the look

Been reading Kaja Silverman's The Threshold of the Visible World which is about the look, the gaze and the development of self image- in particular when your mirror reflection does not reflect the ideal of white masculinity. This is for my thesis but it has intrigued me on a personal level as well. It was not until I was 21 that I really accepted that Asians could be beautiful, after experiments with blonde hair dye and being dumped for a pretty blonde girl by one drop kick. I had internalised for a long time that only blonde was beautiful- I remember when I was six drawing pictures of myself with blonde hair. I am also intrigued by the Woman Warrior in which a Chinese girl torments another Chinese girl and finds her ugly and repulsive. One day I will read the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison which is about a black girl who wants to be like Shirley Temple and in the end is driven mad by her surroundings. I wonder whether Asian girls growing up now experience the same things- or whether with the increase of the number of Asian girls, the idolising of Lucy Liu and the popularity of Asian things means that this is less of an issue.