When I was living in China, strangers often told me I was beautiful. It was quite flattering, and I never figured out how to properly respond. Clearly there is a different cultural standard for saying something like this, though we soon realized that as foreigners, we were pretty exotic speicimens. There seemed to be certain physical criteria that would always be fawned over: blue or green eyes, blond or red hair, ideal porcelain white skin, curly hair, long eyelashes, a curvy figure, and height or facial hair on men. Other characteristics, particularly body fat or large feet were gawked at. I’ve found that people take very differently to the attention, and I was perpetually trying to find some way to come to terms with it.
Please take a minute to imagine being a B-list starlet absolutely everywhere you go for a year.
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One day, I went with Eric, my then-boyfriend, to meet his coworker for dinner. Mr. Li took a look at me, then said to Eric, “Your woman is more beautiful than our country’s woman.” Mmm, A) please don’t make sweeping generalizations, it’s embarassing, B) eliminate the phrase “your woman” from your vocabulary immediately and C) don’t talk about me like I’m some sort of accessory. I’m actually standing right next to you.
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But I also had a striking moment about it all. It was a month or two into my first long trip to China, 20 years old. I was standing outside of the foreign student dormitory in Hangzhou when a passerby complimented me again. Something went off in my brain, and just hit me that oh, I AM beautiful.
Really beautiful.
I cried. It was an incredibly important moment.
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