AAA's Fashion Show Is Not for Asians

I AM a stereotype, resent me.

After a certain point, I can't change who I am--at least not my physical appearance or the clothes I am limited to wearing because of my height.

I don't feel like a stereotype even when I do things that could possibly be labelled as those of a stereotypical Asian American. So, what's the difference?

That attitude doesn't seem so obvious to many Asian American students at Harvard who feel that they have to combat stereotypes to be considered unique.

The Asian American Association (AAA) has conscientiously led the assault, sponsoring a forum on stereotypes and an "Asian Model Search," for a mega-huge-real-Boston-media-coverage-expected-real -hairdressers-real makeup artists-Asian fashion show to be held later this month.

What? An all-Asian Fashion show to combat Asian stereotypes?

It sounds ridiculous.

I was disturbed when I first saw the row of hot pink "Asian Model Search" posters of a tall, slim, decidedly caucasian-looking female taped to the pavement leading to the Science Center. Taped there, I suppose, to recruit all those reclusive Asian pre-meds?

I BECAME more disturbed when I learned that there would be a height requirement for all those aspiring Asian models. To have the honor of sashaying down the runway, women have to be at least 5'6" and men 5'8".

What? The Asian women models have to be at least 5'6"? How many Asian women are actually that tall, I wondered. Instinct told me that 5'6" was far from our median height. I conducted an unscientific investigation.

I thought of all my Asian friends. Only two are that tall.

My other piece of evidence is that the majority of my 4'9" mother's clothes that fit well are sent from Japan by an aunt. If my mom can find clothes that fit in Japanese department stores with relative ease, then a good number of Asians are that short. Economics, you know?

"Discrimination!!" I cried.

Friends tried to placate me with the consolation that the height requirements were merely due to the fact that the clothes to be modeled were cut for people that tall. In a real fashion show (i.e. one with white models), I was reminded that female models are required to be at least 5'10". By lowering the height requirement, this fashion show was indeed taking into consideration the shorter stature of the Asian community. But that's not the message I get.

BEFORE you can consider modeling, my taller Asian brothers and sisters, you must be, according to AAA, "non-stereotypical and distinctive-looking."

"More discrimination!" I cried.

Before I go on, let me state for the record where my bias lies. I am a Chinese-American woman who stands a vertically-challenged 5'1". I have short, straight black hair, no eyelids and look like the stereotypical Asian, whatever that means.

I felt an acute sense of rejection when I learned that AAA had deserted me and all those Asian students whose rights they purport to promote--the simple majority of us who will never, even with spike heels, make the 5'6" minimum; who spend hours at the mall looking for clothes that won't make us look like little girls playing dress-up in mom's clothes; who deal with jeans and slacks rolled up into jumbo doughnuts around our ankles; who scour "petite" departments for clothes that are vaguely fashionable and aren't designed for middle-aged country club women who have just begun to lose inches to osteoporosis; who didn't work hard enough to earn a sewing badge in Girl Scouts and learn to sew our own adequately proportioned clothes.

It was then that I realized the crusade to reject the stereotypes placed upon us by Western-society had gone too far. It had led us to reject ourselves.

Once upon a time, I too wanted to take the road less travelled. I wanted to venture "off the beaten path" and avoid stereotypedom. I wanted to go to Yale.

My parents, however, refused to understand why I would even consider attending another college when the best university in the world (everyone in the Asian-American community knows that Harvard is #1 da xue) had offered me a place in the class of 1994. Asian-American students never reject an offer from Harvard, they insisted. In fact, they threatened to refuse to pay for another college, even one that was, in the eyes of most Americans, equal to, if not better than, this school in Massachusetts.

Two years ago, after pre-frosh weekend, I made two decisions. I would cave in to parental pressure and go to Harvard, and that would be the last stereotypical Asian American act I would ever commit in my life. From then on, I was going to avoid any action that would could label me a stereotypical Asian American.

For instance, I vowed not to live in Quincy House. Not only is this house an architectural monstrosity, but I had learned that its house stereotype was not based on the interests of its residents, like in Adams or Kirkland, but on their race. Quincy, prefrosh in the know at the Asian American Association meeting that weekend told me, was called the "Asian House" because of the disproportionate percentage of Asian students in residence there.

If I was going to be an unoriginal Asian American student and go to #1 da xue, I wasn't, at least, going to follow them all to "Chinatown on the Charles."

TODAY, I am an Asian-American East Asian Studies Concentrator--the proidentity concentration for Harvard Asian Americans--living in Quincy House (I allowed my roommates to place it on our non-ordered choice house lottery form, never realizing that cruel fate would deprive me of wood panelling or sunny suites facing the river.)

So, I've given up. I've come to terms with the fact that no matter how diligently I try or hope or think about being an Asian original, I will never escape stereotype-dom. And I don't want to, if I must reject myself--my interests, my looks, my body, to effect such an escape.

AAA should realize that it's not physical characteristics that create a damaging stereotype. It's not even the existence of a stereotype that is damaging. It would be more worthwhile if they would fight against the pressure that many Asian Americans feel to deny their real interests and avoid choosing stereotypical educational and career paths simply because they are afraid of being labeled as "typical."

We have to realize that people can't change either the way they look or their academic interests. AAA is missing the point by sponsoring a fashion show that conforms, perhaps inadvertently, to "western" standards of beauty when the Asian American body is different.

I commend AAA for attempting to encourage Asian American students to "consider a field they have never considered before" by putting together this fashion show.

But if AAA really wanted to do a positive thing for Asian Americans, they shouldn't mount a fashion show where the majority of the Asians in the audience will never fit into the clothes being modeled.

Expressing culture is supposed to celebrate differences, not try to diminish them.