Changes Coming... Stay Tuned

Yes, after a long hiatus, the Angry Anthro will soon be back online. The career trajectory took a weird, unforseen angle, albeit one that is highly entertaining (those of you in the know will forgive the joke). So, stay tuned and check back periodically, if only for the copious links to your right.

Hollywood Reality, Hollywood Gloss

Yeah, yeah, the whole world is anxiously awaiting Sunday's Oscar bash, or the day-before antipodal Independent Spirit Awards, but if you really want to learn about what's going on in Hollywood, skip the glossy, front-page of the daily paper, and take a look back in the Business Section of today's LA Times:

For 18 years, Mark Karen has worked behind the camera, carefully framing shots on movies and television shows from "Titanic" to "Star Trek: Voyager."

But the 45-year-old Los Angeles resident sees a bleak picture of his own future.

The reason: a proposed contract change that for the first time would remove a requirement that camera operators like Karen be used on feature films. Instead, the new contract would allow directors of photography, commonly known as "DPs," to operate cameras on features and episodic television shows.

The seemingly innocuous concession — contained in a draft contract for Hollywood's so-called below-the-line workers — has roiled the ranks of camera operators, who have worked hand in glove with DPs since the days of talkies."

It means I'm going to be out of a career," Karen predicted.

What the?....

Some mornings - most mornings in fact - are horribly quotidian: Same breakfast foods, same coffee, same egotisitical nut asking you for your morning paper, then complaining when you refuse (see previous post).

And then, occassionally, out of the blue, you open the paper and are given the wake-up call. That happened today when I read this:

A False Note to the New Year in Pasadena

A lawsuit contends that school officials tried to cover up importing musicians to march in the city district's band in the 2006 Rose Parade.

By Bob Pool, Times Staff WriterMarch 1, 2006

Did a group of ringers secretly ring in the new year at Pasadena's 2006 Rose Parade?

The answer is yes. But that hasn't resolved a lawsuit over whether officials at the Pasadena Unified School District tried to cover up what they did.

And then this:

Amid growing criticism, the executive producer of KTLA-TV's "Morning News" defended the show's decision last week to accept free accommodations in exchange for broadcasting its morning program from the newly renovated Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena.

And finally, this item:

A Chinese dissident facing felony charges that could have led to his deportation pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor and was released Tuesday, a Los Angeles County official said.

Zhang Hongbao, the leader of a Chinese spiritual group with an estimated following of 30 million, had been accused of five felony counts related to the alleged beating of his housekeeper in his Pasadena home in 2003.

So much for the boring news from a little city in the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley.

Hands Off My Morning Paper!

Back in the pundit saddle, albeit on a part-time basis.

For those of you who – amazingly – still find your way through the cybersphere to this crass corner of complaints, thank you for visiting. I’ve had a few unexpected turns in recent months (mostly for the better), and will update you all in the near future. Basically, I’m looking at a complicated fork in the proverbial road, and have to choose which of the many tines I’m going to continue on for years to come. No doubt, many of you have experienced the same thing.

But, to get back into form, my rant du jour centers on coffee house etiquette. To be brutally honest, I need and covet my morning caffeine. To that end, I hang out with a bunch of regulars at Peets in Pasadena (Starbucks sucks, but is a necessary evil when conditions warrant), and have done so for years.

Now, I’m a plain coffee type of guy, so I can’t imagine spending $4.50 on a latte with more flavors and calories than most milkshakes. But, if you’re going to spend that much, don’t you think you could spend an additional 50 cents on the damn paper?!

See, my friends joke that no matter where I am sitting, or doing, someone will invariably approach and try to take my LA Times paper away from me, as if I’m the communal paper basket. This happens at all times of the day, and even outside (one time, a guy came off the sidewalk while I’m still reading a section and asked, “Hey guy, you done with the paper yet?”). They’ll even try to yank out a section from under my seat, with my foot on it! (And it happened again this morning.)

Who knows why this happens – I think it’s akin to what the British writer Toby Young calls his, “negative charisma,” when he enters a room, people immediately hate him before they know anything about him. Somehow, I must have the look of, “Take my paper – please….”

My jaded advice: Peets isn’t the Union Rescue Mission. If you there to buy the expensive coffee and more-than-expensive snacks, you can reach down into your pockets and shell out an additional two quarters. Get the damn paper yourself.

