Dude, you just got othered!

Adam has a problem with Ted Everhart's YDN op-ed, and he's not the only one. The basic story is that the International Student Organization is planning a bachelor/ette auction called "Wanna Go on an Exotic Date?", and Everhart took umbrage at the use of the word "exotic." Some of Everhart's points are strained (i.e. putting the word "auction" in scare-quotes), but he doesn't deserve a lot of the flack he's catching:

Alum (unregistered user) said: When I have spent time in non-white countries, I was viewed as "exotic". In some places, they'd never actually seen a white person before. Did I get offended by this? Nope. Exotic is not a bad word. But this article proves any word can be made into a bad word if you try hard enough.

Ted responds:

To those who say they have no problem with being called "exotic," I warn you that it is not comfortable to live day in and day out as "exotic," as "the other." It is not pleasant or dignified to be expected to follow stereotypes (positive or negative). For the person who labels something as "exotic," the encounter with that "exotic" thing is fleeting; whereas those who are so labeled are stuck as "exotic" for life. They are forever on the periphery of normalcy, and this is a form of oppression. Maybe it's fun for some to go to a different country and be "that crazy foreign kid" for a while, but it will get tiring.

He's absolutely right that making the word "exotic" a compliment and not an insult doesn't actually fix the problem. It isn't that thinking of international students as "exotic" will make the Yankees hate them, fear them, or sexually objectify them; it's that "the exotic one" is an exceptionally flat role for someone to play.

However, we can't make international students stop being foreign, and we can't make "foreign" an unnoticeable quality (which is what Ted seems to be recommending), which leaves Yalies with two options: fiddle around with the exotic until it's less constricting, or make damn sure that being exotic doesn't preclude someone from playing other, more flexible roles. An "exotic" date auction undermines the former, but given that the latter is our best bet, I don't particularly mind. The Hottentot Venus it ain't.