ObserAsian #4 Asians and Hair

Asians are known for a variety of physical traits from their flatter broader noses, shorter stature to this blog's inspiration, their eyes. One of the physical traits of Asians that is far less discussed is Asian hair. Asians have a very weird relationship with hair. Asian women are oft cited for having beautiful straight shiny and voluminous hair while Asian men are known for having thin hair wherever their genetics allow them to grow it. In short, Asians and specifically Asian men, really value their hair.

In fact you may have noticed the lack of arm and leg hair present on Asian men. Asian men throughout the years have devised two ways to cope with their lack of active hair follicles on their limbs. Asian men either embrace their lack of hair and cut their hair short to round out their look. We'll call this the minimalist approach. This is the approach that I take. For every bystander who asks us if we shave our legs or our arms we can just say, "well I don't have that much hair anyways," have them look at our shaved heads and nod in mutual understanding.

The other coping mechanism revolves around the overvaluation of hair and the we'll take it where we can get it approach. Asians value their hair and the ability to grow it immensely and have developed quite a culture surrounding hair. The placing of hair on the aesthetic pedestal leads to a variety of hairstyles that are unique to Asians. We will analyze these slightly more in depth.

1) The Dragonball Z Super Saiyan look. This is the simplest of excessive Asian hair growth. Modelling their hair after the popular animated anime series, the Dragonball Z look places emphasis on industrial strength hair gel, hair spray and jagged hair spikes. The fact that Asians equate long spiky hair with the ability to fly and shoot fireballs out of their hands just shows how much Asians truly value their hair. In fact just like the Dragonball Z series and the various levels of Super Saiyan, there are also levels of Asian Dragonball Z hairstyles.

Level 1 (Categorized by lack of hair products and emphasis on big vertical hair):

Level 2 (Categorized by use of hair products and the beginning formation of spikes):

Level 3 (Categorized by the use of hair products and hair dye. Also notice the increased jaggedness of the hair and anime qualities of the individual):

2) The well at least I can grow facial hair look. Asians are completely foreign to the five o'clock shadow. For Asian men, it might as well be the five day hiatus where hair does not even peer through their pores. Days and weeks can easily pass without the use of a razor. In fact the Gilette Mach 5 razor with its 5 blades would probably have enough blades per Asian facial hair. The Asian male who is able to truly grow facial hair is rare and probably Mongolian. There is a very slippery slope with Asians who are capable of growing facial hair; they either look like wise philosophers or creepy Asian men. There is no middle ground; you're either one or the other. Long Asian beards don the likes of renowned thinkers such as Confucius and Sun Tzu. Asian mustaches don the likes of these dudes:

Once again let's review. Asian beard = famed philosopher. Asian mustache = dirtiness.

3) The I know it looks stupid, but it's for good luck hair look. Asians know they cannot keep up with their American and Eastern European counterpart when it comes to growing hair. Asians instead choose to one up their counterparts by growing long strands of lucky hair, whether it be nose hair, ear hair, or the infamous mole hair. Since hair is so highly valued in Asian male society, the fact that hair can grow in such a concentrated area must mean that it is special and bestows good luck upon the hair bearer. When confronted about the sheer ridiculousness of this hair, the response is almost always, "well it's lucky."

4) The I know the only cool person to ever have this haircut in the history of mankind is Bruce Lee but I'm going to try it anyway bowl cut look. It is irrefutable that Bruce Lee is the man. His sheer awesomeness allowed him to overcome the indefensible Asian bowl cut. If you are not Bruce Lee, you should not have this hair cut. It is that simple. Even with the simplicity of this rule, Asians value having hair so much that they bite the bullet, and often. At one point in every Asian male's life they have had the Asian bowl cut.

Shout out to Beth for the inspiration.

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Stuff We Rike #3 Complexity

"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."

-Confucius

The list of figures whose wisdom have permeated to the present is a short list and Confucius is one of the few figures who have withstood the test of time and made the "their axioms will have credibility until the end of time," shortlist. You may be wondering how this quote pertains to what Asians like but let me assure you it does.

The collective "we" that Confucius is referring to are Asians. Asians have shown the collective ability to take any simple situation and make it about 376.41% more complex than it should be. Now why 376% more complex? Because 376% would just be too simple a figure. Do not get me wrong however, this does not mean that Asians cannot operate in complex situations; they actually thrive in such situations. In fact Asians take immense pride in the complexity that they surround their everyday lives with. In fact if Confucius says so, it must be true. Let's examine this phenomenon a little more in depth.

LANGUAGE

One of the easiest places to see how Asians choose complexity over simplicity is in how they communicate. From the earliest days of writing where symbols and pictograms were used to convey information to today's modern forms of communication, language and particularly the written language has gone through an immense amount of simplification. Most written languages throughout the world share similar beginnings with pictorial representations and a few Rosetta Stones and modifications later arrive at an alphabet system to make things simpler.

Asians, and more specifically the Chinese, however, have chosen to not only choose not to simplify their written language with an alphabet but have stuck with using one character to represent one idea. This is the Chinese character for "I": 我. Seriously. And you wonder why Chinese is so hard to learn? Because it is complex. Asians love that their languages are insanley hard to understand and learn and take pride in the fact that their languages are hard to decipher; we like to be a complicated bunch.

Entertainment

People like to do enjoyable things and engage in activities to entertain themselves themselves for the sake of fun. One of the most time tested of these activities is checkers; easy to learn, difficult to master. Traditional checkers takes place on an 8x8 board that has alternating squares where pieces can only move in two directions. We all know the game. We have all played it at some point in our lives.

Now what happens when you cross checkers with Asians? You get Chinese checkers. Let's take the game of checkers, find out how we can increase its complexity and then we can call it an Asian parlor game. The thought process going into creating Chinese checkers mus have gone something like this: A square board? Too simple. Oh let's make the board a hexagram instead. Two sets of pieces? Too simple. Oh let's actually make six sets of pieces. 64 squares? Again too simple. Let's make 121 indentations instead. I guess if If we allow the pieces to still jump we can still call it checkers. Whallah! I present you Chinese Checkers!

EATING

Food and the need of it is one of the few human necessities. How Asians choose to eat their food is another way that Asians choose to over complicate their lives. I am going to reiterate once againthat everybody needs to eat. Food is a must. You would think that you would like to consume food in the simplest manner possible. Asians disagree. In fact most Asians choose to eat their food by using two rounded sticks to pick things up. Some may be saying that they know how to use chopsticks and that they are highly efficient. I answer you this. Do you take pride in being able to use any other eating utensil? Have you ever heard anybody gleefully state, "Yes! I can use a spoon!" Probably not. And lastly, what other eating utensil comes prepackaged with instructions.

Math

Asians like math. They prefer complicated math. This is a topic for another day.

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