Exotic?

In the Orientalism lecture, one topic which Suzanne discussed stuck out to me like a sore thumb. Not only because I have witnessed it in real life but also because I think the term is so blatantly rude and uneducated, “The Exotic”. 

The amount of times I have read or heard someone saying something is “exotic” really is too cringeworthy to count. We see it on beauty products which have an “exotic scent” or are using “exotic” ingredients. We hear the term if someone is talking about a person who is of different descent to them, or who has an “exotic” look, meaning, is not from New Zealand / the country which they are in. 

As Suzanne explained it, it’s “strange and foreign” but also at the same time is “exciting” to the uneducated eye. 

Upon Google searching “exotic people” it confirmed my suspicions about whether people coin the term “exotic” for people who are not of European or Western descent. The first three images that appeared were:   

The first one is a woman from the The Mursi tribe, which are a Nilotic pastoralist ethnic group in Ethiopia, which is the very first image to appear as an “exotic” person. Just because she has a stretched lip from the removal of a lower lip plate, she is seen as ethnic. I have seen countless people with stretched ears and other body from piercings, so why are they not ethnic if this woman qualifies?

The second is from a woman’s Pinterest page, where she shares photos of “exotic people”, never releasing their origin on the photo but rather “love their noses” and “their eyes are so mysterious” about one lady who is wearing a Niqab, showing only her eyes. Yes, she is wearing a Niqab because she wants to be mysterious. Double yes, all of this particular ethnic group have the same nose, just lump them all together, it’s fine! Let’s just say I had to close the page and try to erase it from my mind because I felt like creating a Pinterest and commenting on that woman’s photos, but alas I took the higher road. 

The third photo is from another woman’s Pinterest page and was almost more cringe than the previous one because they tried to justify their posts with captions, but ultimately just ended sounding racist. The caption for the 3rd photo was: “Malaysia symbolises the exotic beauty of its people and environment. I melds cultures together is beauty and relative harmony.” for starters I have no idea what that is even meant to mean. Right off the bat Malaysia is the one in which “symbolises the exotic beauty”. Why Malaysia, what is so “exotic” about Malaysia??

It interests me that Malaysia and other countries in the same vicinity are the ones which are seen as “exotic”, upon googling exotic countries. Is it because they are some of the furthest countries away from the United States (which is where many of the google results are from). Distance seems to be the only thing which categorises something as “exotic” even though New Zealand and Australia are almost as far away from the USA as Malaysia and the Phillipines.  Why is it that when you search “exotic people” there’s not photos of Kiwis and Australians? Is it the fact that we too have English as our primary language when compared to the United States? 

“To anyone born in a so-called exotic culture everything will seem quite normal – far from exotic.  Things only seem exotic to the foreign eye.” as shown on one of the lecture slides and discussed by Suzanne, this a point which I am trying to get at. 

For example when google searching “exotic foods”, there are an array of  bugs and scorpions that appear as “exotic food”. The first picture is from Phnom Penh, in Cambodia showing roasted crickets, which are a delicacy there, but seen as “exotic” and potentially strange because it is half way around the world from us. 

In that country and around that area, that food is seen as normal, but 10,000 miles away it seems to be scary and strange.

Following that photo, then google searching Cambodian food, there are only bright, colourful salads, but no sign of the crickets and other delicacies. 

Whether this is ignorance towards what this one ethnic group eats, or whether exotic food is seen as something completely out of this world, the western world views it as something so foreign because we do not necessarily see it in our lives.  This does not mean that it should be disseminated against or have a blind eye turned towards because it is out of the ordinary in OUR day to day lives. With food being one minority in the mix of what is “exotic”, the fact that the top 3 searches were all people who were from completely different ethnic groups, with no geographical relation, shows further how the term “exotic” is not tied down to one place.  It seems to be used in order to mask the words “different” or “strange” in order to not be sound blatantly rude when describing a person, but instead sounding uneducated.