#who also conveniently has a very stereotypical (and incorrect) name

[lemedstudent2021]

Have you heard about Carbombya, a canon Middle Eastern country in Transformers?

Boycott Transformers.

Transformers: Bigots in Disguise

TIL what Carbombya is, and that its population is 4000 people and 10,000 camels, and frankly i dont know if i should laugh or cry.

apparently the franchise has an extensive history of being racist and promoting problematic stereotypes, this is merely one example.

i honestly have no idea what the people who greenlighted this bs were thinking, especially since their audience is kids 6 and above.

[girlyholic]

A Needlessly Thorough Counterpost to Cybr.Grl’s Video on Jirai

So this was brought to my attention, as I have been subscribed to cybr.grl on Youtube for about a year. And when I saw the notification for a video on Jirai, I was very intrigued!

And it took very little time for my intrigue to turn into exasperation.

So, so much of this video is misinformed, and is far too charitable about Jirai as a concept, which is reckless and dangerous. I was also informed it seems that any comments disputing or disagreeing with the information in the video are being deleted.

This should be an open discussion, and when it is not allowed to be one is where I start to have a problem. Putting up a video on something that has literally killed people and then tuning out anybody who tries to bring this up is inexcusable, if that is truly what’s going on here.

However, I don’t think that everyone in this video has no idea what they’re talking about and are flat out wrong, rather, they’re going off of personal experiences and information that has some basis in reality. However, the information about Jirai being presented here either has more context to it, or is easily debunkable, and that is what I aim to achieve with this post.

BIG TW for this post, as I will be mentioning the many harms of Jirai, such as self-harm, prostitution, and both of these topics in relation to minors.

This video is entirely built upon the assertion that the Girly style is inherently tied to something negative due to its association with Jirai, which I have debunked multiple times on this blog already. To briefly reiterate why Girly gets conflated with Jirai, a viral dressup challenge about emulating the “landmine girl” stereotype linked the term to the fashion and brands started using it for marketing purposes over the popularity of said challenge. Funny enough, most of them have gone back to referring to the style as Girly again since the hype and intrigue around the term has gone down.

Fact is that Girly is the established name of the fashion, and has been for many, many years. The term Girly as its name can be traced back on the internet as far back as 2001.

In fact, here is a Wayback Machine link to an old blog for the prominent Girly brand Liz Lisa, where the clothes this brand sells are referred to as being Girly,  in the year 2006.

I have made a whole post on this “Jirai for clicks” phenomenon using Lafary as an example, but brands do this as well, for all of the same reasons. Some brands, such as DearMyLove, have only doubled down on their usage of Jirai and Ryousangata, and it unfortunately looks like this specific marketing ploy, which is aimed towards young girls in order for them to buy these products, is here to stay.

All of this indicates that Jirai is not a style on its own, but a fad, which is provable time and time again by brands and influencers going back to using Girly when it’s convenient for them.

Simply put, the truth is that there is only the “landmine” lifestyle, as it is described in the video, and there is Girly fashion. There is nothing inherently negative about the fashion.

The specific substyle of Girly that is associated heavily with landmine girls is called "Dark Girly".

But the specifics of the attitude of “Jirai” as a “style” being presented as something negative in the video is a point that’s worth examining, because it isn’t completely incorrect.

Chiara alludes to the idea that if you were to “wear Jirai” in Shinjuku, you would be more likely to get called out like a prostitute in the street if you were to hang around at night. This is true, and her reasoning behind this is also true, when she mentions the fact the landmine stereotype came from Kabuki-cho.

But the thing that is extremely glossed over in this video is how serious this aspect of the stereotype is and where it specifically came from in the first place.

This next section is where I will be discussing the topics in the trigger warning at the start of this post, so please proceed with caution.

This type of clothing became aligned with the landmine stereotype due to many incidents in Kabuki-cho of primarily underage, self-proclaimed landmine girls who were known to prostitute themselves, publicly self-harm, and sometimes even commit suicide in high numbers. Here are two articles on this exact subject as it relates to the landmine lifestyle that I have posted before.

“Even self-harm is a trend now?” - Discusses a rise in the commodification of self-harm scars as being cute, and the lengths some youths in Kabuki-cho have gone to achieve this “pien”, sickly cute aesthetic.

