Thursday night was our HypnoBirthing class at Mt. Auburn Hospital. HypnoBirthing is one of the natural birth methods taught to expecting parents these days. Not to spend too much time discussing the merits of HypnoBirthing, it’s mostly about using hypnosis relaxation techniques to let your body accomplish a natural, comfortable birthing.
After everyone sat down in a circle, the instructor, Meghan, asked each of us tell the group what jobs we had, what we did do for fun, etc. About half way into the icebreaker, before my turn, I was having such a hard time holding back laughs that Kristian was giving me a face. I had realized this was absolutely the highest concentration of "white people" I'd been with in recent times. White people as in stuffwhitepeoplelike, not in the sense of the race itself.
Granted, we do live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the north-eastern capital of liberal, highly educated, and high income hipsters. Our city may be smaller than Seattle or Portland, it contributes quite significantly to “white culture”. An abundance of intellectuals, high-tech companies, universities, proximity to the ocean and maybe just the fact that it's New England, makes Cambridge a hot bed for hipster living.
Here are the highlights about some of the expecting parents:
Dad #1: Just started his solar energy company. Attire: Patagonia fleece jacket and Chaco sandals.
Mom #1: A librarian.
Dad #2: A PhD candidate in engineering at MIT. A mountaineer who is "always looking to climb some snow covered peak". He's about to go away for a month long research trip overseas.
Dad #3: A freelance film producer. Attire: beret hat and a scarf, while sipping from his SIGG bottle.
Mom #3: Owns her own organic foods restaurant in town. She said they "love hiking, backpacking in the mountains and traveling."
Dad #4: An engineer. Loves hiking, backpacking and mountain biking. Wife and him are on ultimate frisbee teams.
Mom #4: A research assistant at Lincoln labs. She is outdoors, sports nut as well. She didn’t stop playing ice hockey until she was 13 weeks pregnant.
Mom #5a: A social worker for troubled youths in Boston.
Mom #5b: A librarian.
Dad #6: A psychology PhD, fellow at a hospital and waiting to get his state license to practice.
Mom #6: Cultural anthropologist, teaching at Northeastern University. Got her degree from Columbia. Both said they love skiing and snowboarding up in NH and VT.
Dad #7: IT Consultant. They are "very big into white water rafting".
Mom #7: Teacher. Loves traveling.
Dad #8: Conducts orchestra at Ithaca, NY. (I’m guessing Cornell related)
Except for two couples, one was Kristian and I, everyone confidently stated their passion for the outdoors. It was either hiking, backpacking, mountain climbing, rock climbing, white water rafting or something else. The class instructor is a married lesbian with 4 kids. There's another lesbian couple students.
In 15 minutes, I’ve accomplished the feat of witnessing first hand the following white people behavior:
* Organic Food
* Traveling
* Snowboarding
* Outdoor Performance Clothes
* Having Gay Friends
* Frisbee Sports
* The Ivy League
* Graduate School
* Bottles of Water
* Non-Profit Organizations
* Scarves
* Making you feel bad about not going outside
What can I say, it really was like playing stuffwhitepeoplelike bingo!!! Me and the orchestra conductor couple were Asian, everyone else was white. Speaking from a white culture perspective though, Asians are pretty white already. Oh, and since I'm an Asian girl married to a white dude, #11 Asian Girls should be on the above hit list as well. :)
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3 comments:
Hilarious.... although not that surprising when you think about it. I mean, hypnobirth, come on! You should send a quick email to the 'stuffwhitepeoplelike' guy to tell him to add hypnobirth to the list.
BTW I don't really like the outdoors as much as most white people. I guess I should apologize for that. http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/05/55-apologies/ heh heh.
PS. let me know how the hypnobirth goes, it sounds really cool.
Interesting post and I totally respect what you say.
However, personally, and this is just my own opinion, I don't consider myself White. I don't have a problem with White people...I've been surrounded by them my entire life...but I still feel what I've experienced is still somewhat different than a White person.
Certainly, I have plenty of American ideas (and some of them are hippie ideas or ideas that the average Asian person wouldn't have), but I would still consider myself Asian American.
Again, I'm just speaking for myself...
And just one more thing, I'm perfectly fine with being just plain American as well....
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