Episode 44: Consequences of an Asian Fetish – with author Kaila Yu

The Discussion

Amy Allebest: When people hear the word “fetish”, they might think of something hidden away, private, maybe even taboo. But for Asian women, fetishization is often out in the open. Think of the way movies like Full Metal Jacket or Madame Butterfly turned Asian women into two-dimensional sexualized tropes, or how dating apps are flooded with men announcing that Asian women are their “type”. The stereotypes of geishas, school girls, and submissive Asian wives are recycled endlessly in Western media. The message is almost always the same: Asian women are docile and obedient, they’re infantilized and sexualized, and of course they make better wives than women of other backgrounds. Kaila Yu, the author of the groundbreaking new memoir Fetishized, writes that “the craziest thing about the Asian fetish is how confidently men announce it with absolutely no shame and a good measure of pride.” It’s also true, because why should these men be ashamed? It’s just a preference, right? Why are we making such a big deal? It’s harmless… until it isn’t. Today we’re going to be discussing the differences between preferences and fetishes. We’re going to dig into some of the most pervasive and damaging tropes about Asian women. And, most importantly, we’re going to hear from firsthand experience how all this reductive, racist, and patriarchal thinking impacts the lives of women and girls. I’m so grateful to be joined in this conversation by the author of Fetishized, journalist, and former rockstar and model, Kaila Yu. Welcome, Kaila! 

Kaila Yu: Hi, thanks so much for having me!

AA: So happy you’re here. Kaila Yu is an author and on-camera correspondent based in Los Angeles. She’s written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Condé Nast Traveler, National Geographic, and more. Her former band, Nylon Pink, has toured in Australia and performed across Shanghai, Costa Rica, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, and more. And her debut memoir, Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty, was released just last month in August. And again, I’m so excited to be discussing this book today. I’d like to start by having you introduce yourself personally, and I’m sure we’re going to spend lots of time discussing your personal story while exploring the memoir, but start us off with a little bit of background, where you’re from and some important landmarks along the path that have brought you to where you are today. 

KY: Yeah. My name is Kaila Yu, and I am from, well, I was born in Kansas, randomly, and then I moved to California when I was three. So I’m basically a California girl, I grew up in Upland. I’ve done a lot of random things in my career, but I just say I’m an author. But throughout the course of my younger life, I did participate in the import scene, which is kind of like the car show scene that inspired Fast and Furious. Then I had a stint as a musician, and then when that was over, I got into journalism, accidentally, and then being on TikTok led to becoming an author. 

AA: Amazing. Would you say you were aware of these issues as you grew up in your life, or was that something that you encountered and started to develop an awareness of later as an adult? 

KY: I mean, I’m sober 11 years. 

AA: Oh, congratulations. 

KY: So that’s probably the point where I started analyzing anything, was 10 years ago. Before that, I don’t think I was in any place of mind to really be analyzing anything, really. And then it was only probably since the pandemic that I really looked back specifically on my twenties and how I might have participated in the Asian fetish. But during the time, all I was aware of was what was shown to me in the media. It was in the 2000s, and I quote Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy in my book, and it describes this time as the “raunch era”, where everything was pornified. Because the internet had just appeared and suddenly we had porn at our fingertips and everybody was watching it. So that turned into influencing our stars of the day, who are like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears on the cover of Rolling Stone, looking like a 25-year-old. I think she was 17. So what I saw was like, “Oh, women are supposed to be sexy. This is empowering.” This was the message we were being fed. And I was very aware of the Asian fetish at the time, just that men had it, but it didn’t seem harmful at the time. It was just gross and annoying, but not dangerous.

AA: Okay, that’s really interesting. Let’s get into the content of the book, and maybe what we can do is start out with some definitions for the conversation. Your book actually begins with these definitions as well, so can you tell us first, just two to start off, what’s an “asiaphile”, and then what exactly is a fetish?

