Womanly Tales

I watched an interesting talk show called BlogTV on Newsasia – a prominent Singapore television channel.
Here’s the Facebook page for this talk show: http://www.facebook.com/blogtv.sg
Here’s a picture of the hosts and their guests on the show I am talking about: http://www.facebook.com/ajax/sharer/?s=2&appid=2305272732&p[]=64081923236&p[]=9508707

So what was the topic? Statistics in 2011 report that there was a 10% increase between Singaporean women and expats. Singaporean men on the other hand were marrying Asian women from outside of Singapore.
Hence, the topic for discussion was: Do Singaporean women prefer expats and if so why? More pertinently what’s wrong with Singaporean men?

On the panel were a couple of experts – An individual who helps Singaporean men improve their ability to date and a professor from a Management University. In addition was a Singaporean man who’s single and a Singaporean woman who’s married to a German.

So what is going on here as per the experts? The professor said that the draw towards Caucasian men has to do with this race being economically better off historically and as a result more confident about what they have to offer. The dating expert agreed stating how the average Expat salary is about 200000 while the average Singaporean male earns about 60-70000. However money is not everything because as the professor pointed out in the US the Asian community is financially very well off and YET they are not attractive to their fellow Asians. In the US there is also a higher number of Americans of Asian origin marrying Caucasian men. The professor concluded that this has to do with Caucasian men being more flexible than his Asian counterpart. The Singaporean woman on the panel concurred stating that her friends are too independent, opiniated and outspoken to be attractive to Singaporean men.

The dating expert added that there are three aspects that Singaporean men need to learn – 1) To be assertive 2) to be comfortable with their sexual nature and I do not recall the third aspect. Interestingly the Singaporean man on the panel did not seem to think he lacked in any of these.

So what next? They put (a bit unfairly) to test the dating skills of the dating expert and the Singaporean man with an ‘anonymous’ caller on the phone. The Singaporean man went first and made a ROYAL mess of his alloted 60 seconds. At this point I had my eyes covered – embarassed – and thinking of changing channels. Next came Mr.Expert who then had to behave just normal to win the contest.
The female host then turned to the professor asking – what next? The prof replied – More of the same trend.

I found this show entertaining at the very least. I was impressed by the stats and the research by the prof. The sample specimens were fabulous themselves – the gulf between the aspirations of the woman and man could not have been more apparent even if the two didn’t say a thing.

This bridge is going to take more than just dating lessons to resolve itself. Asian male stereotypes from the past have left the current generation of Asian men little to draw from. As Deepan mentioned, these men now face a completely different world where none of the ‘methods’ of the past work. Further they have to not only equal the playing field but excel it in order to attract women in their social spheres – this was reflected in one of the comments the Singaporean woman made where she said she has always been attracted to the idea of having mixed race babies… now top that Singaporean man!