Selecting
A couple of days ago I was at work, sweeping the main entrance to the school with a bunch of the ninth grade kids.
One of the boys in this group of kids (whom I'll nickname Eagle) suddenly pointed at his eyes.
"One," he said, in English.
I blinked at him.
He pointed at a boy standing a few feet away, sweeping. He pointed at this boy's eyes.
"Two," he said, in English.
I had no idea what was going on.
With the help of a boy who can speak English better than him, Eagle managed to tell me that his eyes have only one eyelid while the boy next to him has two.
Look at boys like Ninomiya Kazunari and Satou Takeru. They have double eyelids.
Eagle went on to say that girls in Japan like boys who have two eyelids since their eyes appear to be bigger than boys who have one eyelid. He asked me if girls in America are the same.
For a moment I wasn't sure how to explain this.
How do you explain the diversity American girls have to choose from in their guys to a boy who has lived in a country where everyone is so purely Japanese that everyone can immediately tell if you're anything less than 100 percent Japanese?
I decided to talk about eye color, since the topic was just on the eyes. I said American girls tend to have preferences in eye colors.
This is a non-issue in Japan; everyone has brown eyes.
But then I remembered talking to some of the ninth grade girls a few months ago about their eye colors. They were worried about the shade of brown their eyes were. Some of the girls' eyes were a darker shade of brown, and this was seen as bad. The other girls made fun of these girls for having black eyes, which is apparently a bad thing given the reaction to this accusation.
Then my mind hit me with: Maybe because American girls have so much variety to choose from, they aren't as picky, compared to Japanese girls, about what types of guys they like.
And maybe because Japanese girls have such a lack of variety to choose from, they scrounge for any detail in a human feature that sets one boy apart from another.
Would we be like that in America, too? If our (our being American girls) only offering was, say, white guys with brown hair and blue eyes, how picky would we become in choosing among them?
One of the boys in this group of kids (whom I'll nickname Eagle) suddenly pointed at his eyes.
"One," he said, in English.
I blinked at him.
He pointed at a boy standing a few feet away, sweeping. He pointed at this boy's eyes.
"Two," he said, in English.
I had no idea what was going on.
With the help of a boy who can speak English better than him, Eagle managed to tell me that his eyes have only one eyelid while the boy next to him has two.
Look at boys like Ninomiya Kazunari and Satou Takeru. They have double eyelids.
Eagle went on to say that girls in Japan like boys who have two eyelids since their eyes appear to be bigger than boys who have one eyelid. He asked me if girls in America are the same.
For a moment I wasn't sure how to explain this.
How do you explain the diversity American girls have to choose from in their guys to a boy who has lived in a country where everyone is so purely Japanese that everyone can immediately tell if you're anything less than 100 percent Japanese?
I decided to talk about eye color, since the topic was just on the eyes. I said American girls tend to have preferences in eye colors.
This is a non-issue in Japan; everyone has brown eyes.
But then I remembered talking to some of the ninth grade girls a few months ago about their eye colors. They were worried about the shade of brown their eyes were. Some of the girls' eyes were a darker shade of brown, and this was seen as bad. The other girls made fun of these girls for having black eyes, which is apparently a bad thing given the reaction to this accusation.
Then my mind hit me with: Maybe because American girls have so much variety to choose from, they aren't as picky, compared to Japanese girls, about what types of guys they like.
And maybe because Japanese girls have such a lack of variety to choose from, they scrounge for any detail in a human feature that sets one boy apart from another.
Would we be like that in America, too? If our (our being American girls) only offering was, say, white guys with brown hair and blue eyes, how picky would we become in choosing among them?