Hypersexualisation of Asian Women Never Have I Ever... Felt Uncomfortable

not your china doll: on the hypersexualisation of asian women

YIGE XU

CW: racism, sexism, hate crimes, sexual violence, rape, death, pornography

Five months ago, a twenty-one-year-old white male gunman drove to a strip mall in the northern Atlanta suburbs and entered Young’s Asian Massage parlour, where he killed four people, two of them Asian women. After leaving he headed south, killing four more Asian women at a pair of spas situated across the street from each other. When he was apprehended he was on route to Florida, where he had planned to continue his shooting rampage.

I’m sure we all remember the sheriff’s words in infamy. The murderer’s actions were the result of “a really bad day.” The disbelief as these senseless massacres were chalked up to a “sex addiction.” He wanted to “eliminate” his “temptations”. He was just “fed up”. Seeing this headline I felt a mess of rage, paranoia, hurt and grief. But exhaustion came out on top. To say the year that had passed had been an uncertain one for all would be an understatement. But for the Asian diaspora, 2020 was also one of endurance. We armoured ourselves just to step outside, to face the inevitable stream of slurs hurled by strangers, politicians, and friends alike. Reported incidents of hate crimes against Asians surged parallel to COVID cases. I was plunged into reflection, wanting to understand my place in the world as a Chinese-Australian woman, to prescribe reason to a reality that felt unexplainable.

Fast forward to a year later, March 16, 2021. That white supremacist, justified in his murder. His voiceless victims, dehumanised.

The hypersexualisation of Asian women, especially East and South-East Asian (ESEA) women, lies within the nexus of intersecting racism, white supremacy, misogyny, and Orientalism. Our ‘othering’ can be traced to 18thcentury colonialism, where the term ‘yellow fever’ first originated.

Asian bodies were objectified as ornaments in appropriated 19th century art, observed on museum walls as framed objects of desire. The image of the geisha was popularised, cementing the enduring idea of the Asian woman as exotic and submissive. She is your ‘china doll’, dainty and beautiful. Lacking autonomy. She is servile – the perfect mail-orderbride-turned-housewife. Yet simultaneously she is the ‘dragon lady’, hyper-sexual, a temptress.

The rhetoric of Asia as a place to dominate was reinforced with U.S. military occupation of Asia in the last century. To control the land, to subjugate the people. To participate in the sex industry, or to rape. To dehumanise, objectify, fetishize.

This idea that Asian women’s bodies exist solely for white male pleasure continues to pervade our cultural consciousness. The women who work in service-based sectors – massage parlours, spas, nail salons – exist outside the ‘model minority’. These places are seedy, they immediately connote sex. The workers are migrants, and therefore easy, inexpensive, disposable.

Media representations of Asian women have long served to simultaneously reflect, and uphold this ideal; that our sole function is to satisfy the white, male gaze. Kim, the Vietnamese protagonist in the musical-turned-movie Miss Saigon, is a bargirl and a prostitute who falls in love with an American GI. Recall the notorious line we’re all familiar with in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket; “Me so horny. Me love you long time.” Lucy Liu plays the archetypal ‘Dragon Lady’ in Charlie’s Angels, Kill Bill, and Payback – sexually promiscuous and violent. And what happened to Cho Chang after The Half-Blood Prince? “You and Cho just… Sort of fell apart, yeah.”

Contemporary media has hugely perpetuated our hypersexualisation. ‘Japanese’, ‘hentai’, ‘Korean’, and ‘Asian’ were four of the top six most searched for terms on Pornhub in 2019. Enduring tropes like the ‘schoolgirl’ exist alongside new terms like ‘koreaboo’, in the wake of the K-pop industry’s boom, to infantilise and sexualise ESEA women. On dating apps, constant subjection to demeaning fetishization is the norm.

I am exhausted, as I have had to reflect. I have had to remember the old man stopping me in my school uniform at Coles, to insist on “just how beautiful” I was. “No, but really, you’re gorgeous,” he said, touching my arm. I was 12. On a family trip to Thailand three years later, I was approached by another older white man. The conversation was much the same. “How old are you?” he asked. After emphasising the fact that I was only 15, he replied, winking, “What a shame. Maybe next year, then.” All these experiences made me highly uncomfortable in the moment, but I lacked the vocabulary to truly understand why. They seemed like compliments on the surface. If so, I should say ‘thank you’. I did. Now I recognise just how much weight these comments hold.

This is the lived experience of Asian women. The physical, emotional, and psychological burdens that we bear as we try to navigate the relationship between our intersecting racial and gender identity, and our perception as the ‘object’. We suffer racial depersonalisation, as we realise our interchangeability; that we are not valued for who we are but for what we have come to represent. The line between a ‘type’ and fetishization is rice-paper thin. Do they like me for who I am, or have they already reduced me to a stereotype?

Isn’t it ironic that we feel shame whenever a part of our bodies is appraised by a stranger? We don’t speak up about our own discomfort, as there is only so much space the public is willing to allow for Asian stories. But this can’t continue to happen. I am fed up with having to smile and say thank you to ‘compliments’ while the red burn of discomfort crawls up my throat. I am fed up with feeling powerless in my own body. I am fed up with being fed up.

We must work to defetishize society’s views, or violence will continue to happen. Alternative narratives are needed to build solidarity within Asian groups, and with other racialised people. We need allies to recognise our stories. Pay attention. Call out your mates. Intervene if you see hate happening. Educate others. Make space for us.

Letting things stay how they are can literally cost us our lives.