WASHINGTON — Washington Post reporter Maura Judkis has come down on the heavy side of raging-judgy on what should be her life’s co-conspirators — “mostly white, mostly blonde women” — for not getting Lit AF over being served such time-honored and popular “Asian” cuisine as fish eyes, pig’s feet, cow intestines and East Asian bullfrog while on a night out at a Singapore outdoor food market during Episode 4 of American TV show and cultural touchstone The Bachelor.
Judkis, a food and cultural critic/reporter at The Post, reported that this episode of “The Bachelor” wasn’t quite the same as others because participants on the show are rarely shown eating. The report was picked up by Asia’s own South China Morning Post, which brazenly ran the article in its “Racism” section.
“But last night was different,” she wrote, breathlessly explaining that the women were enjoying a “‘Crazy Rich Asians’-esque fantasy date” in Singapore with the bachelor contestant, white male supremo Colton Underwood, who would apparently have his choice of mates should only they be able to show their ethnic gusto and empathy for all world peoples by choking down food that is, according to Judkis, “perfectly normal in Asia.”
For Judkis — who according to sources has been out of the United States just once, when she went to Quebec in 2013 for International Native Staples Day, where she brought a mixed pot of sideoats grama, Amish nuttle beans, venomous Shanhaijing sea snake and sweet Mindoro bull testicles that was promptly set aside by the hosts and later destroyed in a native-style incinerator — the female contestants represented the worst stereotypes about Americans because they couldn’t stomach the entrees that Judkis normally dreams about consuming while instead scarfing down Pringles and jujubes when working at her desk, often well into the night as she is unable to sleep due to wake-unawake dysfunctionality caused by society’s cultural imbalances.
“And off they went, rehashing some of the ugliest American stereotypes about Asian food,” Judkis smugly continued about the female contestants’ disdain for boiled animal entrails, unaware that Asian dietary habits are now mainly focused on overconsumption of doughnuts, cheeseburgers and Doritos, just like in the Western Hemisphere, and that the last time anyone in Asia ate pig anus was in the later stages of the Ming Dynasty.
“The entire segment,” she added, helped fuel “nasty stereotypes that food” — ie, cattle innards, pig’s feet and bullfrog — “from Asian countries is dirty and unsophisticated.”
Judkis also describes one of the participants “ewww”-ing when presented with a plate of pig intestines, which Judkis herself often snacks on either before or after her meditation workout or just simply slices into her avocado mash for a quick and refreshing breakfast.
“The contestants were openly mocking food that — it was immediately obvious — they did not even attempt to understand,” Judkis wrote, while noting that she “generally” considers gelatinous goop to be one of Asia’s finest gustatory experiences.