NYT: Why Are Asian Girls Suddenly Forced to Dye Their Hair Blonde? Because There Are Too Many White People!
04/09/2018
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From the New York Times:

Why So Many Asian-American Women Are Bleaching Their Hair Blond

By ANDREA CHENG APRIL 9, 2018

The first time I was aware of my Asianness was when I asked my mother why I wasn’t blond. I was 5, and one of only a handful of Asian-Americans living in a predominantly white suburb in Michigan.

You ever notice how every.single.article these days is based on the premise of Too Many White People?
Of course, my story is not unique — it’s an experience that’s probably shared by most American-born Asians as we shake off our perceived otherness and strive to prove our Americanness. There’s a term for it: “perpetual foreigner.”

“We’re the group that’s always told to go back where we came from, and it’s partly because we have a very strong immigrant population, so we all get bundled in regardless of whether we’re fourth generation or first — to everyone, you look like a foreigner,” said Erin Khue Ninh, associate professor of Asian-American studies at UC Santa Barbara.

If that’s the case, the most obvious and quickest way to subscribe to Western ideals of beauty is to lighten your hair.

“I grew up in Georgia where everyone was blond haired and blue eyed, and I always had this image of myself as an Asian Barbie,” Ms. Rim said. “Now it’s crazy because one-third of the Asians I see in New York or Los Angeles are blond.”

After all, there are virtually no Asians in New York or Los Angeles, so what can you expect the tiny number of Asians in Southern California to possibly do?
While Japanese celebrities have been changing their hair color as far back as the 1960s to emulate manga and anime characters, it was only a couple of years ago, on the heels of the ombré trend, that salons in this country began to see a spike in Asian clients looking to go full platinum.
This change over the last two years is because of the huge decline in the number of Asians in America in 2015 forced the handful of survivors to adopt camouflage to fit in.
… “Maybe this is one part of unlocking the standards we’ve been imprisoned by,” Ms. Lee said. “It may seem like a silly, frivolous act, an act of vanity, but Asians and Asian-Americans have a history of being marginalized and ignored, so whatever the political statement is, maybe by having blond hair, it’s a very simple declaration: ‘Here I am. Pay attention to me. See me.’”
A striking percentage of articles that I’ve read over the last few years are written by self-absorbed Asian-American bimbo journalists who want to write about Girly Stuff like how to get more boys to notice you by dying your hair, because that’s all they think about, but they also feel the career need to hook their fashion effusions to the main topic of this decade: White People and Why They Should Just Go.

[Comment at Unz.com]

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