Americanization: Snow White conquers the world

I could find myself -- an Asian girl dissatisfied with her small eyes and flat nose -- in many parts of the this week's readings. One interesting fact is that I am not American in any aspect (I moved here only less than three years ago), but my standard of beauty coincides much with that of Asian American women described in many readings. I wonder why.

Earlier today I watched a Youtube video (that clearly has become a sensation of a sort in the last couple days) of a white girl demanding "American manner" (which, for her, is synonymous to basic etiquette and politeness) to Asians (she didn't bother calling them Asian Americans) who lack independence, who speak on the phone loudly in libraries in Chinese, and who (might) have family in tsunami-struck Japan. Her conceptualization of "American-ness" and "Asian" excellently exemplifies Kaw's point on association of qualities to certain visual racial features. As soon as this white American girl sees a person with Asian facial and physical features, without any information about that person's nationality or upbringing, she automatically associates all the stereotypes she had about Asian. What particularly interests me here is her association of Asian visual features and "foreign-ity". The girl says how all those Asian kids at UCLA bring along their parents and grandparents all the way from Asia to go for grocery shopping. Whether that Asian student is fourth-generation Californian whose ancestors came to America before her own European ancestors did, that student's visual feature automatically represents qualities of foreign minority, which therefore is contradictory to "American-ness" (=American manners, American ideals, common sense, etc).

Yet all the Asian Americans, or Asians residing in Asian country (including myself), are not free from this exact same way of thinking. In this sense, despite the huge temporal and situational gap between the two, Seoul that I grew up is much similar to post-war Seoul described by Palumbo-Liu. I grew up watching Disney princess movies and Japanese Anime with super hero(ine)s who looked even more white than Disney princesses. My parents used to buy Disney movies without Korean dubbing in a hope that I can learn (American) English effectively. I grew up playing with Korean-made Jenny dolls (basically replication of Barbie dolls). Yes, the doll's name was Jenny which was obviously not Korean, and she was white and brunette. I did not look like Snow White, Sailor Moon, or Jenny doll. I could never be as American as they were, but I, like many other Korean people, desired American/white/western ideal, living in a western style apartment, dressing myself in a pair of jeans and t-shirts, and eventually deciding to study abroad in America for more successful life. And a part of me still desire bigger eyes, defined nose, smaller face, and longer legs. Perhaps I have always been foreign in my own world, and so was every other marginalized Koreans living in westernized Korean society.

Ps. A random question to the whole class. Do you find Lucy Liu attractive? She is really far away from the modern Asian(or at least Korean) standard of beautiful women, which rather looks like this.