“An increase of "suicide cases" in Kabuki-cho, in it's background are teens who depend on numbers” - Discusses an increase of public rooftop suicides in 2021 in this area, mostly among youths and prostitutes who feel as though they are not popular or worthy enough to live.

Which brings me to another point that I would like to discuss, as it comes up as a derogatory term in these two articles, is the attitude towards Menhera that is on display from the two guests on this video.

Quite frankly, the assertion that Menhera is the dirty word here, and that Jirai is in any way preferable, is nonsense.

The only thing that’s true here is that Menhera can be abused in a derogatory manner, but it never was the intend behind its creation. Menhera has an extensive history as a positive term that mentally ill individuals came up with for themself that has since been twisted into being a derogatory term by neurotypicals. More on that here, if you are interested in a lengthier explanation of why these two terms are completely different things, and how Menhera is a mental health awareness subculture.

You are not winning by going “Menhera bad” and glossing over all the harmful aspects of Jirai as if they wouldn’t exist or get embraced within the community in Japan. Menhera may have a negative public meaning due to social stigma, but let’s not pretend that suddenly makes Jirai the good one.

Because at least the original intend of Menhera as name of a mental health community is still visible to this very day. Meanwile all we have of Jirai is the usage as an insult as well those who use it in a self-affirming manner for their self-destructive habits.

The main point I wish to end on is that the associated style, Girly, is harmless.

The thing I hate the most about this video is how it is spreading the idea that you might have to worry about a horrifying culture of romanticized self-harm being associated with your frilly clothes, as if that’s just how it is.

Going by the Shinjuku example, this is certainly a real thing that is already being assumed. Which is unfortunate on so many levels.

That doesn’t have to be how Girly is being seen in the public eye, but it sure as hell will be if people keep trying to claim that Jirai is only the name of a fashion and that Girly doesn’t exist.

[cartoonessays]

The Problem With The Simpsons

As of this writing, the most recent episode of The Simpsons is “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”, in which they briefly offered a response to comedian Hari Kondabolu’s documentary The Problem With Apu.  The documentary used the Apu character as a jump-off point to discuss the marginalization and the extremely reductive view of South Asians in popular media, particularly drawing on his experience as an Indian-American forced to reckon with a greater population who didn’t view his cultural heritage beyond Apu behind the checkout counter at the Kwik-E-Mart saying “thank you, come again”.

In “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”, the B-plot involves Marge rediscovering a beloved book from her childhood called The Princess in the Garden, only to realize how racist and imperialistic it was in an attempt to read it to Lisa.  Marge later attempts to make edits to the book in order for it to fit current-day sensibilities, or in Marge’s words, “It takes a lot of work to take the spirit and character out of a book, but now it’s as inoffensive as a Sunday in Cincinnati”.  Lisa quickly recognizes that Marge’s changes to the story sanitize the whole plot and calls it out, leaving a frustrated Marge to ask what she’s supposed to do.  Lisa breaks the fourth wall and replies:

Something that started decades ago, and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?

As she says this, the camera pans down to a portrait of Apu with the caption “don’t have a cow!”.  Marge responds by saying “Some things will be dealt with at a later date,” with Lisa quipping “If at all” as they both stare directly in the camera.

A lot of the response The Simpsons has gotten to this has been negative.

And for good fucking reason too.

This response to The Problem With Apu is bullshit; I’m not gonna mince words.  These writers are better than this and these writers know they’re better than this.  Pulling out the banal “PC gone mad” canard is the refuge of a comedic hack.

First of all, The Problem With Apu highlights how Apu Nahasapeemapetilon’s conception as a character is based off of various South Asian stereotypes that include but aren’t limited to his voice being performed by a white man (Hank Azaria) doing an impression of another white man (Peter Sellers) doing an Indian accent, his job being at a 7-Eleven type of convenience store, and the fact that his name “Nahasapeemapetilon” is just foreign sounding gibberish and not actually a name.  Kondabolu and various other South Asian actors and comedians discuss how growing up they were bullied and picked on by being called “Apu” and his catchphrase “thank you, come again” was used against them as a slur.  They also talked about how the roles they get offered for shows and movies hardly go beyond stereotypes and cliches that draw a lot of parallels to Apu.  And the Simpsons writers responded to all of this with a dismissive and tired ass whine about political correctness.

