I was going to put up my post about Thanksgiving, but there’s been something else that’s been gnawing at me for the past week, so the Thanksgiving post will be up in a day or so.

Instead, I want to talk about beauty. The point of this little essay is not how I look, it’s how people’s reactions to the way I look make me feel. It’s about what it feels like to look completely different from everybody else, do live somewhere where I don’t fit in, and to be continually (and more intensely) judged by my appearance.

[I also want to clarify that I do not hold Chinese people in contempt. The people here are so warm and welcoming and continually go above and beyond hospitality and kindness. I’m not whining or wishing I hadn’t come—quite the opposite. Happiness is not a blanket feeling, and contrast exists in every emotion. So here’s the contrast.]

My relationship with my body and my looks has long been tumultuous despite my upbringing. My dad consciously did not make comments about looks, mine or anyone else’s, just as he made a point to never high-five my brother or me My mom used to tell me I was a beautiful girl (she still does). But I have never believed her; she’s my mom—she has to say that. She always argues that all her friends say so, too. They aren’t my mothers, so they must be right, right?

Well if I was so pretty, how come I didn’t have a boyfriend until my third year of college? I reasoned. If I was so pretty, how come I didn’t have my first kiss until I was 19?.

Sometimes people told me I should model, against which my dad vehemently railed, for the reason that models are perceived as stupid, shallow objects, and he did not want me to be seen like that. I always jokingly told people that if I became a model, my dad would disown me. I doubt he actually would, but I think there was a glimmer of truth to that joke, as there is to most jokes.

It wasn’t until I traveled that I really got outside feedback about my looks. In Italy, I got the “Ciao bella!” but they shout that if you’re a woman, so I didn’t pay much attention. But during my time in Shanghai in the summer of 2006, I was walking around the Bund with my friends. A family came approached and asked to take pictures with me.

“Uh, okay,” I stammered.

Suddenly, there were cameras totally surrounding me—total strangers taking pictures of total strangers. Every member of this family posed with me, and then other people jumped in. So this is what it’s like to be a celebrity, I thought grimly.

When I studied abroad in Beijing, it continued. Each American student lived with a Chinese roommate. One day one of them said to me:

“All the Chinese roommates agree. You’re the prettiest girl in the program.”

Uh, so?

They called me Barbie. People on the street pointed, took pictures, made comments, ignored significant historical sites to look at and photograph me. A man in Lhasa approached me to be a model on a billboard for a new hotel.

In Huzhou, it’s more of the same, except in this “small” city, foreigners are much more uncommon. I walk down the street and 90% of the people in my vicinity turn their heads and gawk. And since I look like I don’t speak Chinese, they make comments they think I don’t understand: “She’s so pretty!” “She’s so tall!” “She’s taller than YOU!” Sometimes when I see them point at me, I turn away. They take pictures of me in the grocery store. My students take pictures of me during class. One day I got on a public bus just as a local middle school had let out. As soon as I stepped on the bus, a number of schoolchildren in their matching uniforms, neckties, and baseball caps shouted, “Waiguo ren! Waigruo ren!” [foreigner]

I have devised the formula for this Waiguo Ren Stare: First, they look at my face. Their eyes get a little wider. Then their eyes dart to my feet, to make sure I really am that tall, and then their eyes flick back up to my face. Perhaps they turn and make one of the above comments to the person they’re with. And then their follow me until their heads will turn no further. I feel like I’m always on display, like a zoo animal. All I need is a tail.

In Beijing, I managed to adjust, more or less, to the comments, the pointing, the staring. Here, I find myself withdrawing. If I’m walking or taking the bus, I opt more often to listen to my iPod to better ignore the comments. If I can’t be anonymous and blend in, I at least want to trick myself into feeling so. Placebo anonymity.

Everyone here assumes that I have a boyfriend or a husband. When I’ve assured them to the contrary, they gasp in surprise, “But you’re so pretty! How come you don’t have a boyfriend?”

It harkens back to that high school thought mode. I just want to smack my forehead.

“You should find a Chinese boyfriend,” they all assure me. They know, these total strangers, what will make me happy. Or at least what will pull me from the quicksand of my impending spinster-hood.

Everything I just enumerated is in the realm bearable. They’re just words, and generally they’re well intentioned. I’m different—of course I’m going to pique their interest. We’re visual creatures—we just want to look.

But something is happening that hasn’t happened to me before, in China or elsewhere. Within minutes of meeting me, men are asking for my number. All the time. And I do not live my life emulating the principles of “Sex and the City.”

Remember Shen Yuanfang, the cop? Well, for a while he called and texted me incessantly, asking where I was, what I was doing and with whom. Last week, he called and asked me, “Do you want to invite me over for Thanksgiving?”

