August 27, 2008

•    "'You've Gained Some Weight!':  The Bluntness of Korean-Americans"

  I tend to be on the thin side....but as I get older, unless I run 4 miles a day, I can get bigger in the middle.  And I got reminded of this last night.

  I was with my friend, this married dude my age who runs marathons.  I am aging better than him, but he's taller and more fit.....especially since I haven't been able to run for the past couple of weeks due to a leg injury.

  Anyway, when we met, he took one look at me and said, "Man.  You've gained a little weight there."

  Now even though I am a sensitive guy, I don't get offended by comments like this in the least.  If anything, I APPRECIATE such blunt feedback.  It tells me I need to hit the stationery bike a lot harder after I lift weights and that I need to lay off the beer.  If I did NOT hear such feedback, I would have assumed the world was hunky-dory and that I was my usual fit self because we often tend not to look at ourselves with an objective eye; some view themselves more negatively than the public does while others think they're as hot as Brad Pitt or Paris Hilton if their friends and family don't point out that they need to hit the gym more.

  That is why I LIKE hanging with Koreans and Korean-Americans.  Whether I've gained weight or lost it, it is one of the first comments you'll hear from them after you greet each other. "Ssal-ee jju-suh" ("You've gained weight") or "Ssal-ee bba-juh-suh" ("You've lost weight").  I LOVE this aspect of Korean culture....because how else will you know how you look the public?  If you're tired of asking people how you look or if you look fat in some particular outfit (addressed to the girls)....hang out with Korean-Americans - they'll tell you if you're getting fat as a hog....and not in malicious way.

  Now take my Caucasian friends.  I got some at work, particularly ladies, who are seriously gaining weight.  I see it when I compare their faces now with how their work ID pictures, taken two years prior to now, look.  But I don't dare say anything because I know that they don't want to hear it.  So I have kept quiet over the years.....and their waistlines slowly starts to balloon.  And an unhappy cycle is underway where they gain weight as they age (and are unhappy about it but somehow put it out of their minds for the most part), I have to bit my tongue and remind myself that they are not Korean, and thus they feel no extra motivation to lose the extra poundage since no one is pointing out to them that their body is metamorphasizing.

  I think it comes down to culture, even in this generation.  Female Caucasian Americans, at least the ones I know, have no problems joking about sex and their own experiences with doing the nasty.....but get them on the topic of how they've gained weight or if they've gone to the bathroom and taken a dump or whatever and they look at you like you're uncouth.  Weird, huh?  The activities of their vagina and whose cock has been it is okay to talk and laugh about (hence the whole "Sex & the City" mentality)......but the activities of their neighboring rectum as it relates to digestion and defacation as well as their slowing metabolism resulting in weight gain is taboo to discuss.

   

  Now take Korean girls........

   

  They have NO problems mentioning if you've gained weight, and they don't seem to mind if you say it back to them.  They have NO problems telling you how many times they went to the bathroom to do the #2 (i.e., "launch a missile", "pinch a loaf", "take a dump", "take a sh*t", "read the newspaper", etc.).  But any activities related to the anus's neighboring vagina, as it relates to a guy doing his business inside of one, is off limits unless the girl REALLY knows you.  I think it's because, to a Korean girl, the activities of gaining weight and defacation are not at all a reflection of moral character while humping like a rabbit with some dude COULD be.  So no discussing of sex please!  Play it safe and talk about weight gain (or loss) and if yesterday's dinner came out in the toilet.

   

  And time for me to hit the gym later today!

  • 10:32 am
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