It’s particularly disingenuous of them to use Lisa as their mouthpiece to voice this response, considering her statement is a dismissive retort of her whole existence as a character.

The season 5 episode “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy” is all about Lisa taking the makers of Malibu Stacy dolls to task over its reinforcement of sexist stereotypes, noting how popular and influential the dolls are to girls around the world.  A lot of striking parallels to Kondabolu’s documentary about Apu, aren’t there?  The show didn’t treat Lisa’s concerns about Malibu Stacy’s sexism as trivial or a non-issue; she was framed as the hero in this episode.  Lisa’s statement in “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” is a complete 180-turn from “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy”.

Most of the negative critiques that have been written about “No Good Read Goes Unpunished” have focused specifically on moments where Lisa and Marge break the fourth wall.  But I want to discuss the framing around that moment in the episode more because it is also terrible and makes that particular moment even worse in context.  In Marge’s changes to the book she grew up with, she changed the protagonist from a little girl who happily revels in Britain’s colonization of South America to a “cisgender girl who fights for wild horse rescue and net neutrality”.  Let’s see how many liberal strawmen are in this sentence.  There’s a strawman related to the language used by transgender rights activists and allies, another strawman related to animal rights, and are they seriously framing net neutrality as something you can write off as some shallow identifier of politically correct liberals?  Are there a lot of people who brush off the net neutrality issue as political correctness?

And once Marge began telling her re-edited story, Lisa was quick to point out that all the re-edits stripped the story of the emotional journey the protagonist goes through.  First of all, how the hell would Lisa know about the protagonist’s emotional journey or how the racial stereotypes play into it?  She hasn’t read the damn book!  Second of all, this is a false dichotomy the episode sets up to give weight to its dismissal of The Problem With Apu.  Indulgence in racist stereotypes aren’t an inherent function of character arcs in stories.  Why does Marge specifically say “It takes a lot of work to take the spirit and character out of a book, but now it’s as inoffensive as a Sunday in Cincinnati”?  Her objection in the first place was the book’s racism, not that it had spirit and character.  Why are they now framing racism and pro-colonialism as “spirit and character”?  Perhaps The Princess in the Garden is some kind of allusion to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and controversy surrounding its banning/censoring in various schools and libraries?  If that is the case, the rest of the episode does not make that clear.

In fact, when I watched the full episode, I was surprised to see the rest of B-plot actually admonished the book’s racist stereotyping.  The first part of this plot sets up its racial and ethnic stereotyping as really over-the-top and mean-spirited (and giving no allusions of how it related to an emotional arc later in the story).  The last part of this plot mocks historians of The Princess in the Garden’s author who act as apologists for her racism through ridiculous reasoning that they don’t even really believe (they call her racism “self-consciously ironic protest against [the author’s] own oppression” due to her being a lesbian).  So on top of this episode’s response to The Problem With Apu being built from various strawmen, dishonestly framing a dichotomy between creating a character with an emotional arc and not promoting racial stereotypes, and just being really heavy-handed (they both stare directly at the viewers for crying out loud), it was completely in contrast with the rest of the plot.

I can’t read this as anything else but a petty “fuck you” to Hari Kondabolu.  And that is really sad.  These writers are better than this.

Or maybe they’re not better than this.

The Simpsons has always been an overwhelmingly white show with very little representation of people of color.  In fact, the only characters of color I can think of that has been explored beyond their on-the-surface personality quirks in the show’s almost thirty year tenure are Apu and Carl in only one episode.  This show hasn’t really grappled with racism in any of their episodes outside a character making a small quip about it once in a blue moon or “Much Apu About Nothing” (although that was more about xenophobia than racism).  It seems to be an issue the writers of the show have never been comfortable in tackling.  They nonetheless open themselves up to scrutiny by ignoring it, especially when they conceive a foreign character based on stereotypes they find funny (Simpsons writer Dana Gould admitted to that in Kondabolu’s documentary).

