The title is shit and confusing, so let me explain.
I’m a white latin american who lives in a latin american country, so in my environment there is very few asian people, in fact, in my region there is so few asians that if there is one in a friend group, they will automatically be “El chino” or “La china”.
Anyway, I understand there is a phenomenon that when ur not used to hang out with people from other races, you might see people from other specific race as “they look the same”. This is part of the reason why so many people in this part of the world thinks that “asians look the same” when that is absolutely not true. It might also happen that some asians also think all white people look the same. And yeah, in a limited genetic pool, many people will look similar.
Anyway, I like asian media and I consume Jpop, Kpop, and I’m starting to try and get into watching more dramas. The thing is when I face the “they look similar” barrier so I have a hard time differentiating people.
I can identify well for example the Black Pink girls, GIDLE girls, Mamamoo, half of the BTS members, etc, just to give you an idea, but sometimes I’m stuck playing a game of “Oh, this is X? No, I think that’s actually Y, nah, I’m wrong, really is Z”.
Is kinda stressful sometimes, not being able to differentiate people in dramas or groups and trying to hang on certain identifiable features to do not get me lost.
Is there a way to kinda “train” myself into identifying Asian people and differentiating them better?
I hope this post doesn’t sound racist, is not my intention at all. I’m just looking for some advice. Thanks.
In my experience, just consuming more media is a good way to become more familiar with the facial features that we might not pay enough attention to differentiate between people. When I first started watching Japanese movies, I had a bit of a hard time grasping who was who, but as time went on it became easier.
Let me tell you an anecdote. I’m Asian and grew up in an Asian country. When I was studying abroad there’s a time when my American friends were watching a Japanese drama series. I was the one asking them throughout the watch session who’s who because I couldn’t tell the actors’ faces apart.
You improve at what you do often and with mindful intent. You’re already doing that; what’s tripping you up is the guilt you feel at getting things wrong because it feels like you’re being dismissive of people.
But you’re not: you’re actively working on a problem you’ve identified you have, and for partially personal but also kind, interpersonal reasons. There’s no timeline or final grade to worry about, so just focus on enjoying your media and discernment will come to you.
Dude, I am asian, and I cannot tell kpop band apart to save my life. Some of them really look very similar; racial bias might make it worse, but I dont think it is completely racial.
I think the best way is just to keep watching more and more. Eventually you should be able to tell.
Kpop is cool and all but not a great way to see the differences in people. Kpop idols are routinely made to look like other popular idols to appeal to a larger fan base. This happens in other cultures as well, US actresses for example!
I would suggest you stick with Dramas to get a better mix of people. And mix it up by country. Add some Thai, Japanese and Chinese dramas to your watch list. At some point you will see the vast differences in just one nation, China is quite diverse in looks, Thailand as well. And it can’t hurt to experience music and dramas from other parts of Asia like Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, etc.
And don’t just limit yourself to Asia, really look at humanity. You would be surprised how often you can see the similarities between cultures. American Eskimos having Chinese traits. And I don’t mean eyes, facial architecture varies worldwide.
In America people think anyone Hispanic/Latin is Mexican (which is SOOOOO false). But Central and South Americans are just as diverse. The larger the mix of people from a continent you are exposed to, the easier it is to get a sense of where they may be from.
All of humanity migrated from someplace, and we still do today.Stop beating yourself up. We Asians can’t tell them apart too. Just enjoy the music without guilt.
Knew an Asian guy who was in china with his family. He was looking in some store and when he looked back, everyone looked the same. He couldn’t tell his family apart from strangers.
And then everyone died
Each culture has a standard of beauty that celebrities try to emulate as closely as possible. As someone who’s lived in an Asian country for over a decade, it’s actually not that hard for me to identify whether someone is Korean, Chinese, or Japanese based on how they dress and present themselves. Where it gets difficult are celebrity groups within those nationalities. I get actors, actresses, and pop stars mixed up all the time because they all try to do their make-up the same way. This isn’t exclusive to Asia though. Westerners do the same thing and can be just as difficult to tell apart. It’s just we’re far more accustomed to it. That lady from Barbie? I have no idea who she is in or out of costume and could probably take a few incorrect shots. I don’t even know if she’s North American or from some country in Europe or Oceania.
Off topic, but Margot Robbie is Australian. Watch “The Wolf of Wall Street” and you will never forget her name.
Australia is part of Oceania ;)
I had the pleasure of visiting last year. Beautiful country.