KY: Yeah, so I use the term “asiaphile” in the book just because “man with Asian fetish” is too long, but it’s actually a pretty rare term. It was kind of used back when I was growing up in the 2000s, but not so much today. It’s just a man with an Asian fetish. Not just a preference, it’s beyond a preference. It’s someone who fetishizes their entire race of women, treats them as interchangeable for his consumption, and has an expectation of their behavior to be submissive. It’s very much argued that it’s just a preference, and sometimes it can be. It’s very individual, you know, like I can’t just say “that man has an Asian fetish” categorically, like it’s an individual and we have to know what’s going on inside his head, you know? 

AA: Right. I guess that’s true. That could be dangerous to assume that any biracial couple where there’s an Asian woman and a non-Asian man that that’s necessarily a fetish. 

KY: That’s the real problem, because I have friends who are married to Asian women, and some of them never dated an Asian woman before in their life. They just fell in love with them, and they get these comments because of these icky guys over here that are making it bad for everyone. I would say that most biracial couples are not a fetish, and I would say it’s just a highly vocal minority. 

AA: I see. I see. Well, let’s get into the history. Where does this fetishization come from, where it starts, and then how has it become so prominent and accepted in our culture? 

AA: Yes. It’s flattening women into a trope or a type, right? Rather than as actual human beings. I think that that concept of it being so tied to colonization and the colonial ideology is so interesting with the overall attitude that Westerners were going into Asia with, of conquering, extracting, and exploiting, and that they would bring that attitude to all of their interactions with the people there. Even if the man really genuinely thought, like, “This is a genuine romantic relationship and the feelings I’m having–” but maybe he didn’t even realize. 

KY: Yeah. Even to kind of extrapolate, like women wanting a tall man, it doesn’t really actually do anything, but there’s this original belief, like I guess maybe that was helpful when we were cavemen and a tall man was maybe stronger and could rescue you. But it’s not applicable today, but we still have that desire. 

AA: Yeah. Really interesting. Okay, let’s talk about the specific sexist tropes within the fetishization of Asian women. There’s the geisha, the china doll, the butterfly, the dragon lady. Maybe you could help us break down a couple of these. Where do we see them? 

KY: I think the most common ones are the geisha, the butterfly, and the china doll. Those are all essentially versions of the same thing, which is a submissive Asian girl who self-sacrifices everything for her man. In Madame Butterfly or Miss Saigon, she would rather kill herself and give her baby to the couple, you know, it’s just self-sacrificing to the nth degree. And asiaphiles like to say that Asian women are family-oriented, but I think that’s more coded for being a trad wife or something. 

AA: Yeah, totally. What about the dragon lady? 

KY: Yeah, the dragon lady is interesting, because that’s like totally the opposite. And I cover more of the submissive Asian woman in the book because I think most Asian fetishists are not looking for a dragon lady because it’s the opposite. But it was still very much represented in characters played by Anna May Wong and younger Lucy Liu, where there’s a mysterious, villainous Asian woman who will steal, like a black widow, who will take everything from you.

AA: Yeah, that’s true. That’s really interesting. As a white person, just where I’ve encountered it in different pieces of media, I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so true.” Much more with the china doll, the submissive Asian woman is definitely way more common. And that plays right into patriarchy, right? The patriarchal power dynamics of the man coming in and wanting somebody who’s there to serve and service however he needs. But reducing Asian women to that role is so, so problematic. I want to get into the impact of all of this fetishization. What effects do you see it having on Asian women? I’m especially thinking about young women and girls who absorb this culture and see it as they’re growing up. Does it affect them and impact them? 

