thom-

This all impacts the visibility of Japanese hip hop artists greatly. “Visibility is pretty low,” Thomas says, “definitely lower than Korea.” His area of expertise is not the domestic Korean market, but Thomas shared that there “seems to be more mainstream acceptance for Korean hip hop in Korea.”

When Thomas first heard “It G Ma,” he said it was a monumental step in the hip hop industry, but also noted that the success isn’t translating for Japanese artists in the same way.

as said. “Japanese people haven’t had that experience to interact with black people, to learn about hip hop music firsthand and see that they too are capable of producing this style of music”.

Thomas asserted that in Japan people “aren’t as good at finding stuff online,” noting that mixtapes were only online starting in late 2009 or early 2010. When asked about the existence of a source for Japan like HipHopKr in Korea, Thomas says there’s “nothing approaching that in Japan” and that promotion mostly happens by word of mouth - people find out about shows this way and then come. According to Thomas there are no hip hop magazines anymore. If hip hop artists are featured anywhere, they are in fashion magazines and there’s just not much of a Japanese hip hop community domestically or internationally.

In addition, the Korean government is smart about supporting Korean music but “Japan doesn’t fund stuff like hip hop”. “The financial support isn’t there,” Thomas said. There was a “Cool Japan” government committee for the promotion of culture that didn’t work well, Thomas says. The biggest selling Japanese album was the Pokemon soundtrack back in the early 2000s.

While Korea is more open with what they are funding and supporting, Thomas believes that Japan is more focused on trying to push anime.

“Koreans are doing a better job on capitalizing on this,” Thomas said. Thomas suggested that Japanese artists probably do work to reach the States but it just doesn’t work out. He mentioned the fact that a Japanese rapper came to Chicago and worked with Chicago-based rapper Chief Keef on a project that just did not catch on.

lating Mr. Miyagi stereotypes and break into the southern trap sphere on their own terms,” Thomas wrote in his article for Noisey.

When “It G Ma” dropped, trap music fans were quick to notice the similarities in style and sound it shared with “U Guessed It”, a single by southern hip hop artist OG Maco. The internet was quick to deem Keith Ape the “Korean OG Maco” and “It G Ma” as the “Asian version” of OG Maco’s “U Guessed It”.

Here is what OG Maco had to say. On February 4, he tweeted, “I’m aware of the Koreans that mocked me and took my sauce. I’m not impressed. I’m not inspired. I think it’s kinda lame.

To each his own.” He refers to the presence of “grills” and “lean cups” in the music video as “black stereotypes”. Keith Ape never made a public response to OG Maco.

In an article for OogeeWoogee, Antonio Prata shares his opinion addressing OG Maco’s tweets claiming cultural appropriation. While admitting that the creators of It G Ma walk a fine line between appreciation and appropriation in this instance, he believes that OG Maco’s language is a bit strong. Asian hip hop is an art form deeply rooted in black culture. In turn, American hip hop has borrowed from Asian culture as well.

In response to this tension, the question, is do artists overseas, in addition to borrowing from hip hop and black culture, ever move beyond the music to care about black social issues? Perhaps yes. Right in time for Christmas last year, two of Ape’s label-mates, B-Free and Reddy, released a song called ‘I Wish’ that contained the following lyrics: “maybe this Christmas, man, we could get a little peace… tell the

Appropriation or Appreciation?

On one hand, there are Asians who are proud of “It G Ma” and are excited about the departure from the Asian stereotypes that Keith Ape and his crew represent. “Keith, Jay and crew have managed to flip decades of our emascu-

police back up i can’t breathe” and “on that note, my heart goes out to people in Ferguson”. Who ever thought police brutality in America would be addressed in a Korean rap song?

In Conclusion As long as hip hop continues to expand globally there will be this tension between appropriation and appreciation. There is a clear need for education on hip hop’s origins, its background and its roots in struggle. Japanese and Korean artists have limited opportunities to interact with black people, and the media is the only source artists and the public have to learn about black people and black culture.

