On Being Unique and Special - Or... Tales of the Hair Shop Horror!

Naruto, yet another cartoon character with impossible hair.  But hey!  It makes him unique and SPECIAL!

 The lady at the hair shop sure is nice, but typical in 'one size fits all' Asia, like pretty much every single time I've EVER gotten my hair cut in China, Taiwan or Korea, she stubbornly (and unconsciously, perhaps) just keeps trying to give me spiky, triangular Japanese anime sideburns.   Uh... funny thing is... I'm a REAL white guy!  I am NOT Naruto, somebody's STEREOTYPICAL anamorphic, CULTure-centric FANTASY about how they wish somebody actually did look.

OKAY?

Noooooo!  Of course it's not okay!  You have to look just like all of them, of course.  There's ENORMOUS social pressure to look, act and think JUST LIKE ALL OF THEM!  Funny thing is though... that, naturally, they wake up from time to time and discover that they all look, act and think, not exactly the same, but as a CULTural necessity, pretty damn similar in most respects.  So some of them (the ones with an even greater need to be "special") really do feel even more social pressure to get plastic surgery, start wearing colored contact lenses, and/or having their hair colored some bizarre shade of orange.  Just to be... "different?"   Zany!

I even drew pictures of the profiles of people with different haircuts ON MY HAND, desperately trying to get the woman to understand that I did NOT want pointed Asian style hair sprouting down the sides of my white man face!  But, alas, she STILL did not get it.  Then... she practically DEMANDED of me that I allow her to wash my hair.

Of course, because I felt really guilty for being such a pain in the ass foreign customer, I gave her the vicarious thrill of letting her run her fingers through my foreign scalp while she washed my hair, in her compulsory need to service every single customer the way she is accustomed to.  But seriously... I really don't need anyone else to wash my damn stinky foreign hair.  'Cause... psst!   I take a shower every day, you know.

And... psst!  NOOOOOBODY really has hair like FICTIONAL Naruto!  NOOOOOBODY!  But what can ya say, right?  FASHION!  Which is something that brainwashes people in EVERY COUNTRY, right?  Not only the millions and millions and MILLIONS of people in individuality challenged Asia.

But the vast majority of people in Asia don't resort to plastic surgery to compete with the massive herd, to hopefully be different and special.  Currently, the plastic surgery stereotype is just a trendy, shallow South Korean thing.  No, most other Far East Asians just engage in elaborate social and/or financial ruse after elaborate social and/or financial ruse, just to try to stand out above the crowd.  These odd social manipulations usually entail the usual psychological 'ME ME ME' tactics that people everywhere around the world tend to unconsciously deploy.  But perhaps by sheer necessity, in Asia, the 'me first' stimulus that naturally drives all human beings, gets kicked into OVERDRIVE.

So if a little first grader, for only one purely hypothetical example, that cries and cries and cries for attention all the time (despite never having any real physical ailment) doesn't get enough of a certain social drug called SYMPATHY, the poor little thing continually tries to ESCALATE the budding young hypochondriac style symptoms. And THEN... her mother gets in on the act.  Why?  Well, see, mother has been unconsciously teaching this kid to constantly play the victim all her extremely brief young life.  Why?

Because maybe she (mother or daughter, take your pick) doesn't feel that she is either smart, cute or special enough to compete with the other kids.   So... she continually plays the poor little cripple card.  'Oh, don't mind me!   I'm sick!  I'm too small for my age.   I'm just not clever enough, mommy keeps saying,  so... boo hoo... I don't really wanna play the game that all the other kids are enjoying, anyhow.  I just wanna sit here and ball my little eyes out!'   So that when mama shows up, she can get her own selfish fix from asking WHY her kid is crying!  WHO, dammit, has been being mean to her?  She's special, don't you see?  She may not be as smart, pretty or big as the other kids, but SHE'S MY KID, DAMMIT!

Yes sir, a PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE MASTERPIECE!

Oh well.  Blame it all on them damn foreigners.  That's the ticket, yeah!