The Exotic Childwife

By Gwendolyn Hill

Alex (let’s call him Alex) was definitely not my first love, nor was he my last. Rather, he only took me on one date in highschool. He was at home in mediocrity, but he was charming and made me feel desired when we were texting. We were eating dinner when he looked up from his pasta. You know, my friends were joking that you’re my anime girlfriend . I froze. What do you mean by that? He shrugged. I just thought it was funny, because, you know… He laughed as if that were the most normal thing in the world, and I didn’t know what to do. I switched us to another topic, we finished dinner, and I sent him some convoluted text about how we weren’t meant for each other three days later.

If I could go back in time, would I throw water in his face? Yell at him, cry, scream? Would I walk out of the fancy Italian restaurant? I honestly don’t know if I could have done any of those things. All my life, I’ve struggled with my own definition of self being at odds with other people’s fantasies.

Dating has always been particularly hard for me, and multiple people I have seriously dated turned out to have Asian fetishes. One such relationship lasted two years, and after we broke up they immediately turned around and started dating someone who looked exactly like me ; they even shared my hobbies and characteristics. My friend said they heard my ex on FaceTime with the new girl, and thought her voice was mine. Eventually my friend met the new girl in person, and was taken aback. It’s kind of freaky how much you two are alike , they told me.

Each time I have found out about an ex’s Asian fetish has been after the relationship has ended, but that doesn’t diminish the disgust and despair that I feel. I rethink our entire relationship, with the same thoughts replaying over and over again in my head: How could I be so stupid? Why couldn’t I see that they had an Asian fetish? HOW COULD I LET THEM TOUCH ME?? I think about the times I kissed them and the times we were intimate, and I want to vomit.

I’ve found dating apps a hopeless endeavor as an East Asian femme. I constantly monitor someone’s every move to try to discern if they see my Asian-ness as exotic, submissive, hypersexual, child-like, or if they see me as their ‘anime girlfriend’ even though I’m Chinese. I’ve come across people on dating apps posing with a ‘bunny waifu’ photoshopped next to them, or with copious anime references in their profiles that make me cringe. I’ve gotten messages ranging from people saying that they find me cute and want to dominate me, to people expressing that they have ‘y ellow fever.’ And, if I ever break their expectations of me, I am met with a torrent of hate and rage that I’m not behaving like the exotic fantasy they built me up to be.

Violence against Asian women extends past everyday interactions and dating spheres; in the Atlanta Spa shooting, the white male shooter confessed to killing six Asian women as a method to ‘eliminate’ his sexual desire . He claimed that race played no part, but this was a targeted act of violence against specifically Asian women on the basis of eliminating what he saw as the source of his ‘sexual deviancy.’ The Asian women he killed were victims of the hypersexuality and stigmatization Asian women face, at the most extreme level.

It’s scary reflecting on my own experience — how hypersexuality was always forced upon me. One of my middle school teachers would constantly joke about me and my other friend (who was Japanese) being perfect for his son. He’s your age, you know, and both you and your friend are so smart, so mature. Either of you would make the perfect wife for my son. My teacher said this so many times to us that it was not a joke anymore; we could tell he meant it. The matchmaking was supposed to flatter me, but I only felt distinctly uncomfortable that my older, white, male teacher was trying to co-opt my agency for the sake of his idealized exotic fantasy.

Design by Olivia Sieve

I was fetishized and exotified as an East Asian girl countless times before I even knew the words to describe what was happening. I didn’t understand why people portrayed East Asian women a certain way; all I knew is that there was supposedly something inherently sexual about me. Even though I went to ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ schools in Berkeley, California, I barely learned any of my own Chinese American history. Being an adoptee, I longed to understand who I was, and who I was supposed to grow up to be.

What I learned of my history was largely influenced by the media, and so I internalized the images of East Asian women I was shown. In movies, TV shows, books, and magazines, the exotification of East Asian women is sold to us. The East Asian woman on screen has no agency as an object of the white, cis-het male gaze. She is pale, thin, and hairless, mysterious and demure. She does not ask to be so enticing, but she is so exotic and sexual that she draws you in . Her impact results in the ‘perfect Asian woman’ stereotype, where East Asian girls and femmes are automatically expected to be small, cute, skinny, pale, and subservient.

When I told my white mom I wanted to start shaving my legs at 10 years old, she looked bewildered as she told me no. Who was looking at a 10-year-old’s legs, for goodness’ sake? But fetishization of East Asian women is intrinsically linked with pedophilia. Being small, young, pale, and skinny with little to no body hair are all attributes of children that East Asian women in particular are sexualized for. Add in obedience and subservience, and it is frightening just how much the Venn diagrams of pedophilia and Asian fetishization overlap. At 10, I wanted to rid myself of the undesirable hair that was getting in the way of my ‘identity.’ I felt a need to grow up and be desired, but paradoxically, my attempt to emulate the Asian women I saw meant I was sexualizing my own youth.

