Forget The Prom Dress; Throw Out The Whole Goddamn Fetish

“The West has an international rape mentality towards the East...Basically, 'Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes.' The West thinks of itself as masculine—big guns, big industry, big money, so the East is feminine—weak, delicate, poor...but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom—the feminine mystique.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.”

(David Henry Hwang, “M. Butterfly”)

Three decades have passed since the publication of “M. Butterfly,” but the “international rape mentality towards the East” that Hwang exposes in the play is not an obsolete concept restricted to the days of colonization and international warfare. A history of racism and repression lives on in the fetishization of Asian culture. It’s how American culture continues to preach a cosmopolitan attitude when really it is ignorant, hypocritical, and closed to all who aren’t partly Eurocentric and primarily Americanized. This fetishism is modern day imperialism.

There is a fine line that divides appreciation and preference from fetishism. Appreciation and preference involve being principally drawn to a component of something or someone while also accepting whatever accompanies that component. Fetishism is being abnormally focused on that component, usually to the point where the component’s accompaniments are thrown off to the side and considered irrelevant, regardless of the consequences.

Pornography is one of the most explicit portrayals of fetishism. Go on any porn site and there’s usually an “Asian” category. Surf through it and you’ll find that a significant amount of the content involves women being submissive to the point of subservience, shy but sexually coy, silent until a sex act causes her to squirm and squeal. It promotes a homogeneous “exotic” stereotype that ignores the complexity and diversity of women from 48 countries in a single continent. The fact that the “Asian” category is usually limited to East Asian actresses, with some sites even putting non-East Asians into separate categories, only emphasizes this homogeneity. There is nothing inherently wrong with having a preference for submissive women; this article isn’t meant to be kinkshaming. However, there is an issue with how this porn contributes to the societal problem with how minorities are treated within the dating pool. For an Asian, it’s either being DMed with something backhanded (“I’ve never f**ked an Asian before!”), outwardly racist pickup lines, or something that leaves them unacknowledged (South Asians are frequently underrepresented in the Asian community, therefore often being bombarded with “you’re not REALLY Asian” comments). Being appreciated as an individual is difficult enough; having to dodge toxic fetishists in a world where the tables are not in your favor is something the word “unfair” can’t even fully encompass.

But what about Asian men? Unlike their female counterparts, they’re typically not hypersexualized. However, American beauty standards have implicitly cast the idea that because Asian men’s characteristics differentiate from Eurocentric ones, they’re deemed “inferior,” or at the very least “less masculine.” This, coupled with stereotypes that further portray them as “less than ideal” (ex. the “small penis” stereotype, the “feminine guy” stereotype, etc.) lead to them being ostracized in the dating pool. Recently with popularization of K-Pop idols and more representation of Asian men in Hollywood films, this has begun to change. Unfortunately, this most likely means Asian men are going to be resigned to the same fate of being fetishized as their female counterparts due to the tendencies of Koreaboo, Weaboo, and similar communities to outwardly fetishize them because of their (usually warped) obsession with the entire country.

What’s worse, fetishism extends itself into violating entire cultures. Fashion is known for breaking tradition, but it can easily be iconoclastic, stepping way over the line of what’s respectful and into the realm of culturally appropriating pieces of traditional significance. Traditional wear can’t just be seen as something “exotic” and then have its designs and cuts be manipulated for the purpose of consumerism, especially if the mentality of consumerists is warped by fetishism. Yet if you pop into popular costume shops around Halloween season, you’ll usually find at least one sexualized “geisha” costume resembling NOTHING of what this woman of the arts would traditionally wear. Various non-Southeast Asians wear bindis, henna, and nose chains, ignorant to the themes of womanhood that they represent. Hell, a Caucasian high school student even attended her prom in a qipao/cheongsam dress, completely disregarding that it was both insensitive and inappropriate in context. The tragic irony is when such articles are not being culturally appropriated, the wearers risk being met with mockery and racial slurs. This leads to either abandoning tradition and assimilating in order to avoid being disrespected, or paying respects to tradition but being shamed for it. It’s hopeless.

While America has begun to increase representation of Asians in popular media, this has done nothing to eradicate the issue of fetishization. For as long as Asians are being primarily portrayed through a fetishist’s lens, they will only be perceived as subhuman playthings, malleable to the fetishist’s personal agenda. Our first step then is to return to the idealistic principle that our nation was supposed to be founded on: allowing people the opportunity to forge their own destiny, regardless of their identity. This means acknowledging our identities and being able to live amongst one another not despite who we are, but because of who we are. Most importantly, it means being able to respect what is tied to our identities without violating another’s. It might sound utopian to the point where it’s too unrealistic, but it would be better for our nation to crumble in an attempt to achieve a romantic ideal than for it to implode under its own corruption, with many of its citizens filled with resentment for its hypocrisy.