I don’t care about how “exotic” you think my hazel, slanted eyes look with this head of golden brown hair. I don’t want to hear you analyze whether or not I act more Chinese or more Caucasian. I don’t want you to ask if I eat dog like they do back in my homeland of China, or if I burn in the sun like the rest of my Irish family. Don’t ask me where I’m from and then look at me like I’m speaking a foreign language when I tell you, “New Jersey”. And for the love of fucking God, please stop telling me how lucky I am to be a “halfie”.

It’s almost as if you’re constantly under a microscope, and new people you meet are biologists, dissecting you to see what you’re about. Growing up and hearing that you’re “not Asian enough” or that you “don’t look like you’re white”, with an implicit negative connotation. Going out for dim sum on Sundays, and getting looks from everyone around me because of my white father. Being a little kid and having people constantly categorize you into one culture or the other. It’s as if in this increasingly progressive age of social acceptance, cultures are still seen as black and white, and can’t intertwine once in awhile.

Frankly, I am tired of being treated so well solely because of my curious physical attributes. Though it sounds incredibly privileged, it’s almost as if no one is listening to me because they are too busy looking. Because they are too busy trying to analyze what I am, rather than who I am. Instead of asking me what my life is like, people are so eager to lazily fall back on assumptions created by my mixed ethnicities.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about a little bit of curiosity. But when you make it the only thing about me, make my sole identity my non-typical heritage, and don’t try to delve deeper into who I am, you just become another ignorant person. Please remember, I am more than just a pretty, mixed face.