'Murica!

If girls were noodles, then Hong Kong girls would be rice vermicelli and the girls from Middlebury spaghetti. Why? Rice vermicelli is puny and delicate. It takes on the flavor and color of the sauces it is cooked with. In contrast, spaghetti always slaps angrily at your face when you slurp too hard. Neither does it alter in taste or color, no matter how and what you cook it with.

Although I used to be a member of a swim team and a long distance runner, I have barely moved a muscle beyond the motions of walking since I came to Middlebury. Back at home, when I was training in the pool, I remember one girl complaining about the kicking laps she has to do — ‘kicking too much will make my legs thicker, because I will have too much muscle!’ It was interesting that she said that, because I thought the same way too. Somehow, our notions of femininity are not so much defined by our curves, but by how delicate we look.

What is being delicate? The delicate girl is the pale-looking girl in Oxfords and quaint Korean/Japanese fashion. The delicate girl is chaste, maybe quiet — someone that you would gladly give help to if asked. She would also be skinny — not the rawboned and gritty kind of skinny, like Rooney Mara in “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” — but the softer kind of skinny, where fat accumulates out of laziness, the way cream stagnates into a wintry sheen in a cup of coffee.

Although delicacy is not exactly the picture of health, I think I identified with this aesthetic, much more so than I did with the typical picture of American women in my mind. In my mind, a beautiful American woman is a woman with a prominent facial structure wearing bold red lipstick, regal with several pieces of bright colored jewelry. The crooks and curves of her body are well articulated by formal attire. But she also has another facet — the side with her hair pinned up as she changes a tire off a truck, or jogs through the streets on a winter morning, the lean muscles of her body flexing in the wind. Compared to Hong Kong women, American women in my mind are fearless achievers, with determination, grit and grind.

As an Asian woman, I can appreciate the latter aesthetic. Although these comments may be patronized by feminists, I feel much more feminine when assuming the visual aesthetics of a delicate woman, allowed to be weak and helped in this character role. Somehow this image of delicateness strikes a much more natural balance between male and female roles in society. And yet, as an individual, I would like to assume the American aesthetic — the bold, assertive woman. Although it assumes a sense of unnatural masculinity, I can assume a position of power in this role. In the body of an American woman, I would have the courage and energy to pursue what I want.

Although I have not run or swum for a long while, I remember feeling powerful after my two-hour training sessions at the pool. Sports are the celebration of the power of our own bodies. Preoccupied with our social roles, I think Hong Kong women tend to forget that. Although our curves can never parallel those of Caucasian women, I think we are beautiful in own way, just as rice vermicelli or spaghetti can taste as good as long as they are cooked in ways that match their texture.