Keith Ape and OG Maco finally met at SXSW in Texas in March. Both artists performed at the music festival and OG Maco tweeted a photo of himself with Keith Ape and Okasian with the following caption: “Stop hoping for negativity and understand I’m fighting the system and not the man.” According to an article from HipHopPlaya (translated by HipHopKr.com), Hilite Records had this to say about the meeting: “The two met recently at the SXSW festival. Despite the obvious tension in the air, the two shared a meaningful and constructive conversation. Let’s forget the past.” Perhaps more meetings like these are needed to continue to close the gap.

DEXTER THOMAS’ FAVORITE JAPANESE HIP HOP ARTISTS ARTIST Buddha Brand (group) and Microphone Pager FLAVOR/SOUND/FUN FACT Old school, east coast golden era ARTIST Kohh FLAVOR/SOUND/FUN FACT “1/2 Young Thug, 1/2 Yung Lean” ARTIST 5lack FLAVOR/SOUND/FUN FACT Conversational, lazy flow. Good for people who don’t understand Japanese. As an artist he’s more about the sound than context ARTIST Cherry Brown FLAVOR/SOUND/FUN FACT Raps about anime, trap style ARTIST Moment FLAVOR/SOUND/FUN FACT Korean, born and raised in Korea, but raps in Japanese only ARTIST Simi Lab (group) FLAVOR/SOUND/FUN FACT Almost everybody in the group is mixed race

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NU ASIAN

Photo by Katherine Yao

RISE OF ASIAN AMERICAN PRESENCE IN MEDIA Since its first episode aired on primetime television, “Fresh Off the Boat” has been the center of heated debate. Is the title racist? Does the show reinforce stereotypes? Did Eddie Huang, writer of the original memoir, really criticize the series? Most importantly, what does the show’s popularity mean for the future of American television?

By Jerry Lee The last time an Asian-American family had its own television show was 20 years ago.

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Since the cancellation of Margaret Cho’s “All-American Girl” in 1995, the closest thing we got was the off-hand appearances of one or two Asian-American actors in popular television shows.

“Fresh Off the Boat” is the first successful show to feature the Asian-American family as the main premise in over 20 years, reflecting an important step in mainstream media for the Asian-American community. The ABC sitcom is based off of the memoir written by Eddie Huang, a prominent chef, and focuses on his life growing up in Orlando, Florida. The show examines Huang’s childhood struggles trying to fit in a community as his family invests in the idea of an “American dream.” The first season finished this past year.

With a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the show received positive reviews from critics, most of whom praised the show’s efforts to reintegrate the image of the Asian-American family into the mainstream. However, it has received a less favorable reaction from Huang himself, who fears that the show failed to capture the vision he had when he originally wrote his book, and instead perpetuated an image of Asian-American inferiority in a homogenized American society. “...we’ve been fixated way too long on universality and the matrix’s pursuit of monoculture,” Huang wrote in a New York magazine article titled “Bamboo-Ceiling TV.” “It’s time to embrace difference and speak about it with singularity, idiosyncrasy, and infinite density.”

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Regardless, Asian-American media presence is gradually increasing and developing into a recognizable force. Asian-American actors, who were once a rare sight on screen, are now well-known throughout the industry and have made a sizable impact on the screen. Notable examples include Harry Shum Jr., who appeared as a cast regular in the TV show “Glee,” and Ki Hong Lee, who starred in the movie “The Maze Runner” and was nominated in People’s 2014 “Sexiest Man Alive” contest.

The importance of this growing phenomenon is not to be understated. According to Prof. Hye Seung Chung, an associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University, media plays a significant social function particularly for children, since Asian-American children do not expect to see Asian-American performers in media.

“This matters as media is a crucial arena where social power is naturalized and reinforced,” Chung said. “Currently, 85-90 percent of lead roles are white in the U.S. media although Caucasians only take up 64 percent of our population. Seeing Asian or Asian American characters in positive roles matters to the Asian-American community for its self-esteem.”

According to a report written by the the Media Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California,

among the 100 top-grossing films in 2012, only 5 percent of speaking characters are Asian compared to Caucasian characters, which make up 76.3 percent.

“

I’m happy people of color are able to see a reflection of themselves through #FreshOffTheBoat on @ABCNetwork but I don’t recognize it.”

