No Stupid Questions

In my experience, just consuming more media is a good way to become more familiar with the facial features that we might not pay enough attention to differentiate between people. When I first started watching Japanese movies, I had a bit of a hard time grasping who was who, but as time went on it became easier.

You improve at what you do often and with mindful intent. You’re already doing that; what’s tripping you up is the guilt you feel at getting things wrong because it feels like you’re being dismissive of people.

But you’re not: you’re actively working on a problem you’ve identified you have, and for partially personal but also kind, interpersonal reasons. There’s no timeline or final grade to worry about, so just focus on enjoying your media and discernment will come to you.

Let me tell you an anecdote. I'm Asian and grew up in an Asian country. When I was studying abroad there's a time when my American friends were watching a Japanese drama series. I was the one asking them throughout the watch session who's who because I couldn't tell the actors' faces apart.

Stop beating yourself up. We Asians can't tell them apart too. Just enjoy the music without guilt.

Dude, I am asian, and I cannot tell kpop band apart to save my life. Some of them really look very similar; racial bias might make it worse, but I dont think it is completely racial.

I think the best way is just to keep watching more and more. Eventually you should be able to tell.

Kpop is cool and all but not a great way to see the differences in people. Kpop idols are routinely made to look like other popular idols to appeal to a larger fan base. This happens in other cultures as well, US actresses for example!

I would suggest you stick with Dramas to get a better mix of people. And mix it up by country. Add some Thai, Japanese and Chinese dramas to your watch list. At some point you will see the vast differences in just one nation, China is quite diverse in looks, Thailand as well. And it can't hurt to experience music and dramas from other parts of Asia like Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, etc.

And don't just limit yourself to Asia, really look at humanity. You would be surprised how often you can see the similarities between cultures. American Eskimos having Chinese traits. And I don't mean eyes, facial architecture varies worldwide.

In America people think anyone Hispanic/Latin is Mexican (which is SOOOOO false). But Central and South Americans are just as diverse. The larger the mix of people from a continent you are exposed to, the easier it is to get a sense of where they may be from.
All of humanity migrated from someplace, and we still do today.

Each culture has a standard of beauty that celebrities try to emulate as closely as possible. As someone who’s lived in an Asian country for over a decade, it’s actually not that hard for me to identify whether someone is Korean, Chinese, or Japanese based on how they dress and present themselves. Where it gets difficult are celebrity groups within those nationalities. I get actors, actresses, and pop stars mixed up all the time because they all try to do their make-up the same way. This isn’t exclusive to Asia though. Westerners do the same thing and can be just as difficult to tell apart. It’s just we’re far more accustomed to it. That lady from Barbie? I have no idea who she is in or out of costume and could probably take a few incorrect shots. I don’t even know if she’s North American or from some country in Europe or Oceania.

What you are referring to is called implicit bias. It's the automatic differentiation of tribal heritage. It's honestly a phenomenon that can't be controlled. You spend enough time with a certain people, then you are going to prefer that people. IMO that's why we should drop the cultural walls and just amalgamate

This makes me think of those memes where people struggle with telling white male celebrities apart

The fact that you're conscious of these biases and are trying to take a thoughtful approach to avoiding them probably means you don't need to worry too much about it. I think it's probably unrealistic to be able to memorize and identify every media star, and getting some actors of a certain ethnicity confused doesn't automatically make you racist. I mix people up all the time, regardless of their background, so don't sweat it too much. Over time, your recognition will improve, as with any other activity. Good luck!

It's an easier task if you're looking at normal real people, not popstars deliberately selected for 'ideal' beauty archetypes, with professional makeup, filters, and editing.

This reminds me of the Korean beauty pageant profile photo discussion 10 years ago.

It's not necessarily so much a race thing as it is a 'cultural beauty ideals conformity' thing. There are a lot of similar looking white celebrities too, the blonde pop princess cloning machine was working overtime in the early 2000's.

Alright we’re putting you on a strict diet of 8 hours of Kpop exposure therapy no exceptions.

But seriously like most have said, the main features that differentiate faces can differ all over the world so it will come with time, just do your best and it will get easier.

Man, I am white, live in a predominantly white country, and notice even white people looking the same and confusing them for other people. I'm not so sure it's such a big deal. Humans look pretty close together and is why we constantly bicker about small differences like skin color and eye size; cuz there ain't much else that's different. 🙁

Korean celebrities are the exception. I'm an Asian and can't tell them apart lol.

