Before coming to Shanghai, I had heard about the allure and beauty of Shanghainese women as well as their fame at seducing men. What I found when I arrived, however, was a completely different story. All the locals were unattractive with most of them just downright ugly. This was probably the only culture shock I experienced in China.
Spending more time in Shanghai did not help the situation, out of a city of 23 million I could not seem to find one single local Chinese girl that I found attractive. Faced with this odd observation, I tried to reason it out. As an anthropologist, my first thoughts turned to culture. “Beauty is a cultural construct!” I thought to myself, so it must have something to do with me being very Americanized that I cannot appreciate these Chinese girls. However, as time wore on this seemed less and less convincing. When the cultural theory finally died, I just told people it must be from a lack of nutrition, which is an even worse explanation but the best that I could come up with.
Three months ago everything suddenly changed. It was as if there was a switch in my brain that suddenly got flipped and without explanation or warning, I started seeing attractive/cute/pretty locals everywhere. Perhaps, I was on to something about beauty being a cultural construct. After all I have been enculturated into many local customs such as eating oily food and pushing people out of my way. It should not be that large of a leap for me to come to internalize local concepts of attractiveness. Of course, the other explanation is that I am coming to the end of my junior year and being still single am simply getting desperate.
Whether it be enculturation or desperation, things have gone too far. It is time to go home in order to reverse whatever has happened because I would never be able to face my friends back home if I fell for a local.
-muffinman
