Denial of Asian cultural agency in Kaw's articles

As a half-Asian I found this week’s readings completely riveting. Considering that my mother is Korean yet I am often mistaken as being of completely Caucasian ancestry and was raised with very little contact with Korean culture, I find myself unsure of my own expectations and thoughts on these articles.

I did, however, find Kaw’s essays to be extremely problematic.

She writes that Asian women “feel they are exercising their Americanness in their use of the freedome of individual choice” (77) and subsequently critiques them for seeking out cosmetic surgery that “does not so much benignly transform them as it ‘normalizes’” (78). Are these women excercising an American sense of individualism or are they conforming? I feel that Kaw is disregarding the East Asian (or at the very least, Korean) social expectation of establishment within a group. She denies the agency of Asian culture, despite the fact that two of the women had their surgery before coming to America. She places supreme emphasis on the power of the image of whiteness and focuses only on the external forces of American cultural standards.

Another quote I found interesting: “I guess I always wanted that sharp look—a look like you are smart.” Especially when considered in contrast with “the Oriental bookworm.” Is the standard of beauty smart but not bookish? I find that Kaw’s argument is not terribly grounded—her words could be twisted in either direction.

I also found it interesting that of the surgeries she cites as popular for caucasian women (but not for Asian American women), two of them—liposuction and wrinkle reduction—would, according to the stereotypes explored in Yamamoto’s article, be unnecessary for the slender and doll-faced oriental.

I cannot help but think of Akira Lippit's lecture last semester on Imagined Asian Languages--he was asked (by professor Chun, maybe?) what he thought of the large eyes in anime characters. He replied that the eyes are not, in fact white--they're not human at all--and postulated that the expectation that anime eyes reflect a coveting of Western features might be a Western myth.

It seems that the danger is writing about Asian-American identity is its positioning as always foreign. Asian-Americans are accused of being clannish yet seeking normalization; they're a "model minority" yet change their features in a bid to look smarter.

Perhaps these are all crude or petty points. Ultimately, I am compelled to critique Kaw’s myopic cultural assessment, but I am also hesitant in coming to a conclusion, being unsure as to the extent of my own cultural bias.