Over a decade ago, I dated someone of a different race from me. I remember being anxious that I wouldn't recognize her in a crowd the first handful of times that we met in crowded places. I've become much better at distinguishing people of different races since, but that's only because I have a lot of racial exposure where I live.

I don't know any way of changing this natural occurrence other than repeated exposure. Your brain needs practice. You don't sound the least bit racist. In fact, you sound the opposite because you're looking for better mental tooling.

Yes you just have to see more Asian people.

When you’ve only seen one in your life, you can differentiate them from everyone else using some broad attributes. You don’t have to pay very close attention to the nuances of their facial structure.

It’s only when you know a lot of people who all have those broad attributes that you have to start noticing other things.

This isn’t racist, it’s just the brain doing what it does best: not work harder than it has to.

It sounds like you’re already doing the work of looking twice, looking closely, paying more attention. Just keep doing that. And remember you don’t have to feel bad about this.

Tbf, the problem in terms of kpop celebrities isn't that they're asians, but how they adhere to pretty strict beauty standards and often use cosmetic surgery for this, so they do, in fact, look pretty similar to one-another. I definitely can't recognize any K-Pop or J-pop idol's face, but I've never had this problem with any asian I've known irl. So maybe don't think too deeply into it, I don't think there's anything wrong or racist about what you describe. Maybe try watching some asian movies with a less "spotless" aesthetic, stuff not necessarily for a young audience or where everyone is supposed to look beautiful, and see if you still have the same problem.

I think it's just learned over time spent engaging with faces of that ethnicity. For myself as a white person located much closer to Asia than South America, I can identify someone's specific Asian ethnicity with fairly good accuracy, although there's always curveballs like Chinese people that aren't Han Chinese. But I'd have a lot of trouble identifying the same for people from different South American countries, because it's a lot farther away and there's only a few South American people that I've come to know well in my travels. I think it comes down to understanding that the ways faces vary are different between different ethnicities. Stereotypes result from not understanding this. You could possible 'train' yourself on Asian faces by reading into the ways they vary, but I think internalising it comes mostly from experience.

I taught in China for 9 years and i can tell you that asians all look different. I was good enough at the end to be able to tell who was Chinese, Korean, and Japanese based on bone structure alone. The hardest part is that when 400+ students all have the same haircuts and clothing style, then they really tend to blur together.

Don't worry, you're not racist. If people look similar then they look similar. There is no need to stress out over this very minor issue. Just spend more time with that media and you'll be able to pick up on differences more easily.

It can be hard to determine the differences between people of different Asian nations sometimes, just like it can be difficult to tell the difference between a Caucasian American, Caucasian European, and a Caucasian Canadian. Some can be easier to distinguish (such as Filipino and Japanese being usually easier to tell the difference than say Laotian and Vietnamese based purely on looks alone), but races now are not as "pure" as they used to be in the distant past. There is a lot of international travel and interracial families, so some may look like another nationality because they are.

Its kinda the same with languages. Spanish and Portuguese sound very similar, and infact are based in the same language family. They both use some of the same words and grammar. But with enough understanding of both you can tell the difference.

My understanding based entirely on zero evidence is that our brains recognize faces based on that person's differences from 'average'. Where 'average' is the average face you see/ consider. And your brain mostly examines the parameters that help you distinguish between the people you normally consider.

So like a person's eyes are one standard deviation larger than average and 5 standard decisions further apart. And their nose is 2 standard deviations longer than average and their nostrils are 1 standard deviation smaller than average.

Ethnic groups will have some parameters that vary a lot between them and some parameters that don't, your brain just needs to learn. Basically just keep trying.

How about Japanese media? Me as an SEAsian find it Japan has a more varied type of face in all the big 3. Of course there's Ikemen (Handsome) & Bijin (Beautiful) type but when I watched JDrama I found them varied a lot.

I think the creators of Korean dramas are aware of the issue - the last one I watched was The Glory, which seemed to go out of its way to make its characters visually distinctive.

For me, I have to stop myself blanking it when I hear a name from unfamiliar language, and instead of thinking "Well I'll never remember that", force myself to take note, that's she's "Lee Sa-ra" and he's "Jeon Jae-joon", etc. I find it useful to pause the screen once in a while, to actually make sure I know who's who, and what their motivations are.