Friday, January 25, 2008

Racial Transformations

Yesterday I had my face transformed by this thing called the Human Race Machine that was set up at the Indiana Memorial Union. It was a little electronic booth where you sit down and it takes your picture and then mucks around with the proportions of your facial features. Understandably, there were a few people lined up to try it out. I'm pretty sure that most of the white people were standing in line primarily for the purpose of seeing what they might look like as a black person. That seemed to be the major appeal. In front of me there were these young men from Africa who pretty much went bonkers when they got to the machine and saw what they might look like as white people. I was in line with my friend who is half black/half Japanese, and they kept looking at her, as if to say "can you believe this stuff?!" They were laughing really hard, taking pictures, calling their friends. They seemed to be getting the maximum amount of enjoyment possible from The Human Race Machine. Anyway, according to this machine's calculations, this is what I would look like as a person of the following ethnicities:

Normal Me
First off we have normal WASP me. You can't really see it very well in this picture, but you had to go in with a joystick and manually put in points where the edges of your eyes, mouth and nose were. Is my mouth really that small?

Asian Me
Asian

Black Me
African

Hispanic Me
Hispanic

I Forget What This One Was Supposed To Be
Middle Eastern

Middle Eastern Me
Indian

It was also supposed to be able to age your face by a certain number of years, but I tried that and all it really seemed to do was turn the picture black annd white instead of color. Maybe my face is just already too old-looking!

So what do you think? Which race should I push for if it turns out that reincarnation is what it's all about? Not to sound racist or anything, but I think I look best as an Asian. Or maybe Indian.

P.S. I am told that this machine was featured on Oprah a while back. Does this mean that there is a picture out there somewhere of Oprah as a white woman? The answer is yes.

3 comments:

Sarah said...

1. oprah looks weird white.

2. Ill be your mirror is one of my favorite songs.=)

Unknown said...

I love how the Middle Eastern you has a thin bit of mustache above your upper lip. Now if that's not racist, I don't know what it. Aren't other races hairy too?

M. H. D. said...

Well, I did have a bit of a real mustache to begin with. I think the way that it got bent around depended on the race. Funny though, I have a pretty good 'stache as a Hispanic as well. Hmmmm.