Growing up in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, I was never ashamed of my Asian background because I was surrounded by people who looked similar to me. I was never an outsider in my classroom, dance studio, basketball or volleyball team, or Girl Scouts troop as a child. Coming to college where there were fewer people who looked like me was the first time that I felt uncomfortable with my race, and it caused a lot of inner turmoil within me. I’ve since then grown to embrace my heritage, and I no longer feel any shame for my Asian features. However, these struggles and insecurities still tend to manifest in my dating life, especially when I date a non-Asian boy.
When I was 18 years old, I moved to Los Angeles to attend college. I’m three-quarters Japanese and one-quarter Chinese, so growing up in Hawaiʻi meant that the majority of people looked like me. According to the 2021 U.S. census, 25.5% of Hawai‘i’s population identified as white alone, 37.6% identified as Asian alone, and 24.2% identified as two or more races. Prior to college, I hadn’t dated a boy who wasn’t at least part-Asian, and I didn’t date a non-Asian boy until I had come to Los Angeles.
I think that it is vital for me to acknowledge my own privilege when it comes to Asian interracial dating. Being from Honolulu, I didn’t experience the same discrimination that my Asian friends from other areas endured because I was a part of the majority rather than the minority. Additionally, Los Angeles is very racially and ethnically diverse. 48.9% of Los Angeles’ population identified as white alone, 11.8% identified as Asian alone and 7% identified as two or more races in the 2021 U.S. census.
Asian and Asian American women are often faced with a lose-lose situation. It’s a constant paradox of “Does he merely like me because I’m Asian?” and “Will he like me even though I’m Asian?”
This is not to say that racism and discrimination do not exist in this city, but I am lucky to live in a place where they are not nearly as prevalent as in some other places across the country. According to the World Population Review, Los Angeles is currently home to people from more than 140 countries who speak 224 various languages that have been recognized. Ethnic districts like Koreatown, Chinatown, Thai Town, Little Ethiopia, and Little Tokyo make Los Angeles the multilingual and cultural city that it is. My experience might be very different from an Asian American who lives in a less diverse area. But even in such a diverse area, I’ve still felt apprehension about dating outside of my race.
For myself, dating in general is difficult because I have a fear of rejection, but dating non-Asian men in particular as an Asian American woman brings about a lot of anxiety. Asian and Asian American women are often faced with a lose-lose situation. It’s a constant paradox of “Does he merely like me because I’m Asian?” and “Will he like me even though I’m Asian?” When I was a freshman and new to LA, there were a handful of occurrences when I would begin to approach a boy, but I’d stop myself out of fear that he’d either be interested or completely disinterested in me, both because of my ethnicity and nothing else.
From conversing with other Asian and Asian American women, I have observed that this fear is common. The U.S. has a long history of fetishizing Asian and Asian American women. According to Collins Dictionary, the term “fetish” refers to an abnormal powerful desire or necessity for a specific object or activity (or, in this case, race) to gain sexual pleasure. According to CNN, Asian and Asian American women are stereotyped as submissive and docile but also hypersexual and exotic, and these stereotypes contribute to such fetishization.
The U.S. government encouraged hypersexualized stereotypes of Asian women by implementing state and federal legislation.
Asian pop culture is on the rise in America with the popularity of bands like BTS and shows like Squid Game. According to USA Today, while people may seem more appreciative and accepting of Asian culture, this isn’t always the case. Fetishization is often misconstrued for gratitude or appeal because a person may seem interested in you as an individual when they are actually fixated on your race.
USA Today states that the primary difference is that fetishization is objectification and an oversimplification. The fetishization of Asian and Asian American women depicts Asian women as objects while simultaneously depriving them of individuality. Asian fetishization may present itself as a stereotype, like the one that Asian women are experts in K-pop simply because of their appearance, or it may include hyper-sexualized views about their anatomy. According to Vox, there is a stereotype that Asian women are both sexually different and sexually exclusive, and that their bodies contain a lucrative love, sex appeal, feeling, and desire as compared to women of other races.
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Director of the Humanities Center and Professor of Asian American Studies at UC Irvine, told Time that the narrative of reducing Asian women as a “moral contagion” dates back to the early 19th century. Commenting on the 2021 Atlanta shooting, Wu said that Asian women are discerned as having a dangerous form of sexuality that is plaguing American society.
This stereotype didn’t develop accidentally. The U.S. government encouraged these hypersexualized stereotypes of Asian women by implementing state and federal legislation. According to History, the Page Act of 1875 was one of the earliest instances of federal legislation to restrict immigration to America. The law prohibited Chinese women from entering the United States, so Chinese women at Angel Island Immigration Station near San Francisco trying to enter the country were subject to violating and mortifying interrogations by U.S. immigration officials.
These laws that date back to two centuries ago continue to affect American society today. They have ingrained anti-Asian ideals into American culture.
Due to the Page Act, the Chinese American community became heavily male. According to the History Channel, there were about 78 Chinese women per 1,000 Chinese men in the early 1870s, but the number dropped to 48 women per 1,000 men following the law’s enactment. By the mid-1900s, many west coast states enacted laws that prohibited people from marrying outside of their race. The American government restricted the expansion of Asian American families by banning Chinese women from entering the U.S. Notably, there were no laws aimed at immigrant women from Europe.
These racist and discriminatory laws did not stop after the Page Act, but rather became more prevalent. Following the 1875 Page Act, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was the first and only major federal legislation that explicitly rejected immigration for a particular nationality. According to Britannica, the fundamental exclusion law prohibited Chinese laborers from moving to the U.S., but amendments to the law impeded Chinese laborers who had departed the country from returning.
These laws that date back to two centuries ago continue to affect American society today. Acts like the Page Act and the Chinese Exclusion Act have ingrained anti-Asian ideals into American culture. This was especially seen with the increase of anti-Asian hate crimes ever since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a compilation of hate crime data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 339% in 2021 compared to 2020, with cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and more surpassing their record numbers from 2020. Such laws have also reinforced the belief that Asian women should be excluded from society and are unsuited to be romantic partners in America.
The objectification and fetishization of Asian and Asian American women is not a problem for just the AAPI community, but for all of us if we are to create a world that is safer for everybody.
Additionally, the Eurocentric beauty standard of American society, which is reliant upon the model European figure (with light skin and light-colored eyes), prohibits me or any other woman of color from ever fitting the American ideal of beauty. This adds another layer of anxiety: I could get Botox, plastic surgery, or any other cosmetic procedure done to become more “attractive,” but no matter what I do, I’m never going to be the ideal American standard of beauty. I constantly question whether or not boys will even find me attractive if I’m Asian. I thought that I couldn’t compete with other white girls who have blonde hair and blue eyes because I didn’t think that I compared to them.
It’s unfortunate that many young Asian American women are ashamed of their features or sexuality, and this bars them from approaching prospective romantic or intimate partners. Fetishization of Asian women is a form of systemic racism that must be addressed by laws and regulations to make widespread change for a better future. People must also reject the idolization of Eurocentric beauty standards, as this prohibits many people of color from fitting the Western ideal of beauty that we are bound to aspire towards in our dating lives, and it’s time to stop viewing Asian and Asian American women as objects rather than subjects.
People from all groups must display allyship and solidarity towards the AAPI community as a whole. Allies can address microaggressions and other acts of racism as they happen daily. Everyone can also start to address their own internalized racism and consider how they’ve contributed to the marginalization of ethnic minorities. The objectification and fetishization of Asian and Asian American women is not a problem for just the AAPI community, but for all of us if we are to create a world that is safer for everybody.