Pang

"Why a women's college?" is a question I'm asked a lot, in the States as well as China. They don't have a lot of women's high schools or colleges over here. "Ou Aimei goes to a women's college," Xiao Lu laoshi once said to Sa Zhiang. (Remember him?) "This is why she is so ladylike." I found that slightly embarrassing at the time, I don't know why. Anyway, "Why a women's college?" is a difficult question for me to answer, despite the fact that I am 100% women's college, all the way - I am very satisfied with every aspect of my education. Wouldn't trade it for anything. It's easy enough to answer "Why Smith?" but "Why all women?" is so much more difficult. "Because it is such a comfortable environment" doesn't sit well with me - it sounds like an excellent reason not to go there. You don't learn things by being really comfortable. "There's less competition" isn't right either - who is more competitive than women with other women? But the competition is of a different sort, I find, and there I think we are getting warm.

"I'm so fat."
"That girl is really fat."
"Pang sile."
"Do people talk a lot about how fat they are at your school? Or call other girls fat?" I recently asked my friend Keting, who goes to Mt Holyoke.
"No way! You're supposed to love your body," Keting replied. "In fact we even have a special day -"
"I know! Love Your Body Day!" I cried excitedly. "And there are speakers and activities and there was even a photographer who took pictures of people's stomachs!"
"Yeah! That's so cool!" said Keting, and we high-fived. Lili, who goes to Williams, was looking at us like we were extraterrestrials.
"You guys don't have Love Your Body Day?" I asked her incredulously.
"Um, no. But we do have a day where we raise money for cancer research..."
But that is not the same thing. It's weird for me to hear people talking about how fat they are and how fat other girls - always girls, never boys - are. Of course, girls carried on like that at my high school, but they were full of all sorts of nonsense and I tended not to listen to them. I've never been on a diet in my life. I wouldn't even know how to begin. There's really no way to do it in China, anyway, as far as I can tell - practically everything is extremely greasy and there's nothing to be done about it. It's ironic - or maybe just irritating - that so many people think "American food" just means hamburgers and fries and so on, when Chinese food is all so greasy and there's so much less variety than in America.

The weird thing is, I think the Pang-fearing environment is starting to affect me, as well. I am spending altogether too much time thinking about the shape of my body. It's very annoying and I don't know what to do about it. Will somebody please send me some feminist magazines?