I was struck speechless by his gall and rudeness (by American standards, at least), and then horrified as I imagined just what Thanksgiving with him would be like. He took my silence to mean that I didn’t understand what he was saying. He repeated himself a few times.

“Is it okay if I come?”

“No,” I finally replied.

He hasn’t called me since.

When I go to the gym, people, mostly but not exclusively males, gawk at me. The employees buzz when “That American Girl” gets on the elliptical. Patrons come over and talk to me practice their English with me. I’m totally fine with conversations and practicing English. I like talking to people. Everyone has interesting life stories and I want to hear them. The problem is that (seemingly) platonic discussion is virtually extinct. Five minutes into the conversation, this man offers to take me to dinner, make friends, and take me traveling if he could just get my telephone number. And when he says, “make friends,” he means, “Hey, I think you’re a pretty foreigner. Give me face, come out to dinner with me, and then…who knows, right? Mmmm-hmmm…No no, my wife doesn’t mind. My wife has the television and the Internet to keep her occupied.” [Actual quote]

Last weekend I went clubbing. A man, forty-ish and three sheets to the wind, plopped himself at our table. He greeted me by toasting beer bottles.

“I saw you walking by the TV station,” his alcohol voice shouted into my ear over the blaring vibrations of the music. “I said hello to you.”

I’m supposed to remember you, one of the dozens of people who daily yell “Hello!” at me? I don’t even know where the TV station is. I was at a loss for how to reply, which was once again interpreted as a language barrier.

“Give me your phone number. We can make friends. I’ll take you out to dinner.”

Right. Because the fact that you once yelled “Hello!” makes me want to go out with you. It has the opposite of the intended effect. I think that this is the reason that if I am truly interested in someone, I end up making the first move—because the guys I am interested in wouldn’t act like that in the first place (and there’s nothing wrong with a woman making the first move. Come on, ladies!)

I know that men act like this towards women regardless of geographical location, however I honestly think that the way I look (and the fact that here I look so different) makes these occurrences much more frequent. Does this make me self-absorbed and vain?

I hate the constant attention. On bad days, it makes me want to withdraw from the world completely. That might sound melodramatic, but it’s true. There’s no logic to feelings.

I know that some may read this and say, “Oh, boo hoo, she’s whining about how people think she’s pretty? That’s not something to complain about.” To me, it is. It’s not about my looks—it’s about how they are valued over anything else I may posses. Please see my preface at the top.

All these people automatically like me because of the way I look. I’ve worked hard to be the person I am, to cultivate interests, skills, opinions, a sense of humor, experiences and so on. I think I’m an interesting, fairly intelligent person. And it just happens that when I look in the mirror, I wonder what all these people think is so appealing. I’ve lived with this face for 22 years. It’s nothing special—it’s just me.

It’s human nature to judge, but I don’t like the blatant indifference to what’s under my curly hair. None of the people who approach me ask anything about who I am. They just tell me I’m pretty, go agog when they hear my Chinese, and ask for my phone number.

I too am guilty of judging people by their appearances. But I try to fight that because I hate to think that I would miss out on someone just because I passed a shallow judgment. I’m not trying to make myself sound virtuous or above the fray. I judge. It’s human. I am (very) fallible and nowhere close to perfect. Because if one becomes perfect, what else is left? Life is about reality-checks, constantly questioning what you believe, and openness to change. I honestly love to be proven wrong.

“I should have raised you to be more of a cheap tart so that you would love the attention. Sorry about that,” wrote my dad in an email.

While I’m grateful that I wasn’t raised to be ‘a cheap tart,’ it’s hard to reconcile my upbringing with the rest of the world when everyone else emphasizes the qualities my parents have intentionally de-emphasized.

What is so great about beauty? It fades. It’s subjective. And it means NOTHING. It doesn’t indicate anything about the person inside. Clearly people need to be physically attracted to each other to go forth and multiply, but I’m going beyond evolutionary necessity. Hillary Clinton, among many other prominent women, is scrutinized for her looks. If she looked like Gwyneth Paltrow, would that have made her a more competent politician? I highly doubt it.

Beauty is reinforced as a positive asset, and sure, it gets me free dinners, free drinks, and the benefit of the doubt. But so what?! It’s meaningless.

What I’ve written is open to (mis)interpretation. I’m just trying to relate my experiences and analyze them. I’m not going to change anything about the way people perceive or interact with beauty. But I am trying to get the few readers out there to think about it. Because, like I mentioned above, life is about questioning what you believe and leaving those beliefs open to change.

So prove me wrong. Or back me up—I like being proven wrong, but a little support isn’t so bad, either.