DESCENT
SEEKING ASIAN FEMALE
3
CONTENT WARNING: PROFANITY, SEXUAL HARASSMENT
JAMIE MA
One late Saturday night after coming home from a date, I forced my roommate to balance on top of her swivel desk chair and take a photo of me from the angle at which this 6’6” white man looked at me. Both the angle and my LED desk lamp made me look ghoulish— with buggish eyes, flat lips and dark purple under-eye circles. We doubled over in laughter. “Wow, this man must be really obsessed with getting an Asian girl if that’s what you look like to him,” my roommate joked. I paused. The photo wasn’t great, but it was me— in all my tapered monolid, nonexistent nasal bridge Asian-ness. Then again,
what possessed a white guy that tall and midwestern to want a little Asian girl seventeen inches shorter than him? What I heard was, He only likes you because you’re Asian. Regardless of whether or not this was true, I felt hurt. Was it really so unimaginable that I could be attractive for qualities besides my race? Then again, what possessed a white guy that tall and midwestern to want a little Asian girl seventeen inches shorter than him? Every time I saw him after that (let’s call him Mark) I felt an ickiness pulsing in my gut. Not to pity the white man, but the very foundation of our relationship had troublesome roots.
