Big changes

My life is getting completely flipped around. In every possible way, almost the biggest possible change is happening. Let’s see….

1) I just moved to my apartment for the summer. It’s the first time I’ve lived on my own (well I still have roommates, but it’s not on campus, no dining hall for food and janitors cleaning everything). I also have to pay bills and stuff!

2) I just started my job. It’s the first time I’ve had a full time, regular hours job. It’s a very laid-back place, not too structured, but the environment is still completely different from Princeton.

3) I might have a girlfriend. (The situation is kind of confusing.) I haven’t had a “real” girlfriend since high school, and dating is much different then, I think.

4) I’m going to get a new laptop. A much more powerful laptop than the one I have now. I can’t wait; my current laptop is decrepit and barely functional. (Hilariously, when I give it to my mom, she probably won’t think there’s anything wrong with it, except for the missing Return key.) I haven’t decided yet for sure but I’m probably going to end up getting a Lenovo ThinkPad Mobile Workstation. Seems like a pretty sweet machine.

5) I’m about to start learning Chinese. It’ll be the first time I’ve seriously tried to learn to speak a second language; I studied Hebrew and Spanish in grade school but it was just because I had to. I was never really conversational in either of those languages.

So yeah. It’s almost like I’m switching into a completely different life. Although #1 and #2 will only last for the summer. (Hopefully #3 [is real and] will last for longer than that.)

Another explanation for “yellow fever”

“Yellow fever.” You’ve probably heard of it. It’s a slang term for the phenomenon of white guys exclusively being romantically interested in Asian girls*. Other than politics, it’s the one thing about Westerners that pisses off Asian dudes the most. Part of why it’s so annoying is that it seems to be completely arbitrary. Some of the most standard keystones of the Western conception of beauty (blond hair, large breasts, curvy hips) occur very rarely (if not only artificially) among Asian women. But a lot of white guys like Asian girls anyway, and people are always coming up with various socially-oriented justifications for this.

I don’t want to flog a dead horse, so I’m not going to rehash the old debates. I just want to propose a completely different reason that a small minority of white guys suffering from yellow fever might have. This minority is the group of nerdy white guys.

Here’s the thing: there’s a general cultural split along intellectual lines in America, where the majority of Americans look down on academia and higher education, and a small minority of “nerdy” types pursue academia intensely (though possibly applying their knowledge to industry later, they remain part of the intellectual elite). There’s also still a fair amount of gender discrimination against girls in academia and professional jobs; although this has been abating for some time, it’s still quite strong in some places. But these things haven’t really been absorbed into the mindset of the typical Asian immigrant family.

So imagine that you’re a white nerdy dude, and you’re in high school, college, working for a high tech firm, whatever. What sort of women are going to be around you that value knowledge, learning, intellectual curiosity? What sort of women will have similar interest in science, math, computers, “nerdy” stuff? There will be disproportionately many Asian women! At my school, for example, there are far more Asian women in the analytical sciences and scientific engineering departments than there are white, Hispanic, black, or women of any other ethnicity (combined).

Now look at the plight of the nerdy white guy. He isn’t attractive to the typical white girl, and (other than physically) she isn’t too attractive to him either. However, the typical Asian girl (at least that the nerdy white guy is likely to encounter) is far more likely to share interests and values with him, so it’s only natural for him to develop a general preference for Asian girls.

Just a thought. I know for sure that I stereotype people I meet in this way.

*As far as I know, “yellow fever” is exclusively used to refer to white guys’ preference for Asian girls, but I’m not really well acquainted with many gay people, so I’m not sure if they use it to refer to white guys’ preference for Asian guys or white girls’ preference for Asian girls. However, I imagine that for similar reasons to the ones I gave above, if I were gay I’d still prefer Asian guys. Most of my male friends right now are Asian.