You look like you are not from here. Where are you from?
I’m from China, that’s where I was made. It is a very interesting fact, right?
Do you think you’re more interesting because of your origin?
Actually I am not a plant but a fake plant. This might be more interesting...?
The plant family that the orchid belongs to is called Hodenblüter. Not interesting. Just fun fact.
I’m actually not at all interested in that fuckin plant. It’s a fuckin boring creature. It’s tidy and clean and beautiful and smiling and pink or white like a white man’s dick.
Yes, it's actually too boring to talk to - or to talk about. Just put it in the shop as decoration and let's not talk about it again.
What are you guys talking about? The Asian woman?
Ich bin nicht rassistisch, aber ich finde es total logisch, dass Nagelstudios so klein sind, wenn man bedenkt, dass asiatische Frauen ja auch so klein sind.
"I'm not racist, but......." and they started saying something obviously racist. Does this protection sentence really make this person not racist?
Come on! You say such things, too!
Funny. Then they ask for my support...
Asian people smile all the time. Why do you laugh all the time, what's so funny?
Im Moment... wenig.
Not everybody speaks German. If you speak to Ausländern, you have to speak very loud and clear!
Đó thực sự là một trải nghiệm dữ dội khi làn đầu tiên nghe chính cha mẹ mình nói Đức ngữ. Vốn từ vựng hạn chế, động từ luôn nằm sai vị trí và tất cả mọi nhấn âm đều sai. m thanh phát ra không còn sự quyền uy, mà là bị giới hạn. Họ bị đối xử như những đứa trẻ trong mọi cuộc hội thoại. Ngôn ngữ họ nói nghe như là từ một bà lau dọn, hơn là từ một kỹ sư khoa học, tôi đã nghĩ.
ZELLSTOFFMASKEN - FASERFABRIKATE - I like German Komposita.
...and I hate germans that try to mark their social status by labeling certain linguistic phenomena.
You still can't speak English? You are lazy as fuck. Why don't you make an effort to learn it? And do something about your strange accent.
Wie lernen wir eigentlich? Geht das eigentlich auch über die Erfahrungen Anderer?
Thật ra vấn đề là ở phần cơ thể. Tôi không ở đó với cơ thể của mình. Tôi luôn có cái ấn tượng rằng cái cơ thể mà chúng ta không bao giờ thoát ra được đóng một vai trò to lớn, khi tôi cố thử hiểu cái gọi là nhân dạng và vị trí v.v. của mình.
Oder auch, wenn ich krasse Rassismen von anderen erlebe, dann muss ich mich ja fragen, in welchem Körper steckt diese Person? Wo steht sie?
Ich als Gegenstand habe auch einen Körper, aber der ist frei von allen Kriterien, wie race gender class etc..
The image of the Asian woman wearing a mask is so strong. I think it influences my general racist image of the clean, neat Asian woman – without a certain identity.
I think the picture most people have is that these clean surfaces hide all kinds of diseases – like SARS or whatnot, that is coming from those overcrowded places of the world. That they are a potential threat for infection.
Tega nisem mislila rasistično, jaz nisem rasistka.
Sorry, I can't understand what you're saying through these tons of layers of fibers.
What I wanted to say is that it depends on which side of the mask you’re standing on - or hiding. The experts say that wearing masks lowers the risk of getting a Grippe to 20%. And I really, really like experts. They always tell stuff and it's always true.
...and it's not that expensive actually. You can buy 30 masks for 3 dollars - so let's make a Kosten-Nutzen-Kalkulation.
...I guess last time you checked was in pre-pandemic times?
Do you know that this phenomenon – Asians wearing masks – was of course caused by something European??!! The Spanish flu!
„Einwegmasken“ heißen diese Mundschutzteile bei Amazon. Ein Weg. Die stehen zwar zwischen zwei Entitäten also einer tragenden Person und einer anderen Person oder eines Körperteils dieser Person – aber der Weg ist oneway.