I’m not even necessarily saying that they should kill off Apu or something like that.  I like Apu and I personally wouldn’t want to see him go (but hey, I’m not Indian).  But I would have liked to see the writers honestly reckon with the stereotypical character they created and how the decades-long ubiquity of the show has helped shape the broader collective view of South Asians in media.

Instead they chose to respond like this:

And it’s not only beneath them, it’s pathetic.

P.S. This episode offers much better insight on the debate between artistic freedom vs. calling out objectionable content in media anyway.

[gebaeudereinigungsk087-blog]

Getting Tired of https://1a-gebaeudereinigung.net/? 10 Sources of Inspiration That'll Rekindle Your Love

Let's examine the cleansing industry as well as look at how much money it is feasible to earn and also what it requires to reach the 'six figure' degree.

Just how much Cash can you make Cleansing?

Many small cleansing business owners who work at it full time as single drivers in their initial year have the ability to make between $20,000 as well as $30,000. Once they have the ability to handle worker, build up some local track record and obtain great systems in position after that a $100,000 annual revenue is not unrealistic as well as a lot more is feasible for those who put in the initiative.

What Separates the 'Six Number' Operators from the Relax?

Below are ten factors to consider that commonly separate the high income earners from the rest -

1) Different cleaning particular niche markets use various chances. In some cities and also states in can be easier to make it in the office cleansing field as well as in other locations the carpet cleaning industry is more lucrative. It all depends upon neighborhood demand as well as the amount of business are accommodating that demand.

2) Start constructing your brand name right from the start as well as view it as your company's most useful property.

3) Create as well as fine-tune systems that make certain that your business runs smoothly. Continuously explore ways of boosting the productivity of your cleansing crews.

4) Understand the value of having a great sales system. Emphasis your efforts on converting a raising number of introduce clients.

5) Up-sell your clients with solutions connected to cleansing, premium services or more constant solution.

6) To scale approximately the 'six number' degree you need to find out how to work with, train and also arrange groups of employees to do the cleaning while you focus on running the business.

7) Find out just how to run successful marketing campaign and discover modern-day advertising approaches such as networking, cross promotions with related companies as well as 'word of mouth' advertising.

8) Value your consumers. Treat them as people as well as frequently advise them how much you appreciate their service. Satisfied consumers can result in references, and acquiring clients through this method is complimentary.

9) Have the ideal attitude. People in some cases stereotype cleansers in an adverse means. There is absolutely nothing incorrect with being a cleaner for a living however you ought to see on your own as a business person or lady most importantly.

10) Research study and learn continuously. Informing on your own about the cleansing service and also company monitoring generally doesn't quit once you established your business.

Could you begin a successful cleansing organisation and also earn over $100,000 a year?

If you have a home or service that you take a great deal of satisfaction in - and also many people do - you'll need reinigung clemensstraße münchen to keep it tidy. That has the time? reinigung heilbronn If you have a hectic life like a great deal of Seattle-ites, you'll want to simply let somebody else clean your home or office. That way, it always looks excellent and you're totally free to do all sort of various other things that you intend to do, instead of being stuck inside cleaning up throughout the day. A great deal of individuals have others who deal with their lawns, so there's no factor not to have somebody care for their house, also.

Typical false impressions for cleaning services is that they aren't safe due to the fact that you're letting complete strangers right into your residence and also that the price is as well much for the majority of people to deal with, but neither one of these points is real. Depending on just how much cleaning you have actually done and also how frequently it is generally extremely economical as well as with trusted companies that are accredited and insured there is virtually no threat of theft or various other issues.

The advantages, however, of having your home or office cleaned include a far better degree of cleaning than lots of people would certainly give to their very own residence, even more time to do what you desire due to the fact that you won't invest it cleansing, and the convenience of recognizing that the job will be done right, whenever. It is just one of those points that you do not need to fret about anymore at that point, and that's wonderful for individuals who are hectic with their lives as well as their family members as well as their businesses. It's also excellent for people who are senior or have some trouble with physical activities - such as people with disabilities. They can obtain their home or office cleaned without extreme expense and without worrying too much that they need to try to do work that they really aren't efficient in or that is painful for them.

