Here’s what various media outlets have said about the cheerleaders: They’re “robotic.” They’re “over-choreographed to the point of lost authenticity.” (Since when are cheerleaders not over-choreographed? Don’t they all tend to be pretty intricately synchronized? Isn’t that kind of what cheerleaders do?) They’re “singing, dancing spearheads of a strategic North Korean propaganda campaign.” (But as Jia Tolentino points out in the New Yorker, “cheerleading, by nature, is a form of propaganda.”) They’re “one of the weirdest spectacles at the Winter Olympics.” They’re “creepy.” “Kind of terrifying.”

Weird, creepy, robotic, terrifying — I’m shaking as I type this, angry again. On the one hand, at least some of this commentary has to be reacting to how still the cheerleaders remain between routines, or how they’re visibly flanked by older men, as if to be kept in line; on the other hand, please notice the choice of words. These are the usual slurs made against Asian people in Western countries, that we’re strange, robotic, other than. I try to sit through more replay clips. It occurs to me that, before this, I’ve never seen North Korean women sing, clap. There’s something familiar about how the cheerleaders move, rhythmically inclining their heads left and right as they clap, and then I realize: My mother does this. She often tilts her head side to side, clapping, while she sings. It’s just like this, and it’s fucking adorable. Other women, her Korean American church friends, do it too.