I was told that it is good to wear a mask when you are ill, so that you prevent infecting anyone else. It was common to see people with masks on the street. I hated wearing a mask and breathing through it. After a while it got wet and I could smell my own saliva every time I took a breath. In the end I didn't fucking care if I infected someone or not, I threw it away.
I hated carnival masks for the same reason – the humidity, the smell of yourself, your breath and the industrial, seemingly toxic material.
Do you know that children in Germany dress like an "Indian" or a "Chinese" for the carnival? "Was möchtest du dieses Jahr werden - Clown, Hund, Polizist oder Chinese?".
Mein erstes Karnevalskostüm, das ich erinnere – ich war noch im Kindergarten – was algae. It was self made from shiny green-black-silver textile stripes hanging from my head and body. How beautiful and innocent - floating in the sea as algae.
The mask can hide a smile behind itself or it can show a smile on its surface.
When I look at the images on google for Mundschutz I see an army of black haired Aliens – or better cyborgs. But definitely an army.
“The Chinese will invade the whole global North and they will take not only our wealth, but our smiles too!” AAAAhh. Scherz.
Äääh?!
Tại sao tôi lại nhạy cảm như thế? Đó chỉ là một trò đùa. Đó chỉ chỉ để đùa vui. Bạn đã hiểu sai. Bạn làm cho không khí trở nên kì cục.
I am not sad, I am not angry. I'm just resting my facial muscles because I am getting cramps everywhere from working hard against the gravity all the time. My muscles need a holiday too! I don't want to smile anymore just to make you feel good.
We have a simple word for the product of this shadow labour: "nice".
Emotional labour...
All das Service-Faken versteckt sich hinter der Maske. Macht aber genauso viel Arbeit.
Invisible Work – even more invisible – äh less visible. Nothing can be more invisible than something invisible – invisibility is absolute.
...other things could still be improved.
I think it's ridiculous how much you talk about wearing masks. For me it's completely normal. Convenient even: If i don't have time for make-up in the morning, I can hide behind them.
Japanese are totally polite! They are afraid of infecting people and they would never steal!
Và họ luôn mỉm cười.
The REAL smile was named after a French scientist and is characterized by the fact that a muscle area around the eyes is adressed that one cannot control consciously.
When I first came to Germany my first impression about customer service in Germany was extremely rude, heartless and aggressive. They never smile at the customer! ...On the other hand, it was a relief when working in customer service, because I didn’t have to be smiling all the time.
My smile when trying to be polite or friendly was often read as extra sexual or intimidated.
You're the OTHER – soooo yes, what you do is not normal whereas people here are the "normal" ones (punching people on the street – but normal, because they are not smiling all the time).
The surface and deep acting in a commercial setting, unlike acting in a dramatic, private, or therapeutic context, make one's face and one's feelings take on the properties of a resource. But it is not a resource to be used for the purposes of art, as in drama, or for the purposes of self-discovery, as in therapy, or for the pursuit of fulfillment, as in everyday life. It is a resource to be used to make money.
My politeness is not to be taken for granted. It is not about me being in a lower position in the hierarchy, it is a way to show some respect. If you don't know how to appreciate it, then you don't deserve to receive if from me.
German people don't smile, that makes me anxious. Have I done something wrong?
Es [das soziale Lächeln] zielt evolutionär vermutlich auf die Herstellung einer günstigen sozialen Interaktion bzw. einer Gefahrenabwehr. […] Das Lächeln hat sich nach Ansicht von Experten im Lauf der Evolution vielleicht aus einer Unterwerfungsgeste heraus entwickelt, denn unterlegene Primaten entblößen gegenüber ranghöheren Tieren die Zähne, ohne die Kiefer voneinander zu lösen, was man als Angstgrinsen bezeichnen könnte. Vielleicht haben dominante Individuen diese Geste dann übernommen, um selber vertrauenswürdig zu wirken, denn ein als authentisch empfundenes Lächeln trägt oft entscheidend dazu bei, als vertrauenswürdiges Gegenüber eingeschätzt zu werden.