Another Pasadena Passing....

FYI, reknown Pasadena-born science fiction-writer Octavia Butler has died.

From the front page of today's Pasadena Star News:

PASADENA - Octavia Butler, the Pasadena native who was one of the nation's leading science-fiction writers and whose first novel, "Kindred," is Pasadena's 2006 One City, One Story book selection, died Friday. She was 58.

Butler died after falling and striking her head on the cobbled walkway outside her home in the north Seattle suburb of Lake Forest Park.

Fowl Most Fresh

On the Eve of Turkey Day many cash-stuffed folk will turn their thoughts, and forks, to their favorite festive bird - usually one that is fully dressed, shrink-wrapped, and frozen to Kelvin scale depths. For the more upscale, there are heirloom birds, such as those reported in this week's LA Weekly by Jonathan Gold.

But, for the more adventuresome, the LA Times gave morning readers a nice shock with a report on a thriving slaughterhouse serving a mostly immigrant clientele, who prefer to pick and choose from the winged offerings. Five minutes from pen to plastic bag - try that at a Honey Baked Ham store tonight! And for those of you getting squeamish, remember I ate bugs during my fieldwork. Get over it. Besides, the old Angelino families remember when Sunday dinner required killing a chicken from the coop - my father did that most of his childhood life in Pomona. Now a days you only get to count the chickens riding the Gold Line to Union Station.

Before you take a bite of the chemically-enriched Butterball tomorrow, take a peek at the article. Too bad it wasn't included in the Times Food section, something about advertising revenue....

But if you won't read it for the ethnographic background, read it for the honed rhetoric like this:

Today, Samy Morsy is so deft with his 12-inch chef knife that it seems that he could turn a turkey into a hood ornament if he were asked to.

Soon coming to a fashionable vehicle near you.

The Need and the Loathing

It's late on a Friday aftenoon, the college has gone to bed before the sun is down, and I'm not going to let Warren, David, Joel, Kira, and the others have all the fun with a little Google-magic (all the better to procrastinate and put off finishing another scene).

Here are some results for "Formosus needs" in Google:

The disinterred corpose of Pope Formosus (891-894) was brought before the...

Phosphorous needs of some Australian Plants. Swainsona, canescens, colutoides, formosus, tephrotricha...

Joseph, Ras, Neal, and Formosus. Chris, Trish, and Andie... (Wait a minute! That's from Warren's site - and he suggested this excercise. Hmmm...)

Red Cone Flower (lsopogon formosus): see it and grow it...

Scientific name: Oporornis formosus...

When switched off, the Scleropages Formsous are not moving at all of course...

The main plot deals with the trick of Formosus to obtain 3000 crowns from his miserly father Amadeus...

Dances with Screenwriters

Spent last weekend nursing a lingering cough, and attending the 4th Annual Screenwriting Expo, sponsored by Creative Screenwriting magazine. It was my first time attending and it was rather surprising to be amidst almost 4,000 writers, but then I was surprised to be among 5,000 anthropologists the first time I attended the AAA gathering. Lots of sights, lots of people, and even more stories, which usually constitute the most informative aspect of conventions, and the most entertaining.

Like other writing get-togethers, the Expo was a great venue for the usually solitary to get support, learn that there are actually other people out there who are just as geeky as you think you are, and commiserate with fellow writers over rejection - preferably with an 80 proof libation in hand.

I attended some classes, a panel or two, and many of the Guest of Honor sessions, but more about that later. As I was walking around the trade show, scanning through the xeroxed detritus strewn over abandoned tables, I had this lingering thought....

Am I the only one who thinks that the market for writing products and services is strangely similiar to the market for sex products and services? There are hundreds of companies offering magazines, videos, and "coverage or feedback" (usually in the back of cheap magazines) offering “secrets” (for a price) that purport to make you a "better practitioner," allowing you to "write longer, better, with more passion, all leading to a strong finish." The place was rife with psychoanalytic subtext. But then, after too many years of graduate school I can never look at any social gathering without some weird theoretical interpretation.

If you want to glance at some photos, take a peek at the collection from Warren, Joel, and Shawna.

Instead of the rundown of classes and panels, here are some of the more colorful quotes I heart at Expo 4:

William Goldman: “What I want you to come away from this Expo is this – All critics are failures and whores.”