Tweet, 4/7/2015 @MrEddieHuang

Furthermore, Chung extended the issue to all minority races and emphasized the importance of interminority solidarity, stating that the collective push for equal representation is a shared endeavor for all minority races.

“It is not just Asians who are marginalized in the media,” she said. “… people of color have common concerns when it comes to media stereotypes of racial minorities.”

Northwestern students are also aware of this issue.

“Having a presence is important for all underrepresented groups in entertainment media, especially because modern media technology and social networking platforms are able to reach a large and diverse audience,” said Gabi Romagnoli, a half-Korean

student majoring in Radio/Television/Film.

“A more active presence of Asian-American actors can set a new standard for both how frequently underrepresented groups are presented, but also how they are exemplified.”

The NU community has several organizations that advocate for diversity in media, such as the Multicultural Filmmakers Collective. Their mission is to support the development of multicultural filmmakers, which they define on their website as “including, but not limited to, underrepresented races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations and socioeconomic statuses.” “Multiculti,” as the group is known, is recognized by the Multicultural Student Affairs, and the issues it represents is part of a larger conversation on campus for equal representation in all forms, not only in media.

“Fresh Off the Boat” has acquired the unique position of being the first successful flagship show to feature an almost entirely Asian-American cast, and thus sets a new precedent for narrative significance for Asian Americans in media. Certainly, complex Asian-American characters were present in less significant roles before “Fresh Off the Boat.” However, the television show creates a new standard for Asian-American actors outside of their generally stereotypical and one-dimensional roles.

Whether the precedent becomes an expectation, however, remains yet to be seen.

Past Portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans 1904 Giacomo Puccini’s famous 1904 opera, “Madame Butterfly,” has inspired many theater productions such as the Broadway musical “Miss Saigon,” and play “M. Butterfly.” The story portrays “Oriental” women as “more delicate, more willing to sacrifice for her man, more docile,” writer Gish Jen wrote in a 1991 article for The New York Times.

1998 Actress Lucy Liu’s 1998 guest appearance as Ling Woo in the TV series “Ally McBeal” later became a full-time role as the character gained fans’ support. A 2003 profile of Liu in The New York Times observed that Liu had been accused of “perpetuating the dragon lady stereotype of an Asian woman who is desirable but ultimately dangerous and untrustworthy.”

1961 In the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of a “bucktoothed, myopic Japanese” photographer was “broadly exotic,” according to a movie review written for The New York Times in the same year.

2012 In 2012, a TV review of “2 Broke Girls” in The Guardian described Asian-American actor Matthew Moy’s character, “Han Lee,” as a “short, asexual and work-obsessed” man who is “ridiculed for his broken English and failing to ‘get’ US culture.” The article also quoted a line by co-star Kat Dennings’s character: “You can’t tell an Asian he made a mistake. He’ll go in back and throw himself on a sword.”

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NU ASIAN

By Danny Dongmin Na

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ISSUE 11 VOL. 2

W

e see. We assume. We believe. Yet we never admit. How do we understand and deal with race and racial stereotypes today?

“As the tools for investigating human variation advanced, it became increasingly clear that you couldn’t simply pigeonhole people into races from three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa,” said Chris Kuzawa, an anthropology professor at Northwestern University.

Some scholars even disregard the concept of race.

“The whole idea of race is a fiction,” said JiYeon Yuh, an Asian studies and history professor at Northwestern. “Darwin thought there were 12 races. Some said six, some said 24.

They all thought they had data and scientific reasoning.”

Scientific racism based on evolutionary theory is largely discredited today because its science was deemed unreliable, Yuh added.

However, racial stereotypes have continued to exist as a way of understanding differences across groups. Indeed, people still appreciate TV shows like “Fresh Off the Boat” for its candid take on stereotypes. Often, people simply ignore stereotypes because they are taught that “all men are created equal.” In fear of being called racist, people avoid talking about race or pointing to observable differences.

“Using racial differences as a basis of violence or discrimination is not justifiable,” said Shalini Shankar, professor of anthropology at Northwestern. “But to say that we would not notice them doesn’t make sense at all either.”

What are some racial stereotypes regarding people of East Asian descent? We found a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to “Stereotypes of East Asians in the United States.” Is there a kernel of truth to these stereotypes, are they simply baseless claims?