Have you seen the sign in the back hall of the Italian restaurant? "Know Your Prices. Keep Smiling."
Research with adults initially indicated that joy was indexed by generic smiling, any smile involving the raising of the corners of the lips by the zygomatic major [...]. More recent research suggests that smiling in which the muscle around the eye contracts, raising the cheeks high (Duchenne smiling), is uniquely associated with positive emotion.
Bei der Service Work you would see the real smile on top of the Mundschutz. Or above? I’m not the only one who has conversational problems due to a Mundschutz.
What is work?
"Work" means to start the reflection where it hurts the most – to look at our entangled histories without losing track of the consistent intersectional power dynamics that reproduce themselves on a global scale.
No individual woman simply wakes up to find herself seated in the manicurist’s chair. Forces beyond her control, such as global patterns of feminized labor migration flows, the growth of service-related industries, racialized job structures, and the resources of her family and ethnic community shape the conditions of her employment.
Big bulky fingers, like European fingers, are not qualified to do such a delicate craft job, such as doing nails.
Sadly I don’t understand Vietnamese. Maybe – when the Mundschutz falls down someday we will all be able to understand each other. It will be like reverse Babel.
My mother always said "What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails."
[looks annoyed]
The technical term – hihi – for a face that looks annoyed even though its owner feels, let's say, neutral is "resting bitch face".
It's funny because if you're suffering from this so called resting bitch face it might take centuries till you get it. I mean you feel neutral but everybody reads you as a moody bitch and you might just think that you're ugly or something...
Even though this is INDEED kind of funny my face might look as if I was annoyed by this topic. And yours yours looks... friendly LIKE ALWAYS!!!!! Annoying!!
:) And now you can try to switch perspectives. I'm suffering from a kind of smile mask syndrome... I don't know if it's pathological. Maybe. :)
The smile mask syndrome is a psychological disorder in which subjects develop depression and physical illness as a result of prolonged, unnatural smiling. First described in Japan in 1983, this is attributed to the great importance placed on smiling in the Japanese service industry.
This specialization of emotional labor in the marketplace rests on the different childhood training of the heart that is given to girls and to boys.
What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice. What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.
... Moreover, each specialization presents men and women with different emotional tasks. Women are more likely to be presented with the task of mastering anger and aggression in the service of "being nice."
:) Yeeeaaaah whatever. What I wanted to say is that it's hard to be read as "friendly" "kind" all the time. MY SMILE DOESN'T SAY: HEY I'M WEAK AND YOU'RE GREAT I LOVE YOU LET'S FUCK. :)
...but sadly there are actually lots of people thinking that it means exactly that.
Can a women look beautiful when she's angry? ...das meinte ich nicht sexistisch. Ich bin kein Sexist.
Have you ever seen an ANGRY asian woman?
Bà tôi đã nói với tôi " Cháu phải chăm sóc cho diện mạo của mình, chải tóc và giữ cho móng tay móng chân sạch sẽ, gọn gàng. Nếu không cháu sẽ không tìm được một người đàn ông muốn lấy cháu làm vợ."
Behind the mask you don't know how much garlic I have eaten. You don't know how many swear and curse words I have sent your way. You will only get the filtered hygienic clean white soft air through the mask.
Imagine that we'd have skin polish – like we have nail polish. Today my skin sparkles in shiny yellow, tomorrow I'm bordeaux red.... cyborgs covered in lacquer – I think it's time for that.
I feel every brush stroke on my nail, temporary coldness of polish, my finger being gently grabbed... Without the mask I would also have felt the warm wet breath of the person who cares for my nail.
The lacquer protects you. It's isolating but nobody sees your cracks anymore and you shine from the outside.
My mask is my shield. I'm a feminist knight.
I like the idea of shaping and sharpening – the Nagelpfeile is able to prepare you for everyday struggle.
Let's take on our masks, sharpen our claws and raise our fists!