My husband is Japanese and I'm your standard run of the mill white American. As soon as we got pregnant, everyone was all "You are gonna have the cutest baby EVER!!!" which was fun to hear (a million times!) but how do you respond to that? "Thanks"? "I hope so"?
We were riddled with a mixture of curiosity and anxiety over what our lil' munchkin would look like. Would he get my husband's teeny tiny eyes and my huge nose? Would he look albino with my pasty complexion and my husband's Asian features? Other than the obvious fears of the child being born with a major physical or mental disability, my biggest 100% superficial and selfish worry was that our baby would look 100% Asian and people would think he was adopted.
Well, I definitely think he looks mixed, a perfect mix if you ask me, but my previous fear came to fruition a couple of days ago for the first time. I was with Kenzo at the local bagel shop and a lady (she was Asian, not sure from where) is looking between him and me quizzically, then says to me out of the blue and all matter of factly "He looks Asian". So many creative and fun ways I could have responded. But she caught me completely off guard!! I replied, "Ah, haha, yes, well his father is Japanese". OK, not so unusual... I've had several strangers ask me if his daddy was Asian - mostly people who have a child or grandchild who is half white half Asian - I guess there is a certain happa / haafu / half / mixed / whatever you wanna call it "look". But the kicker is how she responded... "Oh, I thought you adopted him from China". Agh. There it is. Why this offended me so much I do not know. I see nothing wrong with adopting, and nothing wrong with Chinese people, and nothing wrong with adopting a child from China... but the fact is I did NOT adopt a child from China, nor does my child have anything to do with China. He is half JAPANESE and half ME and didn't yo mama teach you if you don't have something nice to say don't say anything at all??? Telling someone their child looks adopted is not especially nice. Grrrr...
We were riddled with a mixture of curiosity and anxiety over what our lil' munchkin would look like. Would he get my husband's teeny tiny eyes and my huge nose? Would he look albino with my pasty complexion and my husband's Asian features? Other than the obvious fears of the child being born with a major physical or mental disability, my biggest 100% superficial and selfish worry was that our baby would look 100% Asian and people would think he was adopted.
Well, I definitely think he looks mixed, a perfect mix if you ask me, but my previous fear came to fruition a couple of days ago for the first time. I was with Kenzo at the local bagel shop and a lady (she was Asian, not sure from where) is looking between him and me quizzically, then says to me out of the blue and all matter of factly "He looks Asian". So many creative and fun ways I could have responded. But she caught me completely off guard!! I replied, "Ah, haha, yes, well his father is Japanese". OK, not so unusual... I've had several strangers ask me if his daddy was Asian - mostly people who have a child or grandchild who is half white half Asian - I guess there is a certain happa / haafu / half / mixed / whatever you wanna call it "look". But the kicker is how she responded... "Oh, I thought you adopted him from China". Agh. There it is. Why this offended me so much I do not know. I see nothing wrong with adopting, and nothing wrong with Chinese people, and nothing wrong with adopting a child from China... but the fact is I did NOT adopt a child from China, nor does my child have anything to do with China. He is half JAPANESE and half ME and didn't yo mama teach you if you don't have something nice to say don't say anything at all??? Telling someone their child looks adopted is not especially nice. Grrrr...
He's mine I tell ya!! Mine all mine!!!
On a lighter note, have you ever taken the All Looks Same exam? They show you various Asian faces and you guess if they're Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc. You will fail. I promise! It's crazy when you don't have fashion or accent to take into account... even Asians fail this exam!
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