KY: Well, I’d be happy to say that it’s a lot better now in diverse media, as in we have so many myriad representations of Asian women. We could always have more, but it’s an exponential amount compared to what I had growing up. So, luckily we have that, but I think the Asian fetish is still alive and well on dating apps, I hear from girls. And with the whole screening process, like, when you’re not dating an Asian guy, you have to wonder, “Was your ex-girlfriend Asian? Okay, maybe that’s okay. Was your ex-ex-girlfriend? Oh wait, your last three were Asian. That’s a little questionable.” And just having to navigate that and wonder. A lot of the men who have an Asian fetish think it’s a compliment, so they’ll actually announce it to you quite casually. My editor was saying that she was riding in an Uber and the Uber driver was like, “Wow, I’ve never been with an Asian girl before.” They’ll just say that to you. What my book illustrates is that in the worst case scenarios, it can lead to violence, and it has. Violence against Asian women is highly underreported. And I didn’t even make the connection that I was assaulted by an Asian fetishist when I was very young, and I stuffed it down so much that I didn’t connect that I experienced violence– I didn’t even make that connection until recently.

AA: Yeah. And you share a lot of firsthand experiences in your book, especially in your work as a model, an actor, and a musician. I’m wondering if you could share some of those firsthand experiences with us. 

KY: Yeah, definitely. One more recent – I guess, 15 years ago – experience is that I was in this all-Asian girl band and we were booked to shoot a music video. And the theme song for this movie, which was kind of a Kill Bill-style fighting dramatic movie. And we wrote this pretty good song, and we presented it to the producer. In this movie, which was about crime and revenge, there was one female lead character who modeled Japanese sushi part-time. It’s this very obscure practice from Japan that isn’t that well-respected, where a naked woman lies on a table and they put sushi on top of her to cover her parts, and people eat off her like a table. And it’s kind of glamorized when it’s brought to the West as some high falutin kind of practice, when it’s looked down upon in Japan. We knew that was in the movie, it wasn’t like we thought we were just going to play a music video of us performing the song. And then when the producer sent us a treatment for the music video, it had all of us, ‘cause we’re an all-Asian girl band, playing sushi girls naked on the table with sushi. And we’re like, “Well, we’re a band. I’m not sure how this is relevant to it.” And we fought back and pushed back on it and we even asked him, “Could you use the actress from the movie to be the sushi model as she is doing this already?” And then he gave some excuses, this and that, and then finally he was like, “Let’s put a pin in this for now.” And then a year later, the music video came out with a white guy band, and they did not have to play naked sushi girls on the table. They just sang their song, you know? Things like that are not that uncommon, actually.

AA: That’s crazy. Well, it’s good that you spoke up for yourself. I can imagine a scenario, especially for younger women– 

KY: Yes! That happened to me a lot when I was younger, that I would just do it because I was like, “This is an opportunity.” At least with this experience, by that time I had been beaten and battered so much that I was like, “I’m not putting up with anything anymore.”

AA: Yeah. Are there any other stories that you’d be willing to share from the book? 

KY: Yeah, I mean the earliest experience was when I was first trying to be an import model, and if you don’t know that term, because most people don’t know the term unless they’re Asian. Import cars are Japanese domestic cars, usually, and Asian kids would fix those up and turn them into race cars, basically. And I was a model for that scene. But when I first wanted to pursue modeling, I was going to UCSD. I was 17 when I started going to college, and I knew I wanted to pursue modeling, but I had no idea how because the internet was barely in its infancy. I started looking in the school newspaper and the San Diego weekly newspaper, and found these ads and I would just go out to these castings, and they were all pretty sketchy now that I look back on them. But I went to a couple and they were perfectly harmless, and one of them that was harmless was just a guy at his house, like shooting models at his house. I did a test shoot there and it was fine and I got photos from it, and at the end of the shoot he showed me some more X-rated videos and he was like, “You can make much more money doing this.” I was like, “No.” My idol was Sung Hi Lee, this Playboy model, and I was willing to do Playboy-type work, but I had no intention or desire to do anything hardcore. So I said no. 

And then weeks later I went to another casting, and when I showed up, it was in his apartment and it was just not a modeling shoot. I showed up, and once I was there alone with him, he coerced me to do much more. And I can’t really explain how it happened because I disassociated a lot of what happened. But he got me there under false pretenses, he told me it was a modeling shoot, like pin-up bikini stuff. And then when I got there, he was like a decades-older man, and I was 19 and tiny. Nobody in the world knew where I was. And just to illustrate, like, I didn’t even realize it was assault at the time or for many, many years. I didn’t talk about it with anyone. And it ended up appearing in a pornographic video that was of all Asian girls. And it was only years later when speaking with a therapist that she was like, “That was assault,” when I described it to her. 

