Oddity Central |
- Chinese Companies Renting White Guys to Look Successful
- Woman Avoids Looking at Herself in Mirrors for a Year to Boost Self-Esteem
- The Facekini – China’s Bizarre Beach Sun-Blocker
| Chinese Companies Renting White Guys to Look Successful Posted: 21 Aug 2012 04:50 AM PDT
Believe it or not, in China white guys can get a job posing as businessmen for companies who hire them to look more international to their real partners. It’s called “White Guy Window Dressing” and it’s apparently a very popular business tactic. What makes this such a great job for white guys in China is that it has some really simple requirements: be white, don’t speak any Chinese, or speak at all unless asked, pretend like you just got off an airplane the day before, and look good in a suit. The people who usually go for this king of gig are part-time models and actors, English teachers and expats looking for a quick and easy paycheck. It’s called ”White Guy Window Dressing”, “The Token White Guy Gig”, or simply the “Face Job” and it’s so popular in China these days that there’s actually a company called Rent A Laowai (Chinese for “foreigner”) that helps businesses improve their image by providing fake white employees or partners. Photo: MyTudut Although this kind of practice is relatively new, it’s tied to a centuries-old Chinese belief about the human face. ”Face, we say in China, is more important than life itself,” says Zhang Haihua, author of a book called “Think Like the Chinese”. He believes that because some Western countries are so well-developed , many Chinese people think that if a company affords to hire or do business with a white man, it must have a lot of money or connections abroad. That’s why some businesses will often hire Caucasians to simply sit in an office near the window, where clients can see them pretending to work.
But most white guys are hired to travel to second and third tier Chinese cities, where their presence is needed to impress officials and business partners. Jonathan Zatkin, an American actor who lives in Beijing, told CNN that three years ago he was paid 2,000 yuan to go to a small city in the province of Henan, and pose as the vice-president of an Italian jewelry company. He was up on a stage with the city’s mayor and gave a speech about how wonderful it had been to work with their local company for 10 years and how proud he was of their work. There was a bandstand in his honor and everything. But this was just a small job. Others pay over $1,000, but are also more dangerous, according to another white rental. The Beijing police knocked on his door after a company he had worked with for a couple of months swindled millions from its clients and told everyone he was in charge. The poor man couldn’t even remember the name of the company… So the next time you’re in China and looking to make a quick buck, try posting an ad for white guy services. You don’t even need any experience. Chinese Companies Renting White Guys to Look Successful was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Woman Avoids Looking at Herself in Mirrors for a Year to Boost Self-Esteem Posted: 21 Aug 2012 03:10 AM PDT
Kjerstin Gruys, a 29-year-old PhD student in sociology, has gone mirror-free for an entire year, avoiding her own reflection in order to boost her self-esteem and inspire others to stop focusing on their physical appearance. Can you imagine not checking how you look for an entire year? Most women can’t go a day without looking in the mirror, whether to check how their clothes fit, or if their make-up looks good, but one ambitious young student managed to avoid looking at her reflection for a full year. If you think about it, it’s hard not looking at yourself, when you’re surrounded by mirrors and all kinds of shiny surfaces, but Kjerstin Gruys somehow made it work. For months, she covered the bathroom mirror so she could wash her face and brush her teeth without accidentally catching a glimpse of herself, she learned how to apply make-up by touch and not by sight, and she even learned to use her car’s mirrors so that she didn’t have to see her face in them. It was hard in the beginning, but she quickly adapted and says the experiment made her realize looks are really not as important as most people think. Photo courtesy of Kjerstin Gruys As a teenager, Kjerstin struggled with insecurities about her appearance and suffered from anorexia. She was obsessed with the way she looked and how much she weighed, and would restrict her food and liquid intake, which led to serious health issues. She developed kidney stones, the lack of body fat started affecting the density of her bones, and she found herself battling an eating disorder. After years of therapy, she overcame anorexia and began volunteering for About-Face, an organization that tries to help women with their physical appearance problems. Gruys started her mirror-free project back in 2010, when she was preparing for her wedding with then fiancé Michael Ackermann. She had always dreamed of going wedding