The first time I was aware of my Asianness was when I asked my mother why I wasn’t blond. I was 5, and one of only a handful of Asian-Americans living in a predominantly white suburb in Michigan. Of course, my story is not unique — it’s an experience that’s probably shared by most American-born Asians as we shake off our perceived otherness and strive to prove our Americanness. There’s a term for it: “perpetual foreigner.”

“We’re the group that’s always told to go back where we came from, and it’s partly because we have a very strong immigrant population, so we all get bundled in regardless of whether we’re fourth generation or first — to everyone, you look like a foreigner,” said Erin Khue Ninh, associate professor of Asian-American studies at UC Santa Barbara.

If that’s the case, the most obvious and quickest way to subscribe to Western ideals of beauty is to lighten your hair. For Liz Rim, a stylist at the IGK Salon in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan who began processing her strands five years ago, blond hair was her way of fitting in.