Weblog
When Facebook was basically past its infancy but not quite in its “prime”, I took advantage like everyone else and spent some time searching for groups that sounded catchy and proudly exclusive — groups like I Remember When the Facebook Was Only For Smart Schools or I Went To a Public School… Bitch, even though my last days in a public school system were sometime in 1997. In a pre-Facebook era, we were always sort of aware that these classifications existed, but Facebook is really what formalized them and gave rise to some of man’s greatest achievements in social taxonomy, like Azn Posse Princesses or Get Drunk, Fuck Liwei.
Awesome.
Anyway, finding a group that would actually say something meaningful about me was completely out of the question. Facebook was all about validating myself through membership in groups inspired by deviant creativity, sarcasm, and highly discerning forms of pride. And well, that’s cool; few people actually take their profiles that seriously. It just gets a little trite when every one of your groups has a hundred some odd members with whom you actually have very little in common. In that case, your groups are more of a nod to a particular set of social attitudes (some more arbitrary or general than others) than they are a means of distinguishing you as, well, you, and not one of those many poor pioneers who lost some cows in a river.
At one point, I considered joining a group called the White-Washed American Asians Society, and I don’t think I really have to explain that one, because, well, have you met me? Ever? Anyway, I didn’t join that group, in part because it is a society, and that word as a label for something like a special interest group has compromising implications (not really; it just reminds me of The Skulls). In addition to that though, something in the group description struck me as slightly off:
Don’t call us FOBs…maybe we were born in a country where flushable bathrooms didn’t exist until the last decade, and we still take off our shoes when entering any house, but we’ve lived in the States long enough to know that tapered pants are out and talking to your mom in [insert first language here] is embarassing at the supermarket line. We got Asian pride, but don’t try to gyp us - our English is better than yours, bitch.
We ARE the Banana Republic.
Disclaimer: This is not a group to downplay Asian pride. We respect others, we respect ourselves, we don’t hate. So don’t hate on us.
It usually doesn’t occur to me to ever take off my shoes when entering a house, and I would actually be lying to you if I said that I was regretful of that. It’s not something to brag about, but my lacking Asian American savoir-faire does sometimes motivate a strangely dignifying kind of pride. I can’t explain it really, but it’s like one of those petty quirks that sets you apart from your friends — like a driving habit that seems natural only to you. It doesn’t make you any better or worse of a driver, and it’s not something you would normally ever think to talk about, but then someone points it out, and for a few, fleeting moments you get to bask in the limelight of your idiosyncrasy.
As for why I have to be reminded to take off my shoes in Asian households: I think that’s just a consequence of having an Americanized mother and a father who doesn’t know cleanliness.
Oh, another reason I didn’t join the White-Washed American Asians Society: that group description, in general. The whole thing. It sounds like me, six years ago, all riled up and impassioned by my teenage, Asian gangster identity crisis. That’s depressing. Also, my first language is English. My only language is English. Talking to my mom in English is not embarrassing at the supermarket line. It is also not embarrassing in the supermarket line. I guess I’m too white to be in this group. How does that work?
To be fair, I was born in a country with a long history of toilets, so I guess I don’t really qualify anyway.