This makes me think of those memes where people struggle with telling white male celebrities apart
Fun semi-related story. I used to work in an open kitchen where a lot of the cooking staff would interact with the customers pretty regularly. Quite often me and two other men in the kitchen would get confused with one another. I gave a guy some marinating tips one week. He comes back in a few days later and waves me over to tell me how well it went. Except he didn’t wave me over, it was a coworker he thought was me. I’d have people bring up previous conversations when I’ve never seen them before. After the 3rd time that kind of thing happened, it clicked. The 3 of us who got confused with each other were just very generic young white guys. One of them wore glasses and I sometimes wore them, sometimes wore contacts. Who I got confused with changed on whether I wore glasses or not, but it happened constantly in the years I worked there. And it was always other white people getting us confused. Looking like a generic white guy is 100% a thing.
I thought Leo DiCaprio and Matt Damon were the same person for most of The Departed.
When Luke Skywalker has a vision of fighting Darth Vader, he opens the mask and sees … I think it’s his own face - it makes sense storywise that it’d be his own face, but I’ve never dared ask anyone and admit to not knowing.
I was really proud of myself for recognising that the two characters in Moon were the same actor. I figured it out, not by looking at their faces, but at the way the camera switched between them.
I’m a white guy, btw.
You should watch Faces in the Crowd
I’m whits and I saw a meme video about someone not recognising a group of famous people. They were all hot, white men with a bit of facial hair, and I honestly had a hard time telling them apart.
I’m about as white as you can get but many groups of white people all look like each other as much as groups of Asian people do. There are many ethnic groups within China that can be visually distinguished with ease, but when you get to the level of “nordic white dude/slavic white dude/mediterranean white dude” things just become a blur to me.
Unless I know you personally or you have some kind of special hair style, you’re just “generic person of x origin” to me.
They were all hot, white men with a bit of facial hair, and I honestly had a hard time telling them apart.
And sometimes they’re all named the same. https://youtu.be/MGurtL83zhY?t=107
There’s actuslly an interesting phenomenon that people can guess a stranger’s name just from their picture with way higher accuracy than we reasonably should.
When you’re named Chris as a baby, there’s just something that will make you end up looking or acting like “a Chris” in your adult life.
Genetics and family names probably have something to do with it as well (not like some random couple in China is going to name their kid “Sioban”), but it’s still pretty freaky to think about.
That’s so cool. It feels like some proof of us leaning into stereotypes rather than them being inherently true. Nurture rather than just nature in a sense.
The fact that you’re conscious of these biases and are trying to take a thoughtful approach to avoiding them probably means you don’t need to worry too much about it. I think it’s probably unrealistic to be able to memorize and identify every media star, and getting some actors of a certain ethnicity confused doesn’t automatically make you racist. I mix people up all the time, regardless of their background, so don’t sweat it too much. Over time, your recognition will improve, as with any other activity. Good luck!
What you are referring to is called implicit bias. It’s the automatic differentiation of tribal heritage. It’s honestly a phenomenon that can’t be controlled. You spend enough time with a certain people, then you are going to prefer that people. IMO that’s why we should drop the cultural walls and just amalgamate
Over a decade ago, I dated someone of a different race from me. I remember being anxious that I wouldn’t recognize her in a crowd the first handful of times that we met in crowded places. I’ve become much better at distinguishing people of different races since, but that’s only because I have a lot of racial exposure where I live.
I don’t know any way of changing this natural occurrence other than repeated exposure. Your brain needs practice. You don’t sound the least bit racist. In fact, you sound the opposite because you’re looking for better mental tooling.
Alright we’re putting you on a strict diet of 8 hours of Kpop exposure therapy no exceptions.
But seriously like most have said, the main features that differentiate faces can differ all over the world so it will come with time, just do your best and it will get easier.
Man, I am white, live in a predominantly white country, and notice even white people looking the same and confusing them for other people. I’m not so sure it’s such a big deal. Humans look pretty close together and is why we constantly bicker about small differences like skin color and eye size; cuz there ain’t much else that’s different. 🙁
It’s an easier task if you’re looking at normal real people, not popstars deliberately selected for ‘ideal’ beauty archetypes, with professional makeup, filters, and editing.
This reminds me of the Korean beauty pageant profile photo discussion 10 years ago.
It’s not necessarily so much a race thing as it is a ‘cultural beauty ideals conformity’ thing. There are a lot of similar looking white celebrities too, the blonde pop princess cloning machine was working overtime in the early 2000’s.
I think it’s just learned over time spent engaging with faces of that ethnicity. For myself as a white person located much closer to Asia than South America, I can identify someone’s specific Asian ethnicity with fairly good accuracy, although there’s always curveballs like Chinese people that aren’t Han Chinese. But I’d have a lot of trouble identifying the same for people from different South American countries, because it’s a lot farther away and there’s only a few South American people that I’ve come to know well in my travels. I think it comes down to understanding that the ways faces vary are different between different ethnicities. Stereotypes result from not understanding this. You could possible ‘train’ yourself on Asian faces by reading into the ways they vary, but I think internalising it comes mostly from experience.
