Why We Can’t Talk About Asian Faces

As an Asian American, how do we describe ourselves? I dont mean in terms of personality or stereotypes. Rather, do we have a vocabulary for illustrating our facial and other physical features?

In the last column, we talked about remembering faces. On a related note, heres something thats intrigued me for some time. As an Asian American, how do we describe ourselves? I dont mean in terms of personality or stereotypes. Rather, do we have a vocabulary for illustrating our facial and other physical features?

For example, when I need to meet someone that Ive never met before in a public place (e.g. a business contact or a blind date), how can that person identify me?

Look for the Chinese guy with black hair, brown eyes and glasses?

This is fine if youre the only Asian male in town, but if youre in a city like Los Angeles, and especially in a neighborhood that has a lot of Asians, youve just described a quarter or more of the population. So how do we describe ourselves to others? Caucasians have more variation in terms of skin tone, hair color, eye color and height range. Except for dyed hair, we Asian Americans are all black haired and brown eyed. Obviously we dont all look alike, but can we articulate how do we look different?

(As an aside, while some features may be more or less prevalent in different Asian ethnicities (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Pacific Islander, etc.), theres a lot of overlap from group to group. If you really think you can tell one Asian ethnicity from another, test yourself at http://www.alllooksame.com. I bet youll be surprised by how badly you fare :-).

Other ethnicities benefit from a wider choice in analogies--he/she looks like A fun pastime is celebrity casting of your own workplace or circle of friendsnamely, if Hollywood made a movie about your office or posse, who would play you and your colleagues? Other ethnicities have a wide selection to choose from. For example, if youre an African American maleOh, he looks like Will Smith/Colin Powell/Dennis Rodman/Chubby Checker. But here in the U.S., who do we look like? For an Asian American male, theres Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow-Yun Fat, Sammo Hung, and a number of good looking actors and news reporters are trying to make it to the big time. But none of them look like me, Mr. Joe Average Asian American. Asian American women have a slightly more diverse gamut of celebrity look-alikes to draw from, but its hardly the range that our Caucasian friends can pick from.

For Asians, then, is there a way of detailing ourselves and our features? A way that I can tell someone with a high degree of accuracy what another Asian American looks like?
If not, is there a role for creating a language or system that describes ourselves?

I dont have the answer to that, but if any of you do, let me know, so that I can start describing the people around me.

Next Time: Reporting from the NAAAP National Convention