Korean LPGA Players - What's up with the long sleeves?

[golfro]

I definitely understand what you are saying, but please realize that groups who have used a word against them in a derogatory fashion end up not liking the word, no matter how etymologically correct it may be.

well said. thank you.

[golfro]

The TV show springs to mind - "My name is nike_golf and I am not smarter than a fifth-grader!"

haha. I was golfing in in Illinois once with 2 friends of mine and we were grouped with a single. Now, all three of us being asian, the white guy who was a single asked us where we were from. We told them "I'm Korean, he's Chinese, and he's Korean as well" and the guy looks puzzled and looks at us and goes "Oh I thought ya'll were asian"

ALmost died laughing. Guy felt ridiculous after we told him.

[Fat Slice]

The TV show springs to mind - "My name is nike_golf and I am not smarter than a fifth-grader!"

Oh man, once I was in Cordoba, Spain and tried to buy a ticket to Morocco.

Doh!

[jmomcc]

I've lived in Korea for the last 4 years or so. Koreans do like to have lighter skin. Sun umbrellas, visors and long sleeves are very common. Also I can;t get lower that spf 30 in my local store. I use 30 because I have fair (irish) skin and i like to get a slow tan but my north american friends say they use as low as 5. Most koreans use 50. Whitening cream is very common to the extent that tanning cream is common in the west.

In short, being tanned seems country. Koreans do tend to pick up tans and weight when they are abroad. I dated a girl who came back from europe brown and much heavier. the bread and cheese is terrible here..I'm not surprised she went a little crazy in France

I have to admit I'm a complete sheep. I came to Korea loving tans and brown skin..but korean cultural values have seeped in. Now I find lighter skin more attractive/cute and now find the 'whining' thing that korean girls/kids do attractive rather than annoying. When in Rome..

[golfro]

I've lived in Korea for the last 4 years or so. Koreans do like to have lighter skin. Sun umbrellas, visors and long sleeves are very common. Also I can;t get lower that spf 30 in my local store. I use 30 because I have fair (irish) skin and i like to get a slow tan but my north american friends say they use as low as 5. Most koreans use 50. Whitening cream is very common to the extent that tanning cream is common in the west.

Daejon huh? :) You can go pay a visit to my parents in Doon-San Dong. My dad is a scratch golfer and I believe he goes to a range in doon-san dong. Forgot the name of the place but its on the top floor of a giant supermarket thing.

[IcemanYVR]

Daejon huh? :) You can go pay a visit to my parents in Doon-San Dong. My dad is a scratch golfer and I believe he goes to a range in doon-san dong. Forgot the name of the place but its on the top floor of a giant supermarket thing.

Doon-San Dong... my wife's Uncle lives there, he's a research scientist. Small world

[jmomcc]

Daejon huh? :) You can go pay a visit to my parents in Doon-San Dong. My dad is a scratch golfer and I believe he goes to a range in doon-san dong. Forgot the name of the place but its on the top floor of a giant supermarket thing.

Yea..I know that place. That is where I got my clubs regripped. It's called Shark Time I think or Shark World. I go to a range at the very end of town in yu seong gu. I very rarely get to play a course(expensive and logistically hard) but i have to keep in trim for when i go back to ireland and play my brothers. Both my brother and brother in law are head greenkeepers and avid golfers.

I really wish it wasn't so expensive to play golf here because otherwise I really love this country.

[golfro]

Yea..I know that place. That is where I got my clubs regripped. It's called Shark Time I think or Shark World. I go to a range at the very end of town in yu seong gu. I very rarely get to play a course(expensive and logistically hard) but i have to keep in trim for when i go back to ireland and play my brothers. Both my brother and brother in law are head greenkeepers and avid golfers.

Yeah thats the one. My parents work and live like 2 blocks from there. My dad is an orthodontist with a clinic a couple blocks from Shark World or whatever. Man I haven't been out there in years.

Doon-San Dong... my wife's Uncle lives there, he's a research scientist. Small world

Seriously. Small world. I have several family friends who work over at the research lab there.

[senorchipotle]

Now I find lighter skin more attractive/cute and now find the 'whining' thing that korean girls/kids do attractive rather than annoying. When in Rome..

oh jeez, don't get me started on the whining! i broke up with an asian chick in college over that, and the fact that she loved to play head games(partly because she was crazy). but i digress back to the point.

at the range today i ended up parking next to a japanese lady wearing shorts and a tank top and those leg warmers for arms some of them wear. i talked to her for about five minutes and told her i had a discussion about asian women and their skin, she found it very amusing, actually. she told me that her goal is to have her skin look like porcelain cause that is most attractive in asian culture and that they have very sensitive skin(not sure whether or not that part is true). i remarked on her slight tan she had from playing golf and she blushed and seemed almost ashamed of it, which leads me to believe that darker skinned japanese are looked down upon.