Hypersexualization of Chinese bodies has become a recurring theme in popular media, often drawing from other cultures indiscriminately and then slapping the monolithic “asian” card on the screen. Sexist stereotypes of Asian women existing solely to entertain and please men are rooted in misrepresentations of Japanese geisha, who have been portrayed as prostitute s. ‘Geisha’ is defined by author Sheridan Prasso as “‘arts person’ trained in music and dance, not the art of sexual pleasure.” So why does the trope of sexual entertainment and prostitution exist?

The ‘geisha girl’ trope has deep imperialistic and colonial roots. During World War II, American troops that were stationed in Japan were exposed to local women they claimed tried to seduce them dressed as geishas. Combined with ‘Yellow Peril’ propaganda, it became all too easy to spectacle and distort Japanese cultural practices. The ‘geisha girl’ trope has been generalized to all East Asian women, regardless of racial/ethnic background. Clearly, historical representations of the ‘geisha girl’ were never about true representation of Asian women; they were about depicting and perpetuating racism and misogyny.

Orientalism puts the ‘West’ (Euro-America) in a hierarchical position of superiority over the ‘East’ (East Asia), manifesting as domination where the ‘East’ has a subservient, childlike, and feminine position. In her analysis of the play “M. Butterfly,” Dorinne K. Kondo notes a specific quote from the play that encapsulates what Orientalism means in context of portrayal and the bigger picture: “‘Basically, her mouth says no but her eyes say yes. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated.... You expect Oriental countries to submit to your guns, and you expect Oriental women to be submissive to your men’” (p. 24). Domination and violence of Chinese women st ems from paternalism , which is an institutionalized system requiring men to dominate women — particularly BIPOC women. Therefore, Orientalism is an extension of paternalism that has been widely adopted in Euro-America to suggest the ‘East’ occupies a position of childlike inferiority.

Chinese women have been discriminated against since the moment they arrived in America. When Chinese people immigrated to California during the California Gold Rush (1848–1855), they were widely discriminated against. Many immigrant Chinese women in t he 1850s were forced, and at times trafficked, abducted, or even sold by their families, into prostitution. Consequently, Chinese brothels became an extremely lucrative business, capitalized on by mainly men. As Karen A. Keely writes, “The number of Chinese women in America was so small, and the percentage of these women who worked as prostitutes was so high, that all Chinese women immigrants became associated with prostitution regardless of their own participation in the business” (p. 131) . The sexualization, exotification, and fetishization of Chinese women’s bodies resulted in them being seen as inherently sexually deviant with zero agency, granting men the right to view them as objects that they could own and rightfully dominate. They were looked down upon in every day-to-day aspect of society even as they were exotified and fetishized as sexual objects.

Rather than taking accountability for the poor conditions of Chinatown resulting from institutionalized xenophobia, America took the easy way out through state-sanctioned exotification of Chinese and Asian women. The Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 further contributed to the exclusion and stigmatization of Asian women in the continental United States. As explained by Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia and Margaret Hu , “The Page Act of 1875 was motivated by stereotypes that framed Chinese women as prostitutes who were a moral threat to American society. California congressman

Horace Page, namesake of the bill, justified the legislation with these prejudicial fears of Chinese workers and Chinese women” (p. 342). The Page Act banned immigrant women from “China, Japan, or any Oriental country” that were coming “for lewd and immoral purposes,” in addition to banning the “importation of women into the United States for the purposes of prostitution.”

This remains true today; it’s much easier to perpetuate racist and patriarchal systems when you stand to ‘gain’ from doing so. Disguised as a helping hand, America dual-wields Orientalism and paternalism, crushing down on Asian women. If you have an Asian fetish, you benefit from Asian people being fetishized and demeaned in real life and in the media. Unfortunately, being raised seeing Asian people as objects of desire and disgust, rather than human beings with sexual and moral agency, creates the fetishization that Asians face. My desire to shave my legs at 10 years old was a direct result of media influence; had I shaved, I would have contributed to this vicious cycle.

I have struggled with seeing myself as someone with agency, and establishing my identity without fear of somehow perpetuating a fetish unknowingly. It wasn’t until highschool that I started to name the uncomfortable myriad of experiences I’d had my entire life. My relationships have always been multi-racial and diverse, so warning bells go off in my head when I see people who only hang out with East Asian people in the context of fetishization. These people desire to touch and play with Asianness in ‘fun’ ways — watching anime and eating fortune cookies — and paradoxically continue to shun and dehumanize real Asian people. As a result, if I think someone has an Asian fetish, my immediate impulse is to try to distance myself from any parts of me that they could fetishize.

