Sunday, August 24, 2008

The Spanish eye slant gesture: offensive?

The Spanish Olympic basketball team posting for a Spanish courier company in an advertisement.

Source

The Spanish Tennis team making the slit-eyed gesture

Source

These gestures have been interpreted as mocking the Chinese people and could be considered offensive and racial insensitive. I don't know how other Asian interpret this, I myself found it funny. The first time I saw this was when hubby told me how to differentiate a Japanese from a Chinese:
slit-eyed up = Chinese
slit-eyed down = Japanese
one eye slit up and one eye slit down = Japanese Chinese mixed

I was laughing to dead when he did the gesture, in which I didn't find it offensive at all.

Come on people, just take it as a joke.

2 comments:

  1. People are usually sensitive when someone makes fun of how they look. It's like making fun of the disabled. But what to do ... most Chinese are born with slit eyes. The Spanish team were just stating the obvious.

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  2. People are usually sensitive when someone makes fun of how they look. It's like making fun of the disabled. But what to do ... most Chinese are born with slit eyes. The Spanish team were just stating the obvious.

    ReplyDelete