David Koepp: “Everyone in this business has to be told what to do, directors, actors, so on, except for the writer. We can go home tonight, open a new file on our computer and start to work on a new project – no one has to tell us to do it. And that’s why they hate us.”

Marc & Elaine Zicree: “If you hear the following: ‘Thanks for coming in’, ‘Interesting…’, or ‘Call my agent’, you’re toast.” On the other hand, “If they say, ‘Who’s your agent?’ they want your script.”

Richard Walter: (quoting someone else) “It is actions that define character, and not the other way around.”

Richard Walter: (again) “There are only two things in scripts: The stuff that’s seen – the wide margins; and the stuff that’s said – the narrow margins.”

David Freeman: “I wasn’t born with an Earth Mother gene…”

But the best was probably at the blogger rendezvous Sunday night: “Yes, I was a Pumpkin Princess” from Shawna.

Carrots Without the Sticks

Buried in the back pages of today's LA Times is a gem of an article highlighting the questionable empirical evidence for economic enterprise zones, which have lately been touted by W. as a response to the aftermath of Katrina.

Call me an old-line positivist, but for something to have effectively changed, beyond normal variation, the data must support the evidence. Take a read:

Over the last 10 years, the federal government has chartered 40 empowerment zones and 40 renewal communities, both of which offer tax breaks to qualifying businesses. One is in Los Angeles. Another covers a portion of New Orleans.

In addition to the federal areas, many states and cities have their own enterprise zone programs.

Over the years, economists have attempted to measure the effectiveness of the zones. Some studies have found statistical evidence of higher rates of economic growth and job creation. Others have not. Several analysts who reviewed past research have told Congress the overall results are inconclusive.

When asked for empirical evidence that enterprise zones work, the White House and the Treasury Department cited a 2001 study by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the federal programs.

HUD looked at the first six urban zones established during the Clinton administration. They were in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, New York and Philadelphia.

Of the six, four experienced greater job growth than comparable areas where the special benefits were not available, the HUD study said, and owners reported that the climate for doing business had improved.

But two zones fared worse than comparable areas, and 65% of businesses in the six areas reported no benefit from being in empowerment zones. In addition, few firms took advantage of the tax credits, and more than half of those that used them said they were of little or no importance in hiring or investing decisions.

HUD said it was unable to reach conclusions about the effectiveness of the zones.

Bad Food is Universal

Anthropologists disagree vehemently about the extent of human cultural universals, but for the cynics in the crowd two items are head and shoulders above the rest: utter stupidity and really bad food.

Another Column One example of Pulitzer-level reportage today from the LA Times strikes yet another blow to globalization of food trends. Target, this time - Mexico - and the food, Japanese instant noodles:

That's a brand of instant ramen noodles that to him means lunch. Leon's grandmother stocks them in her tiny grocery store in this hamlet 40 miles southwest of the capital. The preschooler prefers his shrimp-flavor ramen with a dollop of liquid heat.

"With salsa!" he said exuberantly at the mention of his favorite noodle soup.

Through the centuries, Moorish spices, French pastries and Spanish citrus have left lasting impressions on Mexico's cuisine. Now Japanese fast-food noodles, first imported here in the 1980s, are filling pantries across the country.

Time-pressed school kids, construction workers and office drones have helped turn Mexicans into Latin America's largest per-capita consumers of instant ramen. Diners here slurped down 1 billion servings last year, up threefold since 1999, according to a Japanese noodle association.

My worst food experiences in Mexico were tacos made with roasted grasshoppers and dried, salted tripe wrapped in a tortilla, but hey - those were at least authentic.

I hope the Times continues to give front-page coverage to food articles banned from the haute cuisine afficionados in the Food Sections on Wednesdays. A week ago, the World section also reported on the popularity of Spam gift baskets in Korea (Oct. 15 - go check it out if you can get past the registration barricade).

Morning Reading Fun

Angelinos love their cars, and more literate Angelinos (the few, the proud) are turning to Dan Neil's weekly auto review in the LA times. A past Pulitzer-prize winner, Neil combines the best of over-the-top sports rhetoric with a few witty Chandlerisms in most of his columns.

Today's piece on the new Mazda Miata MX-5 was particularly enoyable. For those of you who don't regularly get a chance to read amusing columns with the morning coffee, here are some choice excerpts:

MAZDA Miata, how do I love thee? Let me count the days.

