Why I Can Never Really Live In Asia

I've often toyed with the idea of going back to Beijing and starting a career there. After all, I'm a (for all intents and purposes) trilingual foreigner with the ability to understand both Western and Eastern perspectives. But I wouldn't. I probably couldn't.

Asia isn't a very kind place to women. The kind of social restrictions they underhandedly place on women drives my feminist side up the wall. You can't be an outgoing feminist and really live in Asia without facing a lot of backlash. You can't be a nonconformist in Asia without a lot of risk. The compulsory need to wear short skirts and heels, have double eyelids, always look prim and proper and demure and be quiet... put up with sexual assault and daily objectification... be married before the age of 30... Thinking about it gives me the chills... I'm still keeping in mind that this is the norm, that deviating occasionally isn't such a big deal. Still, the boxiness of it all raises my hairs and when I asked a friend if she would ever deviate just to stand out from the crowd, she said, "Would you risk it?" When I asked more detailed questions about why things are the way they are (the most current example being everyone having to have the same look and dress despite there not being an actual uniform for job-hunting and photoshopping application pictures to make yourself more attractive, aren't those two counterproductive?), the response is almost always a long the lines of "it just is."

I'm not even going to get into general pressures that crown East Asia with the highest suicide rates in the world. I guess I'm just a big, unadaptable softy with a love-hate relationship with my homeland.