Single, white and looking
THEY are spoiling the market.
So concludes an American friend about Asian women dating Caucasian
men.
And this said to me, an Asian who is dating a Caucasian man.
It was hard to miss the irony, but then came her quick
clarification.
'I mean the Party Girls,' she says.
Ah, yes, the infamous Sarong Party Girls - boon to Caucasian men
who want to sow their wild oats in Asia, and bane to single, white
females who find themselves in the midst of the ang mo's Asian
playground.
My friend, let's call her Sandy, is smart, svelte, sexy and
intelligent.
But, she says, it is impossible to score a decent date in Singapore
because her male Caucasian counterparts are busy having their Asian
fetishes serviced.
'After all the gushing and fawning by the SPGs, the guys can't deal
with anything less,' she laments.
'Their egos are so inflated, they think every girl is dying to rub
up against them. And these are guys who probably wouldn't even get
a second look back home, sometimes not even a first look.'
I was more surprised at her complaints than I was at being made to
feel like a market-spoiling SPG, however briefly.
I thought that Asia being a white man's playground was old news.
And I thought everyone was done slamming SPGs.
She wasn't.
'When I got here a year ago, I was really surprised. I thought
Singapore, where the women are better educated, would be more like
other places I had been, like Australia, New York or Vancouver,'
she continues.
'I didn't think it was like Bangkok or Jakarta.'
As a disclaimer, she adds that she is more than open to dating
Asian men, though she says they seem to write her off, too.
So, SPGs are back on the hate radar - at least for lonely
Sandy.
In fact, her tirade had not ended.
She recounts how an American guy recently told her that he didn't
date white women because they require 'too much energy'. He would
have to think about what he says and does.
'Right now, he doesn't have to try very hard. He'll have someone
else tomorrow. SPGs don't even care what a man looks like, as long
as he's white,' she concludes.
UNTIL fairly recently, there weren't that many single Caucasian
career women in Singapore, or in Asia for that matter.
More seem to have come, mainly with hopes of fast-tracking their
careers, though it doesn't appear to be doing likewise for their
private lives.
The topic was dealt with last month in an Asian Wall Street Journal
article by Stan Sesser.
In it, he quoted executive Julia Sleva, a 30-something Canadian
living in Bangkok.
Apparently, Ms Sleva's on the career superhighway, but her love
life moves slower than peak-hour Bangkok traffic.
Most Caucasian men in Bangkok are either married, gay or have a
young Thai hanging on their arm, while most Thai men don't date
expat women, she complains.
Sesser adds: 'The difficulties of many single white women in Asia
are so widespread that counsellors are dealing with it every
day.'
It's apparently no different in Singapore.
One British female friend tells me: 'Many Caucasian men arrive as
normal human beings and morph into total idiots after sleeping
their way around the SPG hangouts.
'They can't go back home and find a woman because it would shatter
their illusions of being a sex god.'
Another friend, an Australian, adds: 'Everywhere you look, a white
guy is holding an Asian girl's hand. What's left for us?
'Worse yet, after they've had them, the guys want everything small
and submissive, and no questions asked.'
WELL, at least it's a consolation that although I'm going out with
a Caucasian, Sandy does not consider me an SPG.
I'm different, she says.
'You speak your mind and you are who you want to be; you don't just
stand there and take everything,' she says.
Indeed.
I like to think I make my man - whatever colour of the rainbow he
happens to be - put in as much energy into our relationship as he
would have to with a Caucasian woman.
Perhaps it's because the relationship I'm in has nothing to do with
me wanting to find an easy way out of Singapore, or him wanting to
find an easy way into me.
Neither has it to do with the colour of our skins.
In fact, I'm surprised that the single, white female doesn't see us
- this new breed of Asian women dating white men - as a bigger
threat than the fawning, you-are-a-white-god SPG.
Because, if we are both avoiding the same sort of men - those who
go through SPGs faster than you can say sarong - then aren't we
potentially fighting for the same segment of men left?
That is, white men who don't believe in the 'Asian and therefore
easy' myth? White men who - gasp! - go out with a woman because of
her character, brains and his interest in her culture?
Whatever the case, I suggest to Sandy that she just ignore the SPGs
and their white men.
But she insists that it's not possible, given how SPGs have forced
down standards across the board. They give in to their partner's
obsessions so easily, the men take women for granted, SPG or
otherwise.
