As an Asian-American, I’ve grown up hearing “you look exactly like so-and-so” or “are you related to so-and-so?” all the time. A lot of the times, I would try to earnestly look at my face and the face of so-and-so to see if I could see the resemblance. Usually I came to the conclusion that we were both Asian, had rounder faces, and flatter noses. But that didn’t really mean anything. Those were common characteristics of Asian faces. On top of that, I was never compared to the same person twice. I was compared to so many different Asian girls, none of which looked like each other. ‘Is my face that generic?’ I would wonder. After looking in the mirror day after day and year after year, I had grown to know my face—the features that made me unique, the things I found special. Sure my eyes are what non-Asians like to call “cat-eyed,” *eye roll* but they also have this unique outline that makes the skin around my eyes look as if it had been carved smoothly. Somehow reminiscent of totem pole carvings. My eyes turn into half moons when I smile, but the inner corners of my eyes are sharply angled, almost hawk-like. I liked this. My lips, maybe my favorite feature about myself, are full yet delicate. My cupid’s bow is well-defined, but not too mountainous. Of course there’s a longer list of facial features I’ve wished to change; we are our harshest critics. But I’ve trained myself to look in the mirror and focus on what I love and even embrace the parts I’ve been ridiculed for. Like my nose.
I remember one summer at camp, I fell while playing capture the flag, only to get trampled on. My seven year-old self got up, a little bloody and very muddy, crying just a little. My counselor came over to ask if I was alright, and some girls gathered around. One girl asked if someone ran over my face because my nose looked flat. Bewildered, I touched my nose—it felt fine. My counselor told them to go back to playing and walked me to the nurse’s cabin. They called my mom. She came, and when she saw me, I started to cry. But not a little, a lot. She asked what hurt and I told her that some girl had told me my nose was flat. She sympathetically smiled and gave a little chuckle, assuring me that I was beautiful. She explained that Asian faces look different, that all faces look different, and some people aren’t as used to seeing these differences. But that’s okay! From that moment on, two things happened: 1. I was more self-conscious of my face, especially in relation to the ones around me but 2. I worked hard to understand that differences didn’t mean flaws. Luckily, the latter dominated my thoughts over the next decade of my life. The tumultuous teenage years in which girls obsess over the numbers of their waists and cup sizes weren’t in fact so tumultuous. My friends and I would pore over magazines, but while my friends wished they could look like the Seventeen models, I had become immune to comparison. The girls on the glossy pages never seemed real to me and thanks to a Dove commercial here and there, I was able to understand that the beauty portrayed in the media was skewed.
However, as I grew up, the one comment that continued to get under my skin was “you look just like so-and-so!” Going to a high school with a 39% Asian population didn’t exactly help my case either. It seemed like a sitcom at times—the same conversation over and over. Me responding with a pretend-interested “haha really?” while secretly wanting to repeatedly bang my head against the nearest wall.
Why did it bother me so much? I mean, I’d definitely said the same to several people. Certain people just reminded me of other people! Big deal, right? I realized it came down to the desire to be unique. Narcissism, really. After looking at myself day after day, I had noticed the details in my fabric that the average observer did not. I had grown to love the little things. I knew my complexity the best; I lived in my own body, persevered through my own struggles. So to be so casually categorized was insulting. I felt basic, for lack of a better word. Like everything inside of me could never make me look like someone else. Even if so-and-so was beautiful, I wanted to be my own person. I didn’t want to hear that I looked exactly like her.
But then I realized three things that helped me make sense of it all:
1. There have been several times when I’d met identical twins whom I could not differentiate for my life. But as I got to know them better, observable differences surfaced. Huge differences! I couldn’t mix them up if I tried. I realized, it was a matter of time and proximity. People who saw me often and came to know my quirks, would start to see that I didn’t look so similar to so-and-so after all. This worked in reverse as well, people who had known me for quite some time would tell me “you remind me of so-and-so, but not because you look alike…it’s this je ne sais quoi factor.” But really what it was were mannerisms, facial expressions, the details in the fabric! This entire hullabaloo was a matter of perception. Any weight it carried was transient and only had enough determining power as I let it.
2. I also realized that humans are programmed to look for familiarity. When in contact with something, the brain immediately tries to associate that thing with something already in its mental network. The brain tries to recognize, to process and interpret, by categorizing incoming information according to what it already knows. The dangerous thing about this is that humans often behave according to these mental associations despite how valid the connection is. So if I happened to look like someone’s arch nemesis, that person may have a harder time warming up to me. Their assumptions—though irrationally based—may cause them to treat me in the way they’re conditioned to treat their arch nemesis, unless they actively try to control themselves. This just means that I’d have to try my best to make my own mark on their minds with my own brightness.
3. Ultimately, people see only as far as they’ve been exposed to! This goes beyond the first point. Really, people’s experiences or lack of create their realities and thus, their visions. So I needed to work at being secure in myself and what I know to be true rather than falling victim to silly, meaningless comments.
In the end, I can objectively understand how Asian faces may vary in less noticeable ways relative to other ethnicities, but should that mean anything? No. I am proud to look how I do. To all the times I’ve questioned my beauty or originality, I say adieu. I will smile not despite, but because of my dumpling cheeks. I got ‘em from my mama.