[recesspizza40-blog]

Jenny Dorsey Dishes Out Discomfort

What dish encapsulates the Asian-American identity? Instant noodles with hot dogs, Spam fried rice, California rolls?

For chef Jenny Dorsey, it’s an emerald-green maze, formulated from chrysanthemum and celtuce — greens commonly used in Chinese cooking but recently “discovered” by Western chefs. At the center lie veal sweetbreads wrapped in a shrimp, garlic, and chive rice sheet, inspired by the steamed rice rolls commonly found at dim sum.

It’s “a polarizing texture that is so very Chinese and frequently called ‘gross,’ ‘slimy,’ ‘disgusting’ by those under-exposed to its particular mouthfeel,” Dorsey wrote in a July Instagram post unpacking the symbolism behind the dish. “For a long time I shied away from putting anything like that on my dishes because I was afraid guests would tell me they hated it (and by extension, all my cooking).”

Dorsey continued: “Through this process, I realized how much that slippery noodle encapsulated my own struggle with the model minority complex,” referring to the harmful stereotype that emerged after World War II, in which the white American public came to see Asian Americans as hardworking, high-performing, law-abiding “good minorities.” In the years since, Asian Americans have come to resent (and reject) the pressure to maintain this imaginary “ideal,” as well as question its use in normalizing acts of discrimination, racism, and economic inequality in the Asian American community. The rice sheet-wrapped veal dish itself is called “Model Minority” — and Dorsey notes that sweetbreads, “an offal deemed acceptable, fancy even, by haute cuisine,” are “a model minority of the offal world.”

The dish is now part of a dinner series called Asian in America that Dorsey has produced in New York City and Minneapolis over the past few months. The meal distills her 27 years of experiences into six courses, zeroing in on moments when she felt particularly confused, conflicted, or lost in her identity.

Asian in America is just one project of Dorsey’s, albeit the most personal, in a six-year career that has seen her move from celebrated fine dining establishments to creating, in temporary settings, challenging dining experiences that privilege honesty, deep connections, and individual stories over generalizations. Born in Shanghai and raised by tradition-bound scientist parents in the Seattle area, she graduated from the University of Washington at age 19 following a career as a Junior Olympics–level competitive fencer. After a few unfulfilling years of fashion management consulting, she was accepted to Columbia Business School and decided to go to culinary school as a creative sabbatical during the months before graduate education. She soon fell in love with cooking and the culinary community: After one uninspiring semester, she took leave of the MBA program to pursue a career in food.

Now an alum of Michelin-starred restaurants Atera in New York and Atelier Crenn and SPQR in San Francisco (with occasional appearances on the Food Network), Dorsey says her quest to find meaning and personal expression through food came after feeling unsatisfied in fine dining. “When I first started, I really just wanted to be someone that made beautiful food,” she says. But “slaving day after day, doing your weird purees at 2 in the morning — it felt really empty and a low-key waste of my time. What we put out there is a really sterile thing that people eat and forget about immediately.”

“Slaving day after day, making weird purees at 2 in the morning — it felt really empty and a low-key waste of my time.”

That’s the exact opposite of what she strives for at Asian in America and at her popular “experimental dinner series,” Wednesdays, which she has produced since 2014 in New York City and San Francisco with her mixologist husband, Matt. Wednesdays was born from the couple’s frustration with commonplace, superficial conversations, and its stated mission is to “make the dinner conversation as interesting as the meal itself.”

“Our main goal is to engage people on a deeper level,” Dorsey says. “How do we get them talk about things that are personal to them?” Guests answer probing questions via email ahead of the dinners to prime expectations about the intimate discussions the Dorseys hope to foster (a recent dinner with the theme of “radical honesty” required guests to divulge their greatest failures).

Asian in America is the natural evolution of Dorsey’s continuing quest to strip away diners’ day-to-day emotional artifices, as well as their expectations about fine dining. She began exploring the concept last year after acknowledging that she wasn’t divulging her own weaknesses to her Wednesdays guests. “I started an entire business about vulnerability but I was too afraid to be vulnerable myself,” she said in a keynote speech about being emotionally open at a creative tech conference in Minneapolis in September. “I’d been so busy trying to build some brand, I’d drank my own lies and told myself that I didn’t need vulnerability anymore.”

