A little while ago, I had the privilege of joining some friends for a fancy-ish dinner at the NoMad hotel. For this occasion, I thought it necessary to wear something reasonably nice. Since the dinner was immediately after work, I went to work in a business-casual work dress and wedge heels. I often wear a dress to work, but pair it with sensible flats or sneakers for the commute. What smag doesn't have at least 6 pairs of nice work shoes under her desk?
The addition of these heels, however, (despite them being pretty casual) opened up a different commute experience. I was hit on 3 times before I got to work. And not in a specific-to-me kind of way. Any substitute smag would have gotten the exact same comments. But each time confused me more and more.
The first guy was one of the construction guys working on the building next to ours. Our basement apt opens up into a courtyard and we have to go up some stairs to get back out of our building. So cliched, right? A construction worker.
The second one happened just before I got to the train station. A guy walking toward me stepped laterally to get in my way and murmur something in my face. It was general and bizarre but non-threatening.
The last, however, really stuck out to me. I was coming out of the train by the Flatiron building in a steady stream of people trying to get to work. There's a guy of non-asian ethnicity handing out Metro newspapers. He's saying general pleasantries to everyone, but makes a significant point to single me out. So he stopped, looked me up and down and said, "Hey. Ni haooooo...." (which means, "Hey. How are you?" or, with the proper inflection "How YOU doin'....?") It was so quick, like an immediate reaction on his part. 'Yes... this is how I talk to asian girls... all of them.' It wasn't threatening of a comment either, but part of me wanted to turn around and hurl, "I'm KOREAN!!!" (which is not true, but COULD be true!) But alas, I was still not yet fully awake and couldn't care enough at 9 in the morning.
It did have me thinking for the rest of the day. Is this flattering or endearing when non-asian guys try to learn some chinese to pick up [hopefully] chinese girls? Or is it just odd and maybe a little offensive? There's nothing that pisses me off more than people assuming I don't speak English perfectly. Do they just find it to be an easy conversation starter? Is this something that can be changed, if all smags decided to ignore such advances? Is this even something smags everywhere would want?
Food for smag-thought.
