There's a lot I'll miss about Korea, but one thing I won't miss is the goddamn fat jokes. I get this every day, and I got it again tonight when I bumped into two female staffers while waiting outside for my buddy Tom. When Tom showed up a moment later (we were all standing out by the school's front gates), we talked a bit about where Tom was working, what I was doing, and so on. Both of the ladies were a bit confused about Tom's and my plans, and Tom joked, "Yeah... a lot of people confuse Kevin and me because we look so much alike."
Both of these ladies speak English fairly well, but as is true of this culture as a whole, they failed to note Tom's good-natured sarcasm. In reply to this, one muttered to the other in Korean, "Keun-dae, Tom kireum-i eop-neun-dae..." --i.e., "But Tom doesn't have any fat on him." Then she giggled, saw that I had understood her, and waved her hand in that "wipe the table/deny the truth" gesture while saying, "It's just a joke." Yeah, I've heard that before, too.
The problem, alas, is that the woman who uttered this joke isn't particularly thin. I held my tongue, though, and simply explained, laughingly and in Korean, that you just-- don't-- say that sort of thing to a Westerner. I felt as though I were schooling a rude child in basic politeness.
Of course, Westerners who've experienced Korean culture know that Koreans are generally blunt to the point of rudeness about more than just your appearance. Some Koreans even highlight this as a sort of national virtue: one of my Korean colleagues, for example, compared Korean frankness to Japanese reticence and proudly noted that the Korean way is more honest. (Not knowing many Japanese people and never having lived in Japan, I have no real basis for comparison on this point, so please understand I'm merely relaying information, here. Do the Japanese openly crack fat jokes? Do they do it in front of fat people? Or are they more reserved, joking only in private?)
Actually, I agree that honesty is generally a better policy than, say, an unreadable reserve that hides all thoughts and feelings under a cloak of faux civility. But I think honesty also has its limits. If, for example, I had commented on how fat this lady's ass was and had followed that up with an, "Oh, that was just a joke," how would she have felt? Even in Korean culture, fat jokes don't make people happy, and no girlfriend (of any culture) who asks her boyfriend whether her ass looks fat is prepared to hear the naked truth. Sometimes, diplomacy-- just a modicum of sophistication-- is called for.
I've developed a thick enough skin after years of this abuse that I don't fly into a rage every time I hear such stupidity; I usually offer a humorously self-deprecating response, brood a short while, then forget the incident... until the next time I experience similar stupidity. And I'm aware of the blunt Korean answer to my problem: "Just lose weight!" Here again, I agree-- I'm not into so-called "fat acceptance."* But even if I lose weight, that won't address the deeper problem of culturally sanctioned rudeness toward the fleshy (which, to be fair, is far from unique to Korea).
Of course, I've made my share of fat jokes, so this rant is probably as much for me as for any of the other insensitive people out there. I suppose a fat person might justify telling fat jokes much the way Rodney Dangerfield pointed out the importance of relativity: if you want to look thinner, hang around people fatter than you. Fat people may feel they have license to joke about fatter people.
So while I'll take many pleasant memories away from my time in Korea, one thing I won't miss is this country's disconcertingly frequent rudeness, and the general insensitivity that makes it possible. It's true that my own people, Americans, purvey their own special brands of rudeness, but that's not the focus of this post. We'll save the rich topic of Yankee jerkiness for another time.
*This has nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with health. I've seen curvaceous, Rubenesque ladies whom I'd consider quite sexy. In fact, women who lack curves, as seems increasingly to be the case among Hollywood stars, strike me as a bit sad in their attempts at attaining the "Dickensian waif" state.
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