Um, two
***************
From its fiercely flatulent dual-exhaust note and buzzy metabolism to its stunt-kite agility, the MX-5 is all about sensory involvement.

Which is great, absolutely brilliant, two days a week, when the MX-5 can find the empty onramps and lightly patrolled canyon roads to practice its unique brand of necromancy. Weekdays, though, this car is a rolling root canal.
****************
It doesn't help that the car's final-drive ratio is 4.10:1 and that peak torque (140 pound-feet) resides at 5,000 rpm. Put it all together and you have a car that is screaming bloody jihad at 25 mph if you don't shift into second gear.
****************
The MX-5 is the sort of car for which two-car garages were made.
****************
The central console, shaped like one end of a snowboard, holds the fuss-free climate and audio panels. Most notable is the band of shiny black plastic — "piano black" only if your piano is made by Mattel — which, unless I'm mistaken, is the same material that appears in the Ford Fusion (Mazda is a corporate holding of the Ford Motor Co.).
****************
But the car lives for cornering forces. Once it finds its posture, the MX-5 clings to a white line like Kate Moss.
****************
It's not easy to sap the joy out of a car like this — this artful dodger, this blithe spirit — but somehow, Los Angeles manages.

Stuff like this makes waking up fun.

A Thought for the Day

Those of you who have taken a peek at the long list of links on my sidebar know that I enjoy reading literature, and I've written some myself, even though my training and background leans towards the formal side of social science research.

From time to time, I meet other bibliophiles and aspiring writers, many of whom think that the writing process mandates attendance at writing seminars, or at least an MFA.

The question I always think of is, "How did the great writers in the past write so well without the self-help groups, without endless books on the topic, without a graduate degree?"

See, when I was seeking funding for my dissertation research, I eschewed the "how to get your research grant" books (i.e., Sage publications), and focused instead on reading lots of research grants in my field, and others, and asking faculty members who had written successful grants for their recommendations. After I took all this information in, I wrote - I wrote a lot - multiple drafts of each grant.

Consequently, I was a Fulbright Fellow, and was awarded funding from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and others.

So, I'm always a bit baffled by those who flock to the "after-market" for creative writers. No doubt, part of it is a social support system for what is admitedly a lonely and solitary craft, but it is also a very good way to: 1) part you from your valuable time and money; and 2) delay the inevitable, which is - writing! The British novelist Martin Amis once advised the worried-writer crowd with, "you simply must put the doubt and fear aside, and write."

I was thinking about this the other day while rereading a great book, "The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters" by Karl Iglesias (Avon, MA: Adams Media Corp.). A few choice passages in the section, "Point #15: Educating Yourself" echoed my thoughts.

Ron Bass

I came up to (a Stanford professor) after class one day and said, "I really want to write fiction What writing courses should I take?" He said, "Never, ever, ever take a writing course, never read a book about writing, never let anybody tell you how to write. Take literature courses, read, steal, turn everything to your interpretation. As soon as you take a writing course, it's the beginning of the end, because you establish someone else as the authority for how you can write, and it can't be. Writing is an art, it comes individually out of you. Only you can express your art your way, it's an expression of who you are. I can't tell you how to write, Fitzgerald couldn't tell you, Faulkner couldn't tell you."

Scott Rosenberg

It's very difficult to teach someone how to write characters and dialogue. I believe that with the best screenwriters, it's a God-given talent. What you can learn, however, is structure. And you don't even have to go to film school to learn. You can pretty much get that out of a couple books.

Robin Swicord

At the same time, I'm not sure anyone can teach you how to write. All writing is self-taught.

Lessons? Stop reading this blog and go back to writing - I am.

The ABCs of Chinese Food

Los Angeles County uses a letter-grade system to alert the public to "healthy" and "unhealthy" food. Some patrons were surprised to see poor marks for their favorite eateries when this system began a few years back (i.e., my beloved taco trucks - but that's another post), and the more squeamish foodies still check out the grade before trying a new place.

So today I was amused to read a Column One article in the LA Times on Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley which highlighted some of the cultural conflicts between Western-scientific frames of health and cuisine, with centuries-old traditions:

The county does not categorize restaurants by their cuisine. But, anecdotally, officials have long believed that Chinese restaurants elude A grades at a rate greater than any other type of restaurant. Consider this: 80% of the county's eateries have an A. So why is it so hard to find an authentic Chinese restaurant with anything other than a B or C?

