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Do AA Men Prefer Blonde Strippers?
by Hiram Lee-Gonzalez
The short answer is yes and no. I got the idea for this article when an Asian-American stripper complained to me that "All the Asian men who come in here [to the strip club] like tall blondes with big boobs." She said it after I turned down her offer of a lap dance, but it made me change my mind, so I found her again and accepted her offer.
I wanted her to tell me more. I have often noticed how few Asian-American strippers there are in the strip clubs I go to. My impression was that it was hard for them to get dances. There are a lot of tall, thin blondes at those strip clubs and they always have customers. I myself have been one of their customers many times. I bet that when an Asian-American stripper tries to compete with a blond for a customer, the blond wins. When I tried to discuss these issues with the Asian-American stripper, she didn't have much to say. She was happy to take my money, though.
Speaking from my own experience as a half Asian male customer, I can say that part of the appeal of strip clubs is the chance to have very attractive blond women come up to me and persistently ask for dances. I have accepted their offers many times, figuring that it costs the same to get a dance from a blond as from a brunette or a minority, so I might as well get the "best" ones. I imagine that for Asian-American men who can not normally get dates with blondes, strip clubs are places where they can fulfill their fantasies. Two times, I met Hawaiian strippers who were really fine, but I turned them down for tall, thin blondes. Later I regretted it, and I realized I was a hypocrite--if we Asian-American men want Asian-American women to consider us attractive, then we have to do the same thing for them.
In order to write this article, I decided to go to a strip club again (I haven't gone in more than a year) and try to get an interview with an Asian-American stripper. The interview went differently from what I was expecting:
"Lots of Asian guys get dances from me. That Asian guy [pointing] got 18 dances tonight, and another Asian guy...where is he...anyway, he also got a lot of dances. Not to be conceited, but I'm a good dancer and I get a lot of customers. White guys, black guys, Asian guys. White guys love Asian women. I regularly make about $1000 on Friday and Saturday nights-each night. Even ugly dancers can get a lot of customers. What matters are their personalities. The secret is to be really into the guy and make him feel special. A lot of the girls here, like the blondes, are kind of…like…conceited, you know? You can't be too into yourself. You have to be into the other person."
This Asian-American stripper seemed to be unaware that the white male's fetish for Asian-American women is a source of debate within the Asian-American community or perhaps she just didn't care. I am referring to, for example, the fact that most Asian-American-white interracial couples in the media are white men with Asian-American women. Asian-American women are stereotyped as exotic and submissive, and white men, portrayed as strong and powerful, dominate them. In this example, racism and sexism overlap each other. Asian-American men are portrayed as weak and effeminate--except of course for martial artists.
Strip clubs are places to live out your fantasies. For many minority men, this revolves around tall, thin blond women. Maybe this blond obsession is caused by the movies and television. What is beautiful, anyway? I remember reading in elementary school that beauty was culturally defined. My textbook had the pictures of a group of women who were considered beautiful in other cultures. I did not find them beautiful, which was interesting. If beauty can vary across cultures, then who can say what beauty is? "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," wrote Shakespeare.
In traditional Chinese culture, foot binding for women was considered attractive. No longer practiced, this procedure hurt their feet and made it difficult for them to stand or walk. The smallness of their feet represented their feminity, which was equated with weakness, frailty, and delicacy. According to Daoism, the feminine was weakness and softness, and the masculine was strength and hardness. (Lips 6)
In Islamic societies, as I understand it there is a very different conception of beauty. Women are seen as a temptation to men, and are required to wear clothing that conceals their bodies. Men are also admonished not to tempt women sexually, and also have rules concerning revealing clothing. (BeautyWorlds)
The word for beauty is also the word for morality for Maasai, a tribal people in south western Kenya and northern Tanzania. When asked to describe what a beautiful person would be like, they refer to the person's character as well as his or her appearance. (BeautyWorlds)
"Among the Hima peoples of western Uganda, fat is beautiful--at least for women. Men measure a woman's attractiveness by her obesity, and a young woman is prepared for marriage in ways guaranteed to fatten her up: the least possible activity and the most possible food. By the time of her marriage, a young woman may be so fat she cannot walk, only waddle. At the wedding, onlookers will comment on how beautiful she is, noting with approval the cracks in her skin caused by the fat and the difficulty she has walking [...] The obese, conspicuously consuming wife is both a symbol and an instrument of her husbands economic prosperity." (Lips 4-5)
"Another researcher noted the criteria for sexual desirability among the Siriono, a Bolivian Indian people: 'Besides being young, a desirable sexual partner--especially a woman - should also be fat. She should have big hips, good sized but firm breasts, and a deposit of fat on her sexual organs...Thin women are summarily dismissed as being ikaNgi (bony).' " (Lips 107)
Clearly, there is a great deal of diversity around the world in definitions of beauty. For me, this tended to suggest that there was no absolute standard for it. In fact, I would have inferred that a culture's standard of beauty not only changes, but can be deliberately, consciously changed. I thought that perhaps that is what we need to do with the standard of beauty in the U.S. to include minorities on an equal basis, as well as the disabled, strong women, etc.
However, over the years, I nearly forgot that beauty is culturally defined. In high school, I bought in to the mainstream American ideas of beauty, and I thought thin blonde women and extremely muscular men (an unreachable ideal for many Asian-American men, including myself) were the embodiment of female and male beauty. It was my observation that a great many minorities of the U.S. also admired the type of people that the media told us were beautiful.
The media's "beautiful people" are usually white. Although this is starting to change, I would say that even in 2003, the "best" actors and models are still mostly white, like Britney Spears and Brad Pitt. Many minorities agree that they are the "best." In other countries, people generally see women or men of their own ethnicity as the most beautiful.
In the U.S., beauty is also associated with youth. This is referred to as ageism. Strip clubs obviously practice ageism by only hiring young women as dancers. When Asian-American men go to strip clubs, they are contributing to ageism. This seems wrong to me. If the Asian-American community wants equality and complains about discrimination, it should not practice discrimination against older people (in this case, women). All disadvantaged people should work together for a society where everyone is equal.
Of course, strip clubs encourage the idea that women are merely sex objects that exist for the pleasure of men. This is sexism, and Asian-American men probably should not discriminate against women if they are going to complain about unfair treatment against themselves.
Strip clubs allow minority men to live out their blond fantasies. But in doing so, do they perpetuate racist attitudes about beauty? Strip clubs enforce the idea that white is the most beautiful. (They also enforce the idea that blond is better than brunette--something that is often complained about by brunette strippers.) In buying into this idea, are we Asian-American men ruining our own chances in the long run, not to mention being hypocrites? In the 1960's, black people said, "Black is beautiful." Now we need to say, "Yellow is beautiful," or, "Asian is beautiful." If we really believe it, then we Asian-American men must also choose Asian-American women over white women--even blondes. (I realize this applies to myself.) Only then will we be in a position to ask Asian-American women to choose us over white men. Maybe it's something for us to think about the next time we plan to go to "those places."
BeautyWorlds: The Culture of Beauty. November 2002.
Lips, Hilary M. A New Psychology of Women: Gender, Culture, and Ethnicity. New York: Mc-Graw Hill, 2003
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