Wes thinks we should blame Hong Kong’s lack of music/art scene and shitty dating on “women who consider the starving artist type undateable“. Frankly, I disagree.
We can make these women public enemy #1, seek them out in Soho and throw rocks at them. Actually, I also feel like throwing rocks at the douchy bankers these women sought after. Now the question is, which came first, the douchy bankers or the women who find starving artist types undateable?
Hong Kong is one of the financial capitals in the world, expected to surpass London and New York in the very near future. The city attracts and recruits the brightest and the shrewdest to work in its thriving financial sector. As a result, it is a materialistically driven, superficial city. People living and working in Hong Kong have high earning potential, they are able to afford luxury goods and have large, comfortable accommodations. In this highly competitive environment, people have to demonstrate that they are the best of the best. Men will flaunt their earning potential by wearing an expensive suit, driving a luxurious car, living in a penthouse of a fancy building in a trendy neighbourhood. Women want men with high earning potential because walking around with expensive handbags and having the newest gadgets that you did not have to earn is high status. Having a rich man provide for you, so you can sit around and look pretty, is high status. To attract these men, women also need to play the part by conforming to the conventional standard of beauty. In Asia, the golden standard of beauty is slenderness. The mothers of daughters groom them to be submissive, uncritical, to dress and act conventionally in order to be pleasing to a man, with the dream that one day, their daughter will become a mute, beautiful trophy wife to some wealthy executive that will also look after them in their old age. This is the Asian dream.
The worst thing that could happen to a woman in Hong Kong is fall in love with a man with low status. God forbid she might have to work so her artist husband can hopefully become the next Picasso. An artist can only gain high status when his art sells for a lot of money, like Picasso. Before an artist becomes famous and starts raking in millions, they are undateable. (Note the galleries in Central and how expensive bad art cost. It doesn’t matter if the art is bad as long as it fetches a lot of dough). Artists have poor earning potential and by default, low status in Hong Kong society. As do people working in education and NGO sectors. The “hipster” status, the idea of being “cool”, or the idea that you might be doing something with your career other than just making money, seems impractical in Hong Kong. It might be desirable to have a “cool” job as a game designer because you make decent money but your career is also driven by passion or a geeky niche. Being passionate, geeky, or cool is not practical, it does not make money, and therefore not valued in Hong Kong. This is why the creative types in general are less likely to come to Hong Kong, and this is why the music and art scenes are rather pathetic here.
I don’t blame the women who find artist undateable. I don’t really blame the douchy bankers either, but I find their vanity plate extremely distasteful.
’nuff said.
Whimsical Weltschmerz 