Whiter Shades of Pale (21 page)

Many people associate this type of haircut with children and people looking for the most efficient way to get their hair out of their eyes. But for white people, this simple haircut is a bold declaration: the wearer is artistic, deep, and has probably dated a guy in a band you like. Of course, as with many things loved by white people, simple often means expensive; these haircuts almost always cost upwards of $100.

It is essential for you to understand that this haircut is more than a mere fashion statement—it is an important cultural marker. Throughout the world, many cultures feature ceremonies to announce that a girl has become a woman. For white people, the haircut with bangs symbolizes
that a female has completed her transformation from a nerdy girl to a cool woman. In fact, if you went to high school with a nerdy white girl who moved to a big city, there is a good chance she will show up at your high school reunion with bangs.

When you are introduced to a group of white people, it’s a good idea to befriend the girl with the bangs. She’s probably the most popular.

Often it can be easier to find common ground with a white person by talking to them about something you both hate. Discussing things you both like might lead to an argument over who likes it more or who liked it first. Clearly the safest route is mutual hatred. When choosing to talk about something that white people hate, it’s best to choose something that will allow white people to make clever comments or at the very least feel better about themselves. Currently the easiest way to do that is to ask a white person for their thoughts on people who wear Ed Hardy.

Ed Hardy is a clothing company that makes a wide range of expensive T-shirts, hoodies, and jeans. These clothes are notable for their use of elements from classic tattoo design such as skulls, hearts, and dragons. On the surface, the use of the words
classic, tattoo
, and
T-shirt
would suggest a logical fit for white people, but that’s not the case. The right kind of white people hate these clothes unilaterally, and it is advised that you merely accept that at face value. If you were to ask a white person to explain why a regular-size dragon logo is okay
but one that goes around the neck is not, you would be trapped in a long and fruitless conversation.

To put this in proper perspective, Ed Hardy is so hated by white people that it cannot be worn ironically. This is no small feat. As it stands, the only other entries in this category are Nazi uniforms, Ku Klux Klan robes, and self-tanner.

Since you cannot in good conscience have an Ed Hardy–themed party, the best way to make use of this white hatred is to give your stories a little more appeal to white people.

For example, if you take the reasonable but not compelling story “I got cut off in traffic this morning and when I honked the guy gave me the finger” and replace it with “I got cut off in traffic this morning by this guy in an Ed Hardy shirt; I honked and then he gave me the finger!” the story will become 60 percent more interesting to white people because it allows them to make a witty response like “I guess that douche bag had to get to a UFC party or a nightclub event he was promoting.”

Follow this up with a laugh, a high-five, and a compliment about the acceptable shirt the white person is wearing, and you will find yourself with a new friend.

Among the physical activities most enjoyed by white people, swimming remains right near the top. In fact swimming is the one activity that remains constant throughout the life of a white person. They begin with swim lessons as a child, join a swim team in high school, train for a triathlon after college, and then swim as a way to stay in shape after fifty. If you ask any white person over sixty how they stay in shape, the answer will inevitably be “swimming laps.” Or perhaps more accurately, “swimming laps in a Speedo.”

It is hard to say exactly why white people love swimming so much, but there are a number of theories. First, all of the great tragedies to befall
white people in the water were brought about by white people, shark attacks, getting lost at sea, and the
Titanic
. (Though the latter was technically a tragedy brought about by an iceberg, it was still a white iceberg that did it.) Aside from these minor hiccups, swimming has been a pleasurable activity for white people for generations.

Another theory of why white people enjoy swimming so much is their ability to completely dominate the sport. Of course, this domination doesn’t come from years of training and crushing competition; it owes mostly to the fact that white people only have to compete against other white people. This is in turn because even at the highest levels, nonwhite competitors are mostly limited to a few overeager Chinese Olympians or some adorable underdog from a third-world country who just learned to swim.

Swimming at the Olympics is actually another example of how good white people are at figuring out how to maximize the few ways in which they can eke out athletic dominance. White people have helped to ensure that you can win medals in swimming for different distances, relays, and, most important, different strokes. So white athletes can win upwards of five medals for doing the butterfly and the backstroke, but in track, a sport long abandoned by white people, they could not obtain additional medals for running backward or doing a crab walk.

Sadly there seems to be no end in sight for white people’s dominance of competitive swimming. For further proof, go to the nearest computer and type in “swim team” on Google. Then click on the “Images” tab. You will see more white flesh than in a Mormon orgy.

Competition and pleasure are logical reasons why white people would enjoy swimming, but these are not the only factors that will put people in the water. Many white people will engage in something called “polar
bear” events, where they gather on a beach in the middle of winter, quickly jump into a partially frozen lake or ocean, and then run back to waiting blankets and warm beverages. This is often done to remind white people they are alive. For white people, nothing makes them appreciate the gift of life more than voluntarily trying to end it.

Thanks to a middle school reading of the book
1984
, virtually all white people have an intense fear of a “big brother” type of organization that monitors all your actions and compiles terabytes of data on you, your family, and all your actions. A white person can think of nothing more frightening than some strange company holding all of their information and using it for their own benefit. That is, unless that company happens to be Google—then everything is fine.

White people have spent the past decade happily handing over as much of their life as possible to Google: email, work documents, video chat, payment systems, news sources, and all of their Internet searches. If Google offered to digitize and store all financial and medical records, white people would be among the first to jump aboard, partly because this would make dating much easier for white people, because the ability to use your phone to view a sexual history report and a 401(k) statement could save you hours of indirect, veiled questions.

There are a number of reasons white people have been so eager to hand over their lives to Google. The first and most obvious reason is simple peer pressure. If you’ve ever exchanged email with a white person
there is a 100 percent chance their email address ended in @gmail.com. Of course, some white people have an @mac.com address, but even those people know that they’ll need an @gmail.com address if they want anyone to take them seriously. (See
this page
for examples of what can happen when you don’t have the right email address.)

But one of the biggest reasons why white people love Google is simply the company itself. It is famous for providing its employees with all sorts of perks like free food, ball pits, arcade machines, and pretty much anything else that will take the misery out of coding for eighteen hours a day.

Finally, Google is renowned for having a very selective hiring process that enables them to bring on only the best and brightest people on earth. So naturally, every white person believes that they should be working there. When a white person with a job that you covet begins complaining, simply tell them that they should be working at Google. The pull of dot-com money, endless perks, and working in a selective environment will be too strong and they will immediately begin searching for a job. While they are filling out Google’s strange questionnaire, inform your superior that the white person is looking for a new job, and enjoy your new promotion!

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here
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