Chinese restaurateurs argue that their kitchens simply use too many ingredients and too many cooking techniques to comply with the all the rules of health inspectors like Chiu.

They say inspectors are overly strict and that a perfect score is tantamount to destroying the flavor of their food. If a roast duck were kept at the temperature the county wants it at all times, for example, chefs say you'd be left with duck jerky, not the succulent flesh and crispy skin diners expect.

And if diners were getting sick, restaurant owners say, they wouldn't be coming to eat in such large numbers.

"We've been cooking like this for 5,000 years," said Harvey Ng, owner of Mission 261 in San Gabriel. "Why do we have a problem now?"

As for me? An old anthropological adage goes, "If it hasn't killed off an entire culture, it's good enough to eat."

Provecho.

No More Delaying....

Finally, finally, some good news for the week - and for the country:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 - Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the powerful House Republican majority leader, was accused by a Texas grand jury today of criminal conspiracy in a campaign fund-raising scheme.

Mr. DeLay was indicted on one count charging that he violated state election laws in September 2002. Two political associates, John D. Colyandro and James W. Ellis, were indicted with him.

Something Out of Place

Halfway through a workweek, halfway through a mandated survey project, and I've only been able to collect enough material for one good rant (not on the survey - too much material for that - but I'd like to keep my job).

Monday night I saw a special screening of Capote starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and penned by actor-turned-first-time-screenwrighter Dan Futterman. The buzz about this movie from Telluride and Toronto was positive, and Hoffman's portrayal of TC is impressive. There is already a murmur going around some boards that Hoffman might get an Oscar nomination for this part. I liked it, so if you enjoy this blog, make the effort to catch it when it comes to your town.

My gripe, however, isn't with the cast - it's with the crew. One memorable scene has a headshot of Capote talking on the phone to New York from Kansas circa 1960. Nothing else is going on, except for a few cuts to the office in New York at the other end, so anything out of the ordinary stands out. I'll say - the phone he was talking on had an RJ11 phone jack sticking out of the end! All the other phone scenes remained true to the old hard-wired connections, but props failed on that one. A brief review of phone history in the US shows that RJ11 phone jacks only became widely introduced after 1977 to facilitate connections with *new* home consumer products like answering machines and faxes.

Leave it to an anthropologist to point out the obvious. (The AA's basic guide to ethnography: shut up, sit down, and observe before opening your mouth.)

Busy, Busy, Busy

Your intrepid AA apologizes for the many of you who have visited this site only to see last month's measly offerings. With the busy testing season over at Happy Valley College (sic), I'm now well into the early-term survey season, complete with a consequential validity study of a language test which, probably, will need to be re-evaluated next term with additional validation research (i.e., criterion validation, cut score validation, reliability studies, and disproportionate impact surveys - if these terms inspire fear, you should be afraid - very, very afraid).

As you might imagine, with this going on, and other stuff away from the office, my posting has been on hiatus.

Nonetheless, come this weekend I'll be venturing out to two events I'm looking forward to. This Saturday evening at the Mountain Bar in Chinatown, Jim Ruland will be hosting another evening of literary readings with the next gathering of Vermin on the Mount, and Monday I'll be off to a special screening of Capote with Philip Seymour Hoffman, which recently created some buzz at the Toronto Film Festival.

And for the good stuff? The best line of this past week:

Student: How do I add a class? (Third time asking the same question.)

Supervisor: Go to the classroom and request an add slip. (Hitting his head on the counter while simultaneously answering.)

Student: Before class?

Supervisor: That's generally a good idea.

Student: But what do I say?

Supervisor: Try, "Hello."

Devil in the Cinematic Details

While pundits and business reporters debate the latent causes for declining box office receipts, my own particular gripe with current releases has been over continuity and plain-old details. Nothing shouts "low-budget" or amateur as much as the jumbo jet flying over a shootout in the Old West. It just doesn't belong there, and professional movie makers should know better.