dress shopping, and in her mind the experience itself was like a dream come-true, only reality was much different. Trying on different dresses became a source of stress, and the young woman started being critical about her body again, and thinking about losing some weight before the wedding. She realized it was wrong, but she wasn’t afraid of relapsing into her eating disorder, but rather she felt like a hypocrite, thinking about how far she had come. Luckily, while reading a book called “Birth of Venus” she stumbled about a paragraph about nuns in Renaissance Italy and their restrictions against vanity. ”They didn’t have mirrors in their lives. They were forbidden to look at each other when undressing. They were actually forbidden to look at themselves while they undressed,” Kjerstin remembers. ”This idea of living your life experiencing the world for itself instead of constantly reflecting, you know, pun intended, on how you looked…. It was a life where you could get away from yourself.” This inspired her to start this project where she would get rid of mirrors so she could focus more on everything else in her life. During the first month of the experiment, Kjerstin Gruys remembers there was a 50/50% chance she would go out with mascara on her nose, but realized that didn’t affect her life very much. She learned to avoid all kinds of reflections and turned to her friends and her husband for shopping advice, instead of looking in the mirror. She would buy a bunch of clothes, try them on for her friends and rely on their opinions about which ones fir her best. She even avoided looking at herself on her wedding day, and says it was one of the easiest days to be mirror-free. ”I’m getting my focus back to thinking about the real meaning of the day, which isn’t how I look but marrying the love of my life,” she said. Fittingly, she and Michael danced to a song called “I’ll be your mirror”.
On March 12, Kjerstin ended her year-long experiment and finally looked at her reflection in the mirror, surrounded by friends and family. ”I had a little ambivalence, and at the same time, pleasure, because I was happy with what I saw,” she told ABC News. Gruys says the experience has helped her pay more attention to how she feels, rather than how she looks. ”There is nothing wrong with enjoying, um, looking at yourself in the mirror, … but it’s important for every woman, and man, I think, to really think for a few minutes about whether there is a point of diminishing returns,” she said. “Because we have so much more to offer the world than just our looks.” For more information about Kjerstin’s no-mirrors project, check out her blog – Mirror, Mirror… Off The Wall Woman Avoids Looking at Herself in Mirrors for a Year to Boost Self-Esteem was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| The Facekini – China’s Bizarre Beach Sun-Blocker Posted: 21 Aug 2012 01:26 AM PDT
Beach-goers usually use sunblock and umbrellas to make sure they don’t get burned, but in China they use something called a “facekini“. The fact that it makes you look like a Mexican wrestler doesn’t seem to bother anybody. The facekini is being called “China’s latest beach craze”, but according to a Qingdao sales officer, the bizarre mask has been around for at least five years. But photos of Qingdaonese swimmers wearing the bizarre accessory have only recently gone viral on Chinese social sites, and were eventually picked up by Western photo agencies and websites sparking readers’ curiosity. The bizarre clothing item is made of elastic fabric, covers a person’s entire head and neck down to the collarbone and has holes cut out for the neck, nose and mouth. They look pretty creepy, if you ask me, but that’s apparently a very small price to pay in order to protect yourself from getting a tan while going for a swim. White skin is considered a sign of beauty in China, and the Chinese even have an old saying that translates as ”white skin covers up a hundred uglinesses.” The women go to great lengths to make sure their skin remains white as milk during the hot summer months, and the facekini is just one of the things they use. They also dress in full-body swimming suits, and use parasols while walking on the street. The mask has become so popular in Qingdao that vendors have created regular facekini collections, with dozens of available colors, different size eye holes and seam placement. According to one face-kini wearer quoted by CnnGo, “normal swimmers here all dress like this. We’re used to it already,” so I guess it would seem abnormal not to wear a colorful luchador-style mask at the beach… But it seems the facekini doesn’t only shield its wearers from UV rays, it also repels other nuisances like jellyfish stings and sharks. One Taobao facekini vendor says the orange colored ones keep sharks away because “they fear this color the most”. Photos via Ecouterre The Facekini – China’s Bizarre Beach Sun-Blocker was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
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