By Jason Lim
A few years ago, my little boy and I were talking over dinner about how our respective days went. He was trying to narrate a story and was differentiating himself from the other kids in his class. He used a word that I never forgot. He said, "Not me, that was for the real American kids." I feebly protested, "But you are a real American, too." He nodded, somewhat impatiently. "I know, but you know." And I did.
We always taught our boy that he was a full American although he is a hyphenated American: Korean-American. I don't think he's confused about his Americanness. But when he said, "real American kids," we both knew he meant the white kids that made up the bulk of his classmates. He didn't mean anything by it. It was just a descriptor he used because he picked up through various social and cultural cues that white kids were more authentically American than someone who looked like him, despite the best efforts of his parents and the school.
That exchange took me back to when I was growing up in the Bronx, going to a private school that was mostly white Jewish kids from New York City, and the little incidents that puzzled me at the time. For example, when everyone wanted to be Maverick and my friends handed me their sunglasses to try on, they would never fit right, especially Ray-ban Aviators. Another one was hats or caps. They would never look as cool on me as they did on my buddies. Whenever I showed up in a random photo, in the school paper or the Yearbook, I would look at myself with parts curiosity, strangeness and disdain. Attending one of the best schools in the world and surrounded by bright, kind classmates and the best teachers, I felt out of place: not because of the school, but because of myself. I didn't hate what I looked like. I literally didn't know what I looked like because it was so different from what I thought I should look like, which was like my classmates.
Combined with the severe, cystic acne that I suffered from on my face, it left me with a distorted sense of shame and a tendency to want to hide my face away from the bright lights of the world, whether they come from an overhead dressing room light, glare of the subway car fluorescents or enveloping sunlight that bathes your face with soothing comfort, which, in my case, was anything but. As you grow older, you learn to cope and function fairly normally in social settings but the self-distortion never leaves you.
All this rumination has led me to question whether I suffer from a type of facial dysmorphia that is caused by the mental dissonance between what you look like and what all the others look like in your community when growing up. Besides my immediate family, I literally had no one around me that looked like me. These days, you have K-pop stars all over the world with their beauty and talent clearly visible, but, back then, the Asian look was something you only saw on magazine pages as an exotic afterthought.
I also wonder whether the prevalence of facial dysmorphia is higher among minority kids who grow up embedded in a society where the majority doesn't look like them. If so, what does that mean for the increasing number of Korean kids who don't look traditionally Korean? With a significant percentage of kids being born to Korean and Southeast Asian parents, probably to less affluent and rural households, what are these kids going through? How about all the other hyphenated Koreans? Are they growing up as strangers in a familiar land?
I always thought that age would bring me relief and that I would eventually be comfortable in my own skin. Unfortunately, it's more like a temporary armistice than a full peace treaty. Whenever I take a photo and look at myself, I recognize the face as if I am looking at a random face that I encountered a long time ago somewhere far away. There is no sense of ownership over my own face. There is no familiarity. There certainly is no comfort. But, then again, there is no discomfort except for a distant, muted dullness to my vision when looking at myself.
It's not a matter of vanity. There is no self-judgment over its beauty or ugliness. At this point, there is no self-distortion of what I look like, nor even an interest in examining the face closely. It's literally that I am a stranger in my own skin. Or more accurately, my face is a stranger to me because I don't seem to have a deep, foundational relationship with what I look like, fatigued by the constant attempt to reconcile the dissonance of my self-image that might have been created by the unique circumstances of my upbringing. I look at myself, but I can't see me.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
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We always taught our boy that he was a full American although he is a hyphenated American: Korean-American. I don't think he's confused about his Americanness. But when he said, "real American kids," we both knew he meant the white kids that made up the bulk of his classmates. He didn't mean anything by it. It was just a descriptor he used because he picked up through various social and cultural cues that white kids were more authentically American than someone who looked like him, despite the best efforts of his parents and the school.
That exchange took me back to when I was growing up in the Bronx, going to a private school that was mostly white Jewish kids from New York City, and the little incidents that puzzled me at the time. For example, when everyone wanted to be Maverick and my friends handed me their sunglasses to try on, they would never fit right, especially Ray-ban Aviators. Another one was hats or caps. They would never look as cool on me as they did on my buddies. Whenever I showed up in a random photo, in the school paper or the Yearbook, I would look at myself with parts curiosity, strangeness and disdain. Attending one of the best schools in the world and surrounded by bright, kind classmates and the best teachers, I felt out of place: not because of the school, but because of myself. I didn't hate what I looked like. I literally didn't know what I looked like because it was so different from what I thought I should look like, which was like my classmates.
Combined with the severe, cystic acne that I suffered from on my face, it left me with a distorted sense of shame and a tendency to want to hide my face away from the bright lights of the world, whether they come from an overhead dressing room light, glare of the subway car fluorescents or enveloping sunlight that bathes your face with soothing comfort, which, in my case, was anything but. As you grow older, you learn to cope and function fairly normally in social settings but the self-distortion never leaves you.
All this rumination has led me to question whether I suffer from a type of facial dysmorphia that is caused by the mental dissonance between what you look like and what all the others look like in your community when growing up. Besides my immediate family, I literally had no one around me that looked like me. These days, you have K-pop stars all over the world with their beauty and talent clearly visible, but, back then, the Asian look was something you only saw on magazine pages as an exotic afterthought.
I also wonder whether the prevalence of facial dysmorphia is higher among minority kids who grow up embedded in a society where the majority doesn't look like them. If so, what does that mean for the increasing number of Korean kids who don't look traditionally Korean? With a significant percentage of kids being born to Korean and Southeast Asian parents, probably to less affluent and rural households, what are these kids going through? How about all the other hyphenated Koreans? Are they growing up as strangers in a familiar land?
I always thought that age would bring me relief and that I would eventually be comfortable in my own skin. Unfortunately, it's more like a temporary armistice than a full peace treaty. Whenever I take a photo and look at myself, I recognize the face as if I am looking at a random face that I encountered a long time ago somewhere far away. There is no sense of ownership over my own face. There is no familiarity. There certainly is no comfort. But, then again, there is no discomfort except for a distant, muted dullness to my vision when looking at myself.
It's not a matter of vanity. There is no self-judgment over its beauty or ugliness. At this point, there is no self-distortion of what I look like, nor even an interest in examining the face closely. It's literally that I am a stranger in my own skin. Or more accurately, my face is a stranger to me because I don't seem to have a deep, foundational relationship with what I look like, fatigued by the constant attempt to reconcile the dissonance of my self-image that might have been created by the unique circumstances of my upbringing. I look at myself, but I can't see me.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