So I was a bit surprised to have that same "gotcha" moment last weekend when I went to see the latest David Roos film Happy Endings, which recieved high marks during the recent LA Film Festival. Two key scenes take place in Phoenix, yet for those who have visited the lower half of the Grand Canyon State, the terrain is unrecognizeable. Phoenix is flat - but in the movie verdant suburban hillsides abound with homes that look more like 1970's era construction in the San Fernando Valley than Southwest bungalows. A further hint that the crew wasn't on top of things was in the choice of license plates. If you see the movie (which I recommend), take a look at the cars in "Phoenix" - they all have California license plates!

I had a similar experience with Funny Ha-Ha, which was being screened in the Los Angeles area a couple months ago. One scene really got to me - a college professor in Boston hires the lead character as a research assistant. On the back of his office door was his academic cap and gown! (I've never seen that in all my years of academia, apart from graduation day - even then, most full professors just rent the stuff for the day.) And, to rub salt in the reality wound, on his desk was a rotary telephone! Since phones are university property, virtually all campuses of higher education chucked those out shortly after R11 phone jacks became standard. What was the director thinking?!

So, for the true cinemaphiles out there, it's not just plot, character development, and dialog that make you itch in your seat.

In Need of Intelligent (Re)Design

"I think it's an interesting part of knowledge [to have] a theory of evolution and a theory of creationism. People should be exposed to different points of view," Bush said during one 1999 appearance, according to a news account at the time. "I personally believe God created the Earth," he said.

Out of the POTUS mouth comes another bit of Presidential wisdom. The LA Times ran articles today and yesterday on W's assertion that the latest incarnation of creation science - intelligent design - should be taught alongside universally-accepted norms of biological science.

Frankly, most scientists are a bit apoplectic at confronting psuedoscientific conjectures wrapped in the shroud of "divinely-directed covering statements," as in the case of intelligent design. For a more in-depth look, a wonderful piece was published not long ago in the New Yorker by H. Allen Orr. Please take a look.

Tales from Corporate Ethnography

If you haven't already seen it, please cruise over to Grant McCracken's blog on consumption and ethnographic research. A few days ago he posted some first-person experiences in the corporate ethnography trenches for The Coca-Cola Company and McDonald's. It's hilarious, and a must-read for the applied ethnography crowd (hint: it involves a researcher interviewing people at the drive-through window).

Commercial ethnography is sometimes the method of last resort. All other methods, quantitative and qualitative, have been tried and all have failed.

That's why, a couple of years ago, I got a call from The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC). A great torrent of Coke flows through McDonald's every day. So TCCC was particularly concerned by a new finding: that consumers order a smaller size of Coke when passing through the drive-through than when ordering indoors at the counter. Multiply this difference (even if it’s just 3 ounces) by millions of drinks per day over thousands of outlets, and you get the idea.

Click here to read the full article.

A Question of Skin Color

An old committee member of mine once told me, "If you want to read good anthropological topics, just open the newspaper." Today the LA Times is running a Column One article on skin whitening products marketed to the local Asian American community in So Cal.

Whitening products have been a mainstay in Asia for decades, but cosmetics industry officials said they have emerged as a hot seller in the United States only in the last four years. Whitening products now rack up $10 million in sales a year, according to the market research firm Euromonitor.

But their popularity has sparked a debate in the Asian American community about the politics of whitening. Qui and others say the quest for white skin is an Asian tradition. But others — younger, American-born Asians — question whether the obsession with an ivory complexion has more to do with blending into white American culture, or even a subtle prejudice against those with darker skin.

The market research firm says cosmetics companies have taken note of the sensitivity, saying their Asian skin products in America are intended not for "whitening" but for "brightening."

"It's not a politically correct term because it seems to imply that looking Caucasian via a white complexion is the desired beauty goal," said Virginia Lee, a Euromonitor analyst.

But it's not just a generational difference in attitude. Skin color and racial classifications have been at the core of anthropological research for well over a century, teasing out cultural constructions of behavior and attitudes that rely on phenotypic markers to "explain" their underlying causes. Take the following exchange between a husban and wife as one such example:

It's OK for American women to be darker, said her husband Lei Sun, a 36-year-old sushi chef. "It's part of the sports thing."

But Lei Sun prefers lighter-skinned Asian women, saying that they embody the traditional ideal known as si si wen wen. He looked to his wife to explain the concept.

"That means when a lady stands there with white skin and is very polite, and when she laughs, she doesn't make a big noise," Qiu said.