1. East Asians are physically small and unathletic.

According to data from Jikei University School of Medicine and European Neural Network Society, Japan men had an average height of 5 feet 6 inches and a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 23.7, whereas Netherlands had an average height of 6 feet and a BMI of 25.5. Across all nations, there certainly are physical differences, namely skin color, height and weight. But the question is: East Asians are smaller than whom?

“Some Italians and Spanish are smaller and darker than Northern Chinese,” Yuh said.

“Scandinavians who live in colder climate are taller, much the same way Northern Chinese are taller than Southern Chinese.”

Human variation in physical attributes is not racial but “clinal”, according to Kuzawa. A feature changes across geography on a gradient.

“When you fly from Norway to Zaire, you will see enormous biological, phenotypic differences,” Kuzawa said. “Now, if you were to walk, all the characteristics that differ between the two groups would just gradually change.” When two groups from distinct local ecologies are placed

side by side, you get the “illusion that there are discrete differences,” he added.

Another important idea is to differentiate between “actual physical appearance and the meaning we attribute to physical appearance,” Yuh said.

“As a species, we are very visual-oriented,” Kuzawa said. “We use visuals to make sense of human variation, but such cues are pretty arbitrary. It doesn’t tell you anything about internal biology.”

Although medical research often attributes certain health conditions to race, using self-identified race data, variance in physical traits are barely explainable by genes, he said.

When Jeremy Lin debuted in the NBA, commentators referred to him as “deceptively athletic.” Lin once told CBS Sports in a press conference, “I’m not sure what’s deceptive” and that “it could be the fact I’m Asian-American.”

“Some contact sports, Asians might not be built for it,” Shankar said. “Certain body types match well with certain sports.”

“It is about the structure of opportunity, not about innate talent,” Yuh said. “Asian American immigrants sought occupations that provided economic security and stability. Sports did not.”

2. East Asians are intelligent but overachieving.

“Individuals vary in intelligence for all sorts of reasons,” Kuzawa said. “But in general, the view of anthropologists suggests that all groups basically have the same mental capacity more or less.”

Nevertheless, people tend to “measure intelligence by success”, specifically education and profession, Shankar said.

While Asians comprised only 4.9 percent of the U.S. population according to the most recent Census Bureau population estimates, they constitute 16.6 percent of Northwestern’s undergraduate student body as of Oct. 15, 2014, according to Northwestern Common Data Set. International students, about three-quarters of whom are from Asian countries, comprise 7.4 percent. Other top schools show statistics of similar fashion.

Moreover, according to the Census Bureau Current Population Survey, real median household income for Asian Americans was $67,065, compared to $51,939 for all U.S. adults in 2013.

The share with a college degree was 52.4 percent for Asian Americans, compared to 29.9 percent for all U.S. adults in 2012.

Some claim that these numbers are underplayed by racial barriers. To get into top schools, Asian Americans need SAT scores that are about “140 points higher than those of their white peers”, according to a widely quoted 2009 study by Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford.

A common pitfall when interpreting these data is that socioeconomic success does not translate to genetic superiority in intelligence.

“If someone got successful, we assume they

are intelligent,” Shankar said. “The U.S. solicited professional Asian immigration around 1965.

They comprise the current Asian American middle class. They were self-selected. But what about the rest of China or India?”

Regions where Asians had immigrated from previous eras would show Asian immigrants “not as well situated in terms of social mobility and professional tracks,” she added.

It all comes down to the idea of “model minority myth,” where a minority group, Asian Americans in the U.S. for instance, is perceived to achieve more socioeconomic success than the population average.

“Immigrants, no matter of origin, work hard.” Yuh said. “They have to. They emphasize education.”

In the U.S., individual differences get “smothered by categorization on race because of stereotypes,” she added. “It is possible to come to conclusions about immigrants. But we tend to racialize this.”

3. East Asians are less assertive.

While it is difficult to test the degree of truth in this loaded statement, we can trace where this would come from.

“The way institutions are organized in the U.S. makes it difficult for people who are not white to navigate institutional spaces without coming to terms with the fact that they are not white,” Shankar said. “White people may be able to say, ‘No, I don’t look at race.’ But if you’re a person of color, you cannot.”

