{"id":290,"date":"2002-03-25T13:11:12","date_gmt":"2002-03-25T20:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/?p=290"},"modified":"2009-08-08T17:06:51","modified_gmt":"2009-08-09T00:06:51","slug":"self-reliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/2002\/03\/self-reliance\/","title":{"rendered":"self-reliance?"},"content":{"rendered":"

something in alice’s blog<\/a> very much captures something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.<\/p>\n

April 24: “… Ronjon said there are three categories of girls… “hot girl”, “pretty girl”, and “cute girl”. “Pretty girls” are the girls in the E(elegant)-club. I belong to the latter category. Hehehe. Apparently I’m too goofy to be a hot girl, and I’m not demure enough to be a pretty girl. I AM however SHORT enough to be a cute girl… haha.
\n&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp “I’m thinking that the “pretty girls” will end up being these kinds of wives that I know… who always rely on other people to help them, survives by being dependent on their husbands, and would be the luckiest wives alive if their husbands were attentive to them… but wouldn’t be able to cope if their husbands should decide to be non-nice one day. I’m not sure though. …<\/i>
\n&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp “So the question is… be self-reliant, or be helpless so that somebody else will always help you?”<\/i><\/p>\n

(I won’t excerpt the whole thing! you should read it though. alice is someone I really admire and look up to.. truly one of my most favorite people in the world… always reacting and thinking about the world around her…)<\/p>\n

Growing up, I’ve always striven to be self-reliant. I had a certain disdain for girls who were all caught up in their looks, who seemed to prefer to do their hair instead of do something about the world. I always wanted to be capable, to be able to rely on myself, work hard and support myself in achieving my goals. in high school, I had a couple of rather co-dependent “boyfriends” very caught up in the notion of “love!” but I treated them horribly because I was always too busy for them. I had my clubs, I had my sports, I had my schoolwork. I enjoyed their company from time to time sure, but I never grew too strong of an emotional attachment to them (I know, I’m evil). I didn’t believe in that kind of love. I didn’t believe in being that kind of girl who gets too caught up in her emotions and lets them interfere with her work. I defined myself by my achievements.<\/p>\n

So of course, when things started to go bad for me, I couldn’t deal with it. One always seeks to give value to oneself, to give meaning in one’s life… and with my adventures sophomore year, the basis of definition for myself — the high-achiever always on the move — collapsed a wee bit. And so, you find other aspects about yourself to boost. And one of the easiest — and least stable — is your appearance.<\/p>\n

so. what kind of girl am I?<\/i>
\n“elegant”? no. I’m too goofy to be elegant. I can’t pull off that “hot girl” image, no matter how hard I try. first off, I don’t have the goods (I’m your average asian girl. eh.), I think the second reason is that I smile too much. I find it so funny when people get so caught up in their image. at the same time, though, maybe I am a little envious. just the fact that they can pull if off is something I’d like to be able to do to.. just because.<\/p>\n

“pretty”? I’m too crazy to be the quiet “pretty girl” who waits for guys to approach her. And also, again, I’m your standard issue asian girl. This is UCLA! There are attractive girls all over the place. I’m content with my place. -shrug- takes the pressure off of me!<\/p>\n

“cute”? eh. maybe. I’ve got the height, I’ve got the cheesy smile. I occasionally even have the hair. <\/p>\n

I don’t think I like these classifications. If you’d asked me four years ago, I would have scoffed at your categories, saying I fell into none of them. I would have said something like, “that’s retarded. I work hard!” But since I’ve been at UCLA, I feel as if I’ve becomed more and more “cute.” Not “ambitious,” nor “nen2-gan4” (capable in mandarin), nor “driven”… I’m “cute.” it’s a small word to distill a person into. it’s the badge I wear of myself when I’m out and about with the world, and while it’s fun persona, occasionally people get the wrong idea. I’m at UCLA to get edumacated, after all, not to find a husband! At least two friends in the past TWO WEEKS have been kidding me about coming to college to get my “MRS” degree. -shudders- The idea had always repusled me in the past, but as time passes by, marrying for money suddenly doesn’t seem sooo evil….<\/p>\n

And then I snap out of it. What am I smoking? Am I really thinking that? Deep down, I want to be the capable one, not needing a husband to take care of things for me. One derives a certain amount of pride out of self-reliance, and with my ego the way it is, of course I’d get a kick out of feeling like I’m accomplishing a lot, even if it’s something as mundane as building a desk for school. I’ve always admired creative, intelligent, hard working people more than, say, a business type person who is smart enough but makes their money off of hard-working people. In the past, I’ve wanted to be one of those hard working people who create.. but maybe it’s just not for me. <\/p>\n

So maybe people just need to do what they need to do to get by. I feel it’s better to be self-reliant, at least for me. Looks fade — asian women age well, but we’re living like americans now, so we’ll see how that goes in 20 years. They remain a shaky foundation for a person — a source of vanity, insecurity, pointless jealousy… and to me there’s still something degrading in promoting oneself so heavily to the opposite sex. dammit, one should just be capable, self-confident, practical, and men should see this prize and go for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

something in alice’s blog very much captures something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. April 24: “… Ronjon said there are three categories of girls… “hot girl”, “pretty girl”, and “cute girl”. “Pretty girls” are the girls in the E(elegant)-club. I belong to the latter category. Hehehe. Apparently I’m too goofy to be a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “self-reliance?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thisnthat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1217,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/1217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pearlescent.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}