"Sir, you look like Mitch."

Jesse Tyler Ferguson
(Image Source)

versus 

Me

“Who is Mitch?”
“Mitch. Mitchell from Modern Family.”
“NOOOoooo!!! I don’t want to look like Mitch!!!”

Or something to that effect is how a dialogue went between one of my students and I this morning. Now what I find quite curious about her statement is the peculiar timing. I usually have a stubble. I’m not fond of shaving, so I just use a clipper to quickly spruce my beard to a two-day trim. This morning I actually shaved properly, splattered toner and moisturized. “You look ten years younger,” is what a colleague told me. Why the student should compare me with Mitchell on this particular day is unusually baffling. Not only is Jesse Tyler Ferguson, the actor that plays Mitchell Pritchette in the TV-series Modern Family, my senior by a couple of years, on this particular day we look a decade apart.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson
(Image Source)

versus 

Me

So let’s compare Mitchell and myself. He, is older. I'm younger. Okay, just three years younger, but still. Mitchell is out of shape; I'm not. Yes, I'm no beefy hunk either, I will admit it, but I'm not sagging -- yet. He has an unfortunate sense of style. I may not be a fashion slave, but I do have a sensible aversion of checkered clothes. He has what one can obviously refer to as a ginger beard, while I usually display an auburn stubble. He is evidently gay, with the fame and salary that warrants the paparazzi's attention, while I'm questionably bi-sexual with neither the fame nor the salary to have strangers take pictures of me without my shirt on. If I want shirtless pictures of myself on the Internet I have to take them and post them myself.

So what do the character Mitchell and myself have in common that causes my student to "compliment" me as Mitchell's doppelgänger? Mismatched red hair? He is a strawberry blond, while I'm more of a light auburn. A fair skin? Pink cheeks? A slowly receding hairline? Jobs that require talking? (Mitchell is a lawyer and I'm a literature lecturer.)

I guess in Korea all Caucasian gingers look alike. ;-)