[golfro]

it is more of a traditional thing. Modern day korean and japanese girls are very tan and find appeal in that as well. If you've ever been to Japan, there's been a trend going on where girls get extremely tan.

it comes down to aging for a lot of traditional asian women. the sun and excessive tanning ages your skin. keep your skin out of the sun and your skin stays light and doesn't age as fast and doesn't wrinkle.

[lsuwjk]

Prob a culture thing.

[Wisguy]

I was at the U.S. Women's Open at Blackwolf Run on Sunday and wondered about all the Korean players wearing long sleaves, yet I've noticed that none of the Japanese or Taiwanese or American or European players wore them, so a google search brought me to this thread.

If a fair skinned person is wearing protection against the sun for dermatological reasons, that strikes me as a sensible decision.

If an athlete is wearing long sleeves to avoid social stigma attached to having a tan, that strikes me as being silly and the product of backward thinking.  Who do the Korean LPGA players think they are fooling by trying to avoid having a tan?  They are famous athletes in their country and people know what they do for a living.  Athletes who compete in outdoor sports, particularly golfers and tennis players, get a lot of exposure to the sun and everyone knows that - a tan for a professional golfer isn't a sign that the person is a laborer who works in the fields, it means that they have become so skilled at a rather elitist outdoor leisure activity that they can make a good living as an international athlete who spends hours a day outside.  Years ago there was a guy on one of the athletic teams at my school who was a distant member of the Saudi royal family and he insisted on wearing long sleaves and would even put a towel over his head at times to avoid the sun.  On a 90+ degree day, we asked him why he would make himself so much hotter than he needed to be and he arrogantly explained that he did not want his skin to become darker or people might think he was a peasant.   This "lighter skin is superior" cultural trend is akin to the caste system in India and is primitive thinking.

On Sunday we kept seeing the same woman in the crowds who was the opposite of the Koreans - a relatively young (in her 30's) woman who had exposed her skin to the point that it was beyond tan - it was a mahagony brown.  We nicknamed her Mel for melanoma.  That sort of sun worshipper is also silly.

And one more comment on the "Asian" vs. "Oriental" terminology debate.  It has always struck me as one of the very most asinine of the politically correct so-called rules that the term "Oriental" is considered improper.  It is not now nor has it ever been a derogatory term, it is a descriptive term.  It signifies that the person's ancestry is from the Orient, that is Southeastern Asia.  Anyone who compares the term with "nigger" or "spick" or "wop" or "kyke" is being ridiculous - those terms always have been derogatory terms, meant to demean the person to whom they are addressed.  Oriental is no more of a demeaning term than saying "white" or "Hispanic."  My ancestors were from northern Europe and I don't take offense if someone refers to me as white, so why should someone who is from or whose ancestors are from Japan, Korea, Thailand, China, etc.... take offense if someone similarly refers to them as Orientals?  I can assure you that Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Finnish people do not take offense if someone refers to them as Scandinavians and they do not  throw a childish little tantrum insisting that they be called "Europeans" instead.  What's the difference between the terms "Scandinavian" and "Oriental?"  They both refer to people from a specific portion of a continent.   I'll answer that question:  the only distinction is that members of the first group do not get themselves into a tizzy over a completely inconsequential issue of semantics, whereas members fo the second group often do.

Asia is the world's largest continent.  It has a huge variety of different ethnicities and cultures.  Demanding that people use the term "Asian" to refer to all of those peoples promotes vagueness rather than specificity.  A person born in Vladivastok or Mumbai or Tehran is every bit as much of a resident of Asia as a person born in China, Korea, Japan or Singapore, but would it make sense to refer to all of those people as Asians, also?  I only hope that some of these politically correct opponents of the term Oriental are put in a situation where they are told to meet an "Asian" they do not know and embarass themselves by approaching a person of southeast Asian ancestry, only to find out that the person they should be contacting is of southern Asian ancestry instead.  As for the argument "How about having some respect for what a group of people want to be called?" I respond, how about having some respect for common sense, rather than irrational hypersensitivity?

I wonder if there is something about American cultural history that makes people so absurd about terminology that labels ethnicities.  Take the term "African-American."  One might be accused of bigotry for failing to use that term, yet it is an overbroad, vague term that the rest of the world thinks is ridiculous.  I had friends whose parents were born in Egypt and Morocco, and I have a friend who married a white South African girl.  Those people all have more current ties to the African continent than 99% of the people wishing to call themselves "African American."  Shouldn't we call them African-American, too?  They aren't Sub-Saharan African-Americans, though.  I've known several people who were from the Caribbean, from Africa, and from countries in Europe who are dark-skinned and their ancestors were from Sub-Saharan Africa, but they are not Americans and they hate being called African-American - to them it makes as many wrong assumptions as nearly any term used to lable a group of people.  They, and the rest of the world, prefer the simple, descriptive (if not always perfectly accurately descriptive) term "Black."