I’ve become deeply afraid of people perceiving me as cute, docile, and submissive, and I believe that is part of the reason why I am so outspoken. I stop myself from dressing ‘cute’ for fear of being seen as child-like. When I finally let myself dress in bows and dresses and flouncy skirts, I am hyper aware of what people perceive me as, even as I try to shut my eyes to it all. Just let yourself be a girl for once . And yet, to be the least child-like as possible, I keep myself from doing anything without the ease of a practiced adult. If I mess up and make mistakes in the typical human fashion, does that make me seem like I need help? Like I’m submissive and need saving? Poor little Chinese girl can’t do anything right .

Reflecting on my childhood, I think I grew up too fast. I vehem ently rejected things that were ‘cute’, ‘girly’, and ‘feminine.’ But for me, it was both a rejection of ‘female’ stereotypes and a desperate attempt to reject the Asian stereotypes being plastered onto me. Now as a young adult, I have this paradoxical desire to simultaneously be more mature and experience the joys of being young. On one hand, the more mature I am and the fewer child-like attributes I have, the more I feel like I am successfully rejecting the hold that fetishization has on me. On the other hand, I long to experience childlike joy and wonder, and to embrace life with youthful fearlessness without the fear of people confirming their pedophilic stereotypes.

Last year, I came to a concrete conclusion: I am not just a hypersexual plaything that averts their gaze when a man walks by, and falling short of other people’s expectations is not my problem. Sometimes people try to approach me with the ‘preference’ argument, but Asian fetishization is not simply a ‘preference.’ We must recognize that ‘preferences’ and generalizations about Asian women and femmes inherently feed into harmful stereotypes, perpetuating the fetishization of our bodies.

However, I cannot undo the knowledge I’ve acquired — how the hypersexualization of East Asian women such as myself is a reflection of our cyclical historic treatment and portrayal on the United States mainland. Wadhia and Hu write that “anti-Chinese sentiment is often conflated with, or used as a proxy for, broader anti-Asian sentiment. That is, historically and today, anti-Chinese stereotypes and policies have the effect of creating more expansive anti-Asian attitudes and prejudices. The hypersexualization of Chinese women embedded within the Page Act of 1875, for instance, is then projected onto and synonymized with APA (Asian Pacific American) women generally” (p. 364). I understand just how deep the roots of targeted xenophobia, racism, and sexism go. There is much that the United States tries to bury, and there is a reason why certain histories are not taught in schools. Omitted history often speaks of systemic discrimination against BIPOC and queer people, and parties in power actively benefit from placing us in a position of inferiority, so it’s no wonder why we continue to be hypersexualized.

I don’t know what to do except try to present myself and my truth as clearly as possible. I have since sworn off dating apps. I have no interest in being fetishized and stereotyped like I have been countless times before. Unfortunately, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, dating apps and websites have become one of the only ways to meet people safely. I refuse to risk my health and the health of others simply for the sake of finding romance and connection in person. Yet, every negative experience I’ve had just drives me further away from dating apps, and dating in general. I retreat within myself, searching for the little girl who was ignorant, who was more concerned about recess than relationships.

I am constantly on high alert because I am aware of how widespread Asian fetishization is. But with this watchful eye comes a strong sense of boundaries. Because of my negative experiences with dating, because of the history I have learned, I understand that to allow someone to fetishize me is to disrespect myself; it is to drive my youthful ideals further and further away. Rather than letting people project their ideals onto me, I try to embrace my own sexuality and femininity on my own terms. Everytime I let myself enjoy life, I am slowly rebuilding my relationship with myself, getting closer and closer to reconnecting with the youthful joy I had to leave behind far too soon.

If I were to write a letter to my younger self, I imagine it’d go something like this:

Dear Wendy, Gwen, Gwendolyn;

There is so much love and joy in store for you. Let yourself love abundantly, and step into who you are. Society has tried to put you in a box, but you know yo u don’t fit; as an adoptee, as a queer Chinese femme, as a lover of the different. You already are unique; you don’t need to change yourself for anyone else. You can reclaim femininity and sexuality without being weak or inferior, and if someone thinks poorly of you for being your authentic self, then you do n’t need to value their opinion. I want you to wear pink, to be like other girls, to run around, to play in the dirt, to make mistakes, to let go of trying to be more poised and mature than everyone else. It’s okay. You will figure it out, like you always do, so trust yourself. I love you; be free, and let go.

With love, Gwen