Shankar attributed the characterization above to communication styles. Asian Americans may not seem assertive because they, especially the first generation, are used to interacting in a certain way at the workplace.

“If there’s a culture of deference or not openly challenging people, they might think of it as the proper etiquette,” Shankar said. “It doesn’t mean they don’t have the same desire to advance in a workplace.”

However, Yuh disagrees that there is a culture of conformity or deference in East Asia.

“It is absolutely not true to characterize East Asians as obedient,” Yuh said. “There have been numerous civil revolutions led by students and political coup in Korea over the last decades.”

To some scholars, this is how the majority suppresses and controls minorities.

“For middle-class and affluent whites, overachieving Asian Americans pose thorny questions about privilege and power, merit and opportunity,” wrote Carolyn Chen, Associate Professor of Sociology at Northwestern, in 2012 for The New York Times. “When [Asian American students] succeed, their peers chalk it up to ‘being Asian.’ They are too smart and hard-working for their own good.”

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NU ASIAN

The Body-Shaming Experience

By Estelle Lee

S

itting at the dinner table during a big Asian family gathering can be like sitting with a panel of judges who scrutinize your body for any signs of changes.

One person says, “Your cheeks got chubbier,” and soon all the other family members at the table will take turns commenting on your allegedly chubby cheeks.

If you are not familiar with Asian cultures, you might find this scene odd and somewhat intrusive. When talking about weight and appearance in the U.S., people often tread lightly, cautious not to hurt each other’s feelings. In contrast, for many Asian cultures, these topics are not taboo like they are in the States. Family members and close friends openly criticize each other’s body. While this phenomenon of body shaming exists in almost every culture, it seems to be especially prevalent among Asian and Asian American women.

“In Asian culture, everyone tends to comment, and they especially say it to your face,” said Weinberg senior Jodie Zong, who is from China. “I get those comments [regarding my body] constantly. They don’t mean it in bad way, but when you lose weight or gain weight, they will just tell you.”

The intention behind those comments seems to originate mostly from concerns about developing relationships with others. Physical appearance often influences first impressions and interpersonal relationships.

“Lots of times, I feel like if I gain weight, it is hard to get into relationships,” Zong said. “My mom would say, ‘You can’t gain

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anymore weight or else it will be hard for you to build up relationships.’”

Medill freshman Jenna Lee shared a somewhat different experience with her parents.

“My parents always tell me that it’s their best intention to comment on my body,” Lee said. “They believe that I will have more confidence, and my clothing will look more flattering if I am skinnier. I know that they [weren’t trying] to hurt me, but I was still annoyed because I am aware of my body better than anybody else. I know that I am not the perfect body shape.

Their comments just add on to the stress that I already have.”

Even seemingly innocuous comments can have lasting impact.

“In lots of Asian cultures, it is very fashionable for women to be petite and slender, and that’s exactly how my sister is: she is size double zero. I was the chubby kid in my family,” Weinberg freshman Diana Fu said. She remembered that her sister and her parents poked fun at her for being chubby but never in an explicitly negative way. “They weren’t really telling me to go on diet or anything, but they were saying that I wasn’t really normal in a way… those memories still [resonate] with me,” Fu said.

According to Zong, the media also pressures girls to fit a certain body type. Some Asian girls are ready to do anything to achieve what seems to be the ideal body shape: a tiny waist, slim arms and slender legs.

“Today, celebrities aren’t as far away [from us] anymore,” Zong said. “You think that you can be like that, too. Celebrities

in Asia are very glamorous and skinny.

K-pop has so much emphasis on beauty that celebs go through beauty surgeries that could change them from head to toe.”

One possible reason for this singular standard of beauty is the homogeneity of some Asian societies. On the other hand, western countries like the United States, with a diverse range of ethnicities from all over the world, may be more inclined to multiple standards of beauty. After living in the U.S. for four years, Lee became more open to the idea that beauty can be flexible.

“People should turn that energy on body shaming into focus on being healthy,” Lee said. “People would be so much more satisfied with their lives, because simply losing weight won’t do anything.”

