Number white dudes at the Whole Foods who have spontaneously spoken to Porcupine in Hindi: 3
Number of collective piercings on those white dudes: at least six
Number of those white dudes who claim an Eastern religion: 3
Percent chance "Aaron" at the check out counter knows more about the Bhagavad Gita than Porcupine: 100
Number of times Aaron looked at Porcupine askance when she didn't recognize a Sanskrit word for "vegetarian": 2
Chances three white dudes, particularly "Aaron," exotify the East: 100
Number of times Porcupine was infuriated by the phenomenon known as flirtation-by-way-of cultural and religious appropriation: 0
8 years ago
4 comments:
LMAO
Do you really think they're "exotifing" the East (is that even the way to spell it?) if they've gone so far as to learn Hindi and Sanskrit?
I mean, taking yoga classes, even at a hard core studio, just to meet girls -- or even "Eastern" girls -- is one thing. But there are a lot of lost people out there (myself included) who have found the answers they seek in that part of the world.
I say the flirtation was probably an attempt to forge a genuine connection with someone based on something other than breast size, job, car, house or any other other inane social measuring stick.
Now, on the other hand, I've learned the hard way that people can be insulted if you assume they speak one certain language, especially since, if I recall from my "Linguistics of Asia" class in college, India alone has some 900 languages and thousands of dialects.
I don't think my goal in that class was to exotify Asia. Or was it?
:-D
P.S. I should add that all bets are off if any of these guys were just trying to charm your pants off. Pun intended.
I just found out that Blogger has a "Hindi transliteration" button.
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