"You Have Lips Like Jack Bauer"

     "You have lips like...Jack," stated Crystal, my graduate student. "Jack...who?", I asked, puzzled.  "Jack, from the American television show 24", she clarified. I blanked for a moment, not being a regular watcher of 24, and certainly not since arriving in China.  And then Keifer Sutherland's face flashed behind my eyes and I could only agree with her statement; my lips are thin and narrow.  And most people--and by people, I largely mean girls--might have found this unasked for comparison insulting, but I could tell by how she delivered it that this was supposed to be a mere observation, and somewhat of a compliment.  This was all part of a larger conversation about Crystal's interest in the similarities and differences between Olivia's and my appearance and various American celebrities.  Apparently I am a dead ringer for Kirsten Stewart--and yes, that was supposed to be a compliment too (Twilight is very big in China).
     Each culture has different ideas for what is considered pretty, and in China the ideal is light hair, light skin, and big light eyes.  And if you have all three you are like, the epitome of pretty in China.  Now, this certainly has its advantages.  First of all, it feels really good to go about your life each day and have Chinese friends, acquaintances  and complete strangers stop you and tell you that your are beautiful.  Even on a Sunday, hungover, in my sweatpants, stuffing noodles in my face and in general looking like a hot mess.

Me, stuffing my face full of squid and noodles.  I know, who wouldn't want to take my picture? 

    We would be walking around the West Lake, or other areas around China when we were traveling, and it would happen rather frequently, although this happened more frequently to Liv (who, in addition to being awesome, has the triple threat of features).  We would be asked, in either Chinese or English or both, if they could take our picture or take a picture with us.  We would be asked by children, married couples, people with babies (usually we were asked to hold the baby), groups of friends (usually accompanied by lots of giggles).  Or, we would be non-so sneakily photographed.  Seriously though, sometimes they would be right in front of us or sitting at the table next to us, phone out, leaning towards us, taking the picture.  (We would usually pose, which they would only notice after they checked to see how the picture came out--they would usually react by looking up at us, startled, and laughing sheepishly).  This made us feel roughly like celebrities, and was an enormous ego boost.
    However, unless you have come to China to work as a model (and many people do, with varying degrees of success), this hyper-attention to how you look can sometimes be a problem.  And I am not just talking about it being annoying to be stopped regularly at tourist locations to have your photo taken, when you yourself are trying to also take in, experience, and photograph whatever man-made or natural wonder you'd traveled to see.  Or when you are trying to eat lunch.  Or just walking down the street.

Some strangers asking Liv for a photo in Fenghuang!

     I am talking about the frustration that comes from being judged on your ability to do your job based on how you look.  So, the majority of Chinese people that we have met assume that we are students because we look too young to be teachers (all of us are solidly in our mid-twenties).  Our youth combined with what they consider beauty, means that we often times get feedback on our job performance that has little to do with our job.  For example, when students, or sometimes even other educators, give us feedback, they do not talk about our teaching strategies.  They rarely mention how we can improve our teaching, or what they think is working about our methods for teaching English as a Foreign Language.  Instead, our students would say that they like us because we are beautiful.   Or they like our big eyes and our foreign features.  At best, our students will tell us that our teaching style is entertaining (we are, on average, more enthusiastic and prone to ridiculous facial expressions and body language to help communicate our point and convey our meaning--as we cannot fall back on our Chinese language skills.)
   After spending our weekends planning and worrying over lessons for the following week, designing creative ways in which we can test their knowledge, and in general slaving to be good teachers for the semester (and then spend our breaks thinking about how we can do it better next semester), the very last thing we want to here is "we like our teacher because she is pretty!" (although, if it is grammatically correct, and pronounced correctly, well, at least we know our students are learning).  Sometimes it would feel like our students were appreciating us for the wrong reasons.  It was frustrating; we felt like we could be working our butts off to create these lessons...or we could stand in front of the class and smile and achieve the same level of appreciation.

   Which, of course, was not true.  We were, for most students, more than satisfied with our students learning and they showed a marked improvement in reading, speaking, listening, and writing (especially in classes taught by teachers who were really committed to student learning, and not just teaching as a way to be in China).  But it was nonetheless frustrating, especially during our first semester, to be valued, as a teacher, for our physical features, rather than what we could bring to the table as educators.

Alex, me, and Fancy after our last American History class!