The dinner series comes in the midst of a prominent cultural discussion about Asian-American identity, fueled by cultural products like Crazy Rich Asians, Searching, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and Kim’s Convenience. Dorsey’s dishes, some of which are preceded by a virtual-reality experience featuring animated illustrations of ingredients and cooking techniques accompanied by Dorsey’s spoken-word poetry, have names like “Stereotypes,” “Saviors,” and “You Make Asian Food, Right?”

The last dish is composed of black-bean sauce clams nestled in black sesame and rye pasta, topped with habanero chutney and a beet-pickled egg, and enshrouded in a terrarium with applewood smoke. The accompanying poem reveals the dish’s roots, in what Dorsey calls “a search for the in-between”: her grandfather’s breakfast porridge (black sesame), Jewish delis (rye), tea eggs (beet eggs), dim sum (clams), and her stint in Haiti opening an ice cream shop (habanero). The dish’s name was inspired by a common refrain she hears, as well as her experience in culinary school, where a career advisor recommended externships at Asian restaurants based not on her cooking interests but solely on her ethnicity. “Culinary school has a special place of distaste in my heart,” she tells me, detailing her horror at watching a teacher improve a sweet-and-sour sauce by dousing it with ketchup.

Substitutions happen to be a singular pet peeve — and the name of another dish, in which each part masquerades as something else: her chawanmushi, typically a Japanese savory steamed egg custard, is actually an aerated egg with gruyere; her take on the Thai staple chile sauce nam phrik is composed of charred pollack roe and shrimp sauce; and the “pork” is actually smoked jackfruit. The dish is meant to provoke diners to ponder the acceptability of substitutions for hard-to-procure ingredients or unfamiliar techniques. It engages wider concerns of food authenticity and appropriation and how chefs should engage in a respectful cultural exchange. “If you search for ‘ramen noodle recipe,’ the very first result on Google is a recipe containing eggs, not kansui (alkaline water),” she wrote in a Medium post earlier this year. “Misrepresentation and lack of representation reinforces incorrect worldviews that the particularities of these ‘other’ cultures’ techniques or ingredients or traditions don’t matter, or are somehow inferior.”

Jenny Dorsey uses VR as part of Asian in America.

Photo by Jennifer Reagan

Anger, shame, indignation, guilt, and eventual pride — her cooking seeks to surface these sentiments. It’s a sharp departure from the “pretty food, pretty people, lots of money, we’re happy all the time” fine dining style she says she was trained to execute.

“I used to think cooking was about making others feel good, but now I’ve learned it’s about letting others see you as you are,” Dorsey said in her keynote. “Shame, regret, fear, uncertainty, half-truths are not only normal parts of being human, but some of the most precariously beautiful bites.”

Dorsey doesn’t see her work as fine dining. “For two- and three-star restaurants, the emphasis is about culinary excellence and curating the perfect guest experience,” she says. “I think vulnerability in that setting is giving guests more of a peek inside the lives of the executive chef and really feeling his/her presence in the food. But ultimately, the experience hinges on what the guests want — whether it’s an extravagant evening of celebration or a romantic anniversary. Guest comfort is the No. 1 goal, as it should be.”

“I used to think cooking was about making others feel good, but now I’ve learned it’s about letting others see you as you are.”

She identifies more as an artist whose medium is food. “I see my work as more of a typical museum or art gallery installation where the guest is there to observe and partake, then hopefully engage and be interested, but their whims and wants are not part of experience,” she says. “My focus is about making people uncomfortable and really feel something. I think guests can feel much of my vulnerability throughout the event, but it’s also meant to force them to also feel something about themselves.”

This is tasting menu as intellectual exercise. And Dorsey’s found an audience: Nearly 7,000 people are on her email lists, and tickets for both dinner programs (which range from 12 to 100 seats and run about $125) sell out quickly. The 16-seat debut Asian in America dinner at Brooklyn’s Museum of Food and Drink in August had a wait list of 150.

