Ba da daa ba da baa da da daa da da daaa. Surely I have to listen to the song by Seal as I type up this post, right? It was featured in Batman Forever, so it's gotta be a great song. Side note: Every time Rorschach tests were mentioned in psych, I'd always think of Nicole Kidman in Batman Forever. I'm so sad The Riddler never made it into any of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, but to be honest, his Cloud Cuckoolander nature would have been hard to fit into that style of movie. And a Seal song features in one of my favourite Christmas movies: Space Jam (Fly Like an Eagle).
I already covered my misgivings about being touched, and being kissed by people in general in another post earlier this year, so I won't rehash that here. I was out with some friends, and I wasn't expecting one of my friends to be there. Back when I was at university, I had a bit of a crush on him, but he was one of those people who felt so out of my league, so I kept it to myself. I still remember lying on the floor of his bedroom struggling to stay awake because I wasn't sure if I snored or not and didn't want him to hear me snoring if I did. Ah, to be a teen again. Obviously, that's a thing of the past now.
Anyway, at the end of the dinner, at which there was a lot of alcohol consumed (but not by me), we were getting ready to go out separate ways. There were the usual goodbyes, which were shorter than usual because of the rain. He gave me a hug. It has happened before. Then he kissed me on the cheek. That has not happened before.
It was just a friendly thing, and he probably only did it because of the effects of alcohol. But it unsettled me for the rest of the night.
It's been over 10 years since I last thought about him romantically, and we rarely see each other anymore, so I don't think this is marriage-breaking or anything even close to that. I think a part of it is that kissing still feels so...sacred.
In Memoirs of a Geisha, the main character talks about some of the things the geisha are taught to do to please their clients, and one of the most erotic things she describes is simply a kiss. Maybe it's just a cultural difference. Physical displays of affection seem really uncommon in East Asian countries.
Given the fact that I grew up in Australia, and the only East Asian country I remember going to is Japan, all of this knowledge is what I've gained from anime and J-dramas. I feel like expressing your feelings, especially romantic ones, is just not something you do. There's the common stereotype of the stoic Japanese male, who will struggle through many hardships, and put on a happy face for his family, just because that's what you're meant to do.
Then you have all the デレ ("dere") stereotypes.
From the article:
Tsundere ツンデレA tsundere is a girl that pretends not to be interested in a guy, but keeps doing things for that guy, and keeps saying she is not actually interested in that guy. So, basically, she just isn't honest with herself and her feelings or is too embarrassed to admit her love.
Yandere ヤンデレA yandere sees everyone surrounding the guy as if they're going after the guy, be it male or female, and she will actually attack people to get what she wants, in some cases gorily so, in other cases just name-calling or hiding their possessions somewhere or whatever.
Kuudere クーデレKuudere girls, are those girls that look expressionless, wont react to whatever the guy says, doesn't get jokes, is usually of white or blue hair and most likely regarded as some sort of genius of high IQ or whatever.
The main thing all three of these stereotypes share is that the characters struggle to express their romantic feelings through a traditional way, and instead express their love for another character indirectly through their actions, and the subtle notes underneath their words.
For some real life examples, now that I'm old enough to reflect on it, my mum has always done little things like give us the better cuts of meat to eat, and she'll eat the worst pieces. Or all the shuttling between the various after-school activities we had to do. I've realised that their love is shown through actions and not words, which was something I struggled with when I was younger, because I would visit friends' houses, and their families would always tell each other that they loved each other, and kiss each other goodnight / goodbye.
As a result, even telling someone that I loved them was a huge thing for me - though it seems that this is also considered a big milestone in romantic movies, and teen TV shows, so it's probably not that unusual. But I've found that for a long time, it also leaked into other aspects, with me being afraid to even say things like, "I love fried chicken" and instead saying, "I really like fried chicken". It's not really a big deal for me now, I even caught myself saying to someone, "I love how you do _________", which surprised me, but it seemed completely natural at the time.
To see if it was just me, I tried finding some other accounts of cultural differences with kissing.
According to Wikipedia:
Kissing quickly on the lips with the mouth closed is a common greeting in some places of Western culture such as South Africa and Australia, especially in rural areas.
What? I don't think I have ever kissed someone on the lips with the mouth closed. How do you even do that? Do you just press your closed lips against their closed lips? What if you go in for the closed mouth kiss and they open their mouth to say, "Hi"? Then you might end up accidentally kissing them with an open mouth!
From another Wikipedia page:
Similar situation in Chinese tradition, when Chinese men saw western women kissing men in the public, they thought the women were prostitute (sic).[44]OK, now that Wikipedia says it, I feel a lot more justified in my stance. So..... why do I still feel unsettled?
Normally, this would be something I push to the back of my mind, to be processed when there's idle CPU time, but I feel like it's starting to encroach into that part of my brain that obsesses over something until I end up sending an awkward SMS asking him to explain his thought process behind why he did it.
Except it has nothing to do with him - he was inebriated, he didn't mean anything intentional by it. It's to do with me, and my inability to assimilate properly. I've been thinking about how I enjoy learning languages, because it's a window into other cultures. When we travel to other countries, we do our best to adopt the local customs - why don't I do the same in Australia? I have mixed feelings about it.
On one hand, I feel like Melbourne is celebrated as being a multicultural city, and for the most part, many different cultures exist side-by-side with no issues. Is the greeting / farewell kiss an Australian thing, or just something that the European immigrants do? On the other hand, and I know his view is somewhat controversial, but I was talking to TS about assimilation. and he said it was unreasonable for people from non-English speaking countries to come to Australia and not learn English. It's the national language here, and Australia shouldn't be expected to cater for other language just because we have immigrants from those areas. I understand his point of view, but personally, I found it incredibly convenient to have English and Japanese signs when we were in Japan. And I'm incredibly grateful for all the places we went to in Europe that had English menus.
I have done a lot to go outside my comfort zone this year, but this... I think this is my limit. Hugging I could get used to, but I have a giant mental barrier when it comes to friendly kissing, and... I just can't. Does this make me un-Australian? Maybe. But I feel like I've survived so far - possibly because a large majority of my friendship group is either also Asian, or geeks who just don't touch each other in general. Maybe I'll feel differently in ten years. Maybe I'll feel differently while drunk (actually, I know I do, because I ended up kissing a guy I had met 10 minutes ago goodbye the last time I was seriously drunk).
In funnier news (well, funnier in a schadenfreude way), one of my Kiwi Dota friends told me about this woman who travelled to Kazakhstan from New Zealand, and was asked to provide an Australian passport, because they didn't believe New Zealand was its own country - they thought it was a state of Australia. The map of the world they had in the interrogation room didn't have New Zealand on it. Link to /r/MapsWithoutNZ.
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