NUASIANMAG.COM | 23 Photo by Katherine Yao

NU ASIAN

New Faces of Fashion

Tired of scrambling to put together an outfit for a night out with friends? These Asian-American fashion bloggers are just a few clicks away from saving your day.

By Jee Young Lee Whether designer merchandise or local thrift store finds fill their closets, fashion lovers from all around the world aim to accomplish the same goal with their clothes—creating their own individual and distinct styles. As people began to showcase these personal styles online via social media, a new generation of fashion voices emerged. In particular, a vibrant community of Asian-American fashion bloggers and vloggers developed a large (and still growing) online presence. From posting their outfits of the day to filming their trips to foreign destinations, these creatives use various social media platforms such as Youtube and Instagram to explore the fashion world in new and innovative ways.

Here are introductions to three of today’s biggest Asian American fashion bloggers: 1

EUGENIE GREY

“FERAL CREATURE”

2

JENN IM

“CLOTHES ENCOUNTERS”

You might recognize her handle @imjennim on Instagram or have seen her on Refinery29’s YouTube channel. Regardless of the platform, this Youtube star with over a million subscribers is known for her big smile and put-together look.

Through her Youtube videos, she not only shares styling tips but also uploads her chronicles to different cities of the world like Tokyo and Bangkok as well as music festivals like Coachella. She categorizes her content by ‘outfit diaries,’ ‘monthly favorites,’ ‘travel & vlogs’ and ‘beauty.’ In her videos, she is not afraid to be different and encourages her fans to step out of their comfort zones 24

Eugénie is unashamedly herself. Her ever-changing hair colors spice up her unique looks, each of which makes a statement. She takes street style to the next level by layering slit shirts that reveal her tattoos, oversized sweaters and thigh-high tights under velvet ankle boots. Moto jacket, destroyed jeans and graphic shirts complete her signature look.

An artist if you will, Eugénie explores her identity through art, empowering her fans to express themselves through unique clothes and accessories.

and wear whatever makes them feel good. As a testament to her fashion prowess, she even has her own hashtag #wwjw, which stands for ‘what would Jenn wear.’

When it comes to styling herself, the bubbly SoCal girl mixes and matches clothes from well-known brands and thrift stores in her area, as well as from online shops from different countries. She provides tips on layering, mixing patterns and wearing unconventional pieces, her specialty being insanely high platform shoes. Her realistic outfit advice is easy enough to follow, yet never expected or boring.

3

WENDY NGUYEN

Photo by Randy Tran

Shout-out to all you fashion pioneers out there: Eugénie Grey of Feral Creature demonstrates a wild and young spirit of her own.

Having joined the online fashion blog community in early 2013, she is blooming like no other through her authentic showcase of style.

Eugénie doesn’t create videos but instead curates her own website, Lookbook, Bloglovin’ and Instagram to share her thoughts and daily outfits. No better description comes to mind for Eugénie than a versatile dresser: her style ranges from Adidas-casual to bohemian.

“WENDY’S LOOKBOOK”

If you prefer a classy and preppy look, then Wendy is your girl. The renowned fashion blogger with more than 600,000 YouTube followers reaches her audience through easy tutorials for putting together anything from runway-style hair to a chic outfit.

Wendy shares many intimate details of her life, including her upbringing as a foster child who worried about being homeless at the age of 18. As a juvenile justice advocate, she juxtaposes her passion for fashion with a passion for educating underprivileged youths. She has also worked with incarcerated students to help them have a second chance

in life.

One of her most popular videos is “25 Ways to Wear a Scarf in 4.5 Minutes.” The video solves the eternal enigma of tying scarves without looking like you tried too hard. Besides unique tutorials like this, she also experiments with all kinds of items like graphic t-shirts and coats to add something unexpected and fun to what would result in her final sophisticated feel.

Photo by Katherine Yao

PHOTO OF THE ISSUE

Sam Tsui gives a rousing performance as the headliner of Korean American Student Association (KASA) Show on May 15. Tsui, a YouTube celebrity well-known for his mash-ups and covers of popular artists, started his channel in 2011 and has since garnered a widespread following of nearly 2 million subscribers.