On that balmy summer night, Dorsey, a brisk, clear talker, focused her opening remarks on an entreaty to “be open.” “What do you think she means by ‘be open?’” asks my tablemate, a mid-30s Asian American who works in tech and is seated next to his white girlfriend. We’ve all been primed by wonderfully boozy cocktails (one featuring baijiu and Sichuan peppercorn syrup, another lamb fat–washed brandy and Shaoxing wine). Someone speculates that it could be a nod to the novel incorporation of VR technology; another offers it could be the unfamiliar ingredient pairings on the plates. Or perhaps it’s simply a way to facilitate conversation among strangers. Coincidentally, the dinner took place on the buzzy opening night of Crazy Rich Asians, which was a frequent topic of conversation.

Guests sat at four tables of four, with chunky VR headsets and headphones sitting next to each plate; the service was informal, and guests were relaxed yet curious about how the meal would unfold. Three courses were presented with cards printed with the dish’s ingredients on one side and a short poem by Dorsey illustrating the course’s theme on the other. The “Saviors” dessert course, for example, was a sly dig at the some of today’s high-profile, outspoken male chefs, with the ingredients list reading: “Gordon’s ice cream (smoked bone marrow),” “Andy’s mousse (champagne mango),” “David’s mochi doughnuts (with spicy raspberries),” and “Rick’s tapioca boba (in sweet soy)”. The accompanying poem underscored the name’s ironic intent by praising two of this year’s notable Asian-American women in the performing arts: “congratulations sandra oh / young jean lee / i’ve longed to hear your stories / the narrative not brought forth / by a white knight.”

For the other three courses, we strapped into VR headsets, observing the VR illustrations and hearing Dorsey’s spoken-word poetry through the headphones. The final course, titled “Fancy Because It’s French,” was a classic Chinese mooncake reimagined with showy French techniques: “The red bean filling has been made into a fluffy mousse, the salted duck center into a custard akin to a crème anglaise, and the kansui-and-golden-syrup wrapper replaced with an oolong-flavored biscuit,” Dorsey has written of this dish. “Ultimately my ‘mooncake’ is different, but no better, than the traditional version.” The spoken-word poem touched on how certain things (foods, recipes, restaurants, cultures) accrue worth and others do not, and how that lack of valuation trickles down to members of a community: “I’ve forgotten much of my own history / Maybe that’s why I’ve internalized another’s / I grew up wishing I would wake up blonde / But I could never give up my love for soymilk.”

Helen Situ, a VR company exec I met at the dinner, told me afterward that she felt “incredibly proud” to attend Asian in America. “I saw and tasted and felt myself in her expressions of identity,” she says. “Each course was carefully constructed with infusions of Eastern and Western flavors, which spoke to me as a first-generation Chinese American. I’ve often felt compelled to choose which side of my identity to lean into, and as I become more comfortable in my skin I’ve sought experiences that help me embrace the hybrid of Chinese and American.”

“The event was nothing like I’ve seen before when discussing the Asian-American narrative,” says Felicia Liang, an illustrator who worked with Dorsey on some of the dinner’s AR art. “Every part of each dish, from the ingredients to the preparation to the final presentation, all revolved around very difficult themes around race and identity. Food is already such a great connector for people, but she takes that ability to have meaningful conversations over food to a whole new level. There’s been a cultural movement the last few years about the importance of Asian-American representation and sharing our stories, and it’s been exciting seeing how she’s exploring these themes.”

Dorsey will produce her Asian in America dinner at the Culinary Institute of America’s reThink Food Conference in Napa Valley on November 8, and she’s in talks to bring it to Philadelphia, Montreal, and Atlanta. She also plans to expand her brand of “culinary storytelling” to an immersive dance collaboration later this year and an augmented reality and ceramics project in early 2019.

“What I really want to do with food is to use it as one of the platforms in which I tell stories,” she explains. “I hope that people dig a little deeper and find the uncomfortable bits of meaning in their life.”

Lisa Wong Macabasco is a writer and editor based in Queens, New York. Her writing has been published in Vogue and Slate. Editor: Hillary Dixler Canavan

Eater.com

The freshest news from the food world every day

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and European users agree to the data transfer policy.

Source: https://www.eater.com/2018/10/25/17992386/chef-jenny-dorsey-asian-in-america-series