I just wanna write and create an update. I was going through some of my past writing and I stopped for a minute, but I genuinely want to get back into it.
Some of the things I’ve been thinking about, and always wanted to write about, is Asian masculinity. Being an Asian dude is kinda funny and interesting lol. Especially if you’re Asian Asian and not Asian American. Because you grow up in a space where you’re the shit, or even if you aren’t, you know you belong to the conventional beauty standards. And by that I don’t mean you’re handsome or anything, just that generally you’re okay.
Like there’s people who dig you and people who don’t, and it feels normal in that sense. That was my experience mostly growing up in Bhutan, y’know. Some girls catch your eye and you catch some of theirs, and you genuinely never really feel like shit about how you look or who you are.
Fast forward 2019 and boi was I in for a culture shock. Flew to the US, Connecticut, and went to Connecticut College. Didn’t know it was a prep school and that 80% of the population is the whitest of the white. You go in with this mentality from home, that you’re not too bad looking, that you’re attractive. Then you walk into this nest of whiteness and suddenly you find yourself not being seen at all.
It’s worse than not having an interest in you, it’s more that they never even see you as an option. Like they don’t consider you as the opposite sex, y’know. It felt like invisibility. That’s when I first learned, wow, beauty standards are geographical. And the Asian dude in a white society is at the bottom of the pecking order.
Fast forward 2024 and I find myself in Seoul, South Korea. And what do you know, bro’s out here getting handed notes from women asking for numbers and dates. The foreign, white, European, OIDC-country women are digging me too. Hahaha, this is so funny, I thought. How do you go from the bottom to the top of the pecking order with just an 8 hour flight.
Then fast forward 2026, Berlin trip, and I’m in a club trying to hit up on women seven times, and most of them just flat out say no. Same sense of emasculation. That feeling that these girls don’t see me as a man. It’s really weird being an Asian dude, especially with attraction. How things can fluctuate so much.
Then I get home and the validation comes back. The side looks, the small whispers after I pass by, the sense that my presence actually registers in the room. Like I walk in and something shifts, even if just slightly. Girls clock that I’m there. Their posture changes a bit, their eyes flick over, maybe they angle towards the conversation differently. I matter in that room, even if just as background noise to their radar. That sense of masculinity comes back.
Versus Conn, where walking into a classroom felt like being an old grandma or an old uncle passing by. Like you register as a moving human being for half a second, just enough for someone’s eyes to flick over and confirm “yep, person,” and then straight back to ignoring you. No shift in the room. No change in anyone’s behavior. You’re just furniture that happens to walk.
And I always thank god, like man, I’m glad I didn’t grow up in a white context as an Asian dude. My self esteem would be in the gutter, never feeling like a man worthy of attention, y’know. Asian masculinity is definitely something I’m always aware of, especially when I travel.
On the note of Berlin and Europe though, I would’ve thought the sense of attraction would be the same across the board. But Paris felt significantly different from Berlin. Berlin felt way more different to Connecticut. In Berlin at least, like 1 in 7 ish, I could still feel the attraction. But Paris felt much more open, much more like Asia, where I’m not starting from the bottom of the pecking order. I could see that in the number of Asian dudes paired with other races too. It’s always apparent, and the environment around me just corroborates it, y’know.
And this is the part that always gets me. If you ever bring this up with a non Asian dude, they’ll always hit you with the “nah bro I don’t think that’s the case, you’re probably just overthinking it” or “it’s your game” or “you’re just not trying hard enough.” But bring it up with another Asian dude and he just gets it. No explaining required, no convincing needed, just instant camaraderie. Like you’re both carrying around the same weird invisible data set that only the two of you can see.