Reflections

I saw my reflection in a store window today. My hair is so sun-damaged that parts of it look almost blond in the sun. This is unacceptable. You can put sunblock on your skin; what can you put on your hair to keep this from happening? I always envy the Asian girls I see whose hair is so dark and black and shiny. It's a pride thing, I guess; an identity thing, although even I don't really understand what I mean by that. Twenty-first Century already, globalization, yada yada yada, and yet it's still so hard to put my finger on what it means to be both Asian and American. Honestly? I feel more American than Asian. I love this country as much as any gun-toting, red-state-dwelling, Budweiser-chugging white man (or woman). Probably even more than some, because I know what the alternatives might have been for me. I don't take it for granted. But I don't want to forget where I come from either.

Not, I suppose, that there is any real danger of that, because people will always react to how you look, not how you feel. And I look pretty Asian. (Blond hairs aside.)

It's worth stopping to think how much of your identity is premised on your appearance. We watched Alejandro Amenábar's Open Your Eyes last night, about a man whose life falls apart after a disfiguring car accident. My husband couldn't get over how sympathetic I felt toward the main character (who pre-car accident did a lot of unsympathetic things that I would normally have been outraged by). But I guess there was part of me that really knew where he was coming from.