OK, lecture over.  I guess I may not be very sensible hoping that others will prefer common sense over the irrational.

[John King]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjtoal

None

He didn't mean it. It was occidental.

lol!!!!!!!!!!

[GaijinGolfer]

Originally Posted by senorchipotle

in the asian culture, the shade of skin is an indicator of social status. the wealthier a person, the lighter their skin should be hypothetically cause they work in an office, etc. the darker skinned people are looked down upon as manual laborers. it's really stupid, but that's the gist of it.

Stupid is whose opinion?  Im sure theres plenty of American cultural practices that other countries think is stupid.

[GaijinGolfer]

Originally Posted by Wisguy And one more comment on the "Asian" vs. "Oriental" terminology debate.  It has always struck me as one of the very most asinine of the politically correct so-called rules that the term "Oriental" is considered improper.  It is not now nor has it ever been a derogatory term, it is a descriptive term.  It signifies that the person's ancestry is from the Orient, that is Southeastern Asia.  Anyone who compares the term with "nigger" or "spick" or "wop" or "kyke" is being ridiculous - those terms always have been derogatory terms, meant to demean the person to whom they are addressed.  Oriental is no more of a demeaning term than saying "white" or "Hispanic."  My ancestors were from northern Europe and I don't take offense if someone refers to me as white, so why should someone who is from or whose ancestors are from Japan, Korea, Thailand, China, etc.... take offense if someone similarly refers to them as Orientals?  I can assure you that Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Finnish people do not take offense if someone refers to them as Scandinavians and they do not  throw a childish little tantrum insisting that they be called "Europeans" instead.  What's the difference between the terms "Scandinavian" and "Oriental?"  They both refer to people from a specific portion of a continent.   I'll answer that question:  the only distinction is that members of the first group do not get themselves into a tizzy over a completely inconsequential issue of semantics, whereas members fo the second group often do.

The difference lies in the negative racial stereotype that was tied to, "orientals" in the early-mid 20th century.  The label, "oriental" is taboo just as was the term, "colored" when referring to African-Americans.  Use of those terms shows a clear level of ignorance and intolorance.

[Golfingdad]

Originally Posted by Wisguy

What's the difference between the terms "Scandinavian" and "Oriental?"  They both refer to people from a specific portion of a continent.   I'll answer that question:  the only distinction is that members of the first group do not get themselves into a tizzy over a completely inconsequential issue of semantics, whereas members fo the second group often do.

This whole conversation is waaaay but ...

While I generally agree with you, I believe that your answer above is exactly why we shouldn't use that term.  It doesn't really matter if it used to be acceptable ... if I know something I say might cause somebody to "get themselves in a tizzy" then why bother to say it?  (And it just sounds wrong.  My dad still says it all the time, and I flinch when I hear it)  It's not like it's the only way to specify what part of Asia somebody is from.  There's nothing wrong with the terms Korean, Japanese, SE Asian, Russian, Persian, etc. to differentiate between parts of Asia.

Now, on topic ... I always have to do a double take when I drive by women down here in Socal who wear "sunglasses" that are basically just a big plastic tinted welders mask.  I'm getting used to it now, but it used to freak me out because it looked like a giant blindfold.

[rustyredcab]

BACK TO THE OP --  Are those long sleeves some sort of fabric that actually cools the skin or simply covers it? I also saw one of the caddies wearing the same white sleeves this weekend in the 100 degree heat. Someone in my regular foursome guessed that those sleeves must have a temperature regulating effect -- keep you cool when it is hot and warm when it is cold. I would think that if the goal was just sun screen, the sleeves would be loose. They seems almost compression tight.

[Yukari]

The good ones are made of moisture wicking fabric.  Suppose to keep you cooler by keeping the sun off the skin and cooling your body by evaporation of moisture.

Of course there are cheaper ones that just block the sun.

Originally Posted by rustyredcab

BACK TO THE OP --  Are those long sleeves some sort of fabric that actually cools the skin or simply covers it? I also saw one of the caddies wearing the same white sleeves this weekend in the 100 degree heat. Someone in my regular foursome guessed that those sleeves must have a temperature regulating effect -- keep you cool when it is hot and warm when it is cold. I would think that if the goal was just sun screen, the sleeves would be loose. They seems almost compression tight.