And more recently there’s been a case that just passed. GirlsDoPorn was this huge company that was on PornHub, and basically hundreds of girls were trafficked through this in the same way I was. By the time I realized my situation, my statute of limitations had long passed. But these girls recently sued in the past 10 years and they won an award for $18 million. The guy was on the run for four years, the leader of this trafficking organization, and he was just last week sentenced to 27 years. So, it’s still happening. This is a thing, where men pornographers tell young college girls that they’re going to a modeling shoot and then when they’re in the room they’re pressured to do much more. 

I didn’t even realize it was assault at the time

AA: So terrible. Do you feel like #MeToo, in 2014 and beyond, did that have an impact on girls identifying that dynamic? Like, “Oh my gosh, what was happening? It was assault. That was bad.” Do you feel like it has been better since then? 

KY: Absolutely, yeah. It’s been so much better. I mean, we’re still in a place where we don’t automatically believe women, but it’s so much better. And plus, a lot of women are now realizing and speaking out. Because after #MeToo happened, like, Puff Daddy still didn’t go down with that, so it’s still taking years and years for women to be able to process or even want to look at these things. Because mostly it’s just easier to put it to the side and never look at it again. 

AA: Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. 

KY: But it’ll still come up and affect you in subconscious ways that you don’t realize.

AA: Oh absolutely. And I do think it’s so brave, it’s so courageous for you to write about it so openly and talk about it. So, I thank you for that because I do feel like the more people talk about it, the more de-stigmatized it is, and it really does give other people the courage to come forward. I really applaud you for doing that.

KY: Yeah, it’s so important for all women to share their stories, because we’ve been gaslit for so long into thinking that things were not that bad. 

AA: Yeah, totally. Shifting gears, you write really bravely also about your decisions to undergo multiple cosmetic surgeries. And you say that you always, this is a quote from the book, “always rationalized that going under the knife was for me, but it’s not entirely true. None of these decisions involved my own pleasure.” That’s the end of the quote. Could you tell us a little bit more about those surgeries and the decisions that led you there and the complexity of making those decisions? 

KY: Yeah, it is very complicated because I think the first surgery I got was a very popular surgery amongst Asians, which is the double eyelid surgery. A lot of people, a lot of moms will just bring their daughters to get it when they’re 14, 15, 16. It’s just a normal surgery. I decided to get it when I was 20 or 21. 

AA: Kaila, can you explain, for people who don’t know what that is and haven’t heard of it, just explain what it is and what are the beauty standards that would make people even think of that?

KY: Yeah. For some Asian eyes, there’s no eyelid, and some girls will get it to make the eyelid. I had an eyelid, and a lot of girls will have eyelids but still get them cut higher just to brighten up or open up the eyes. And I don’t think anyone’s trying to look white, consciously, but it is a Western beauty standard, I guess, having bigger eyes. But that is a beauty standard within East Asian culture, too. Bigger eyes are more attractive. But the problem with the surgery is that it was popularized by a man named Dr. David Ralph Millard, and he had very racist ideas about eyes. He wrote about it in medical journals, where he described the eye as dull and lazy and unemotional, which was kind of a belief of Asians at the time. And the surgery was popularized for military wives and also for prostitutes to make them more attractive to Westerners or military men. 

And now it’s just a popular surgery. And I guess mine has fallen, pretty much, so I don’t think I would get it redone. But I do feel a lot of pressure, still some pressure too, not just being Asian, but the pressure as a woman to look a certain way because it opens doors. I also got my breasts done, which I wish as a feminist I can say I regret it, but I actually was very happy with that surgery, so it is very complicated. Because if we weren’t living in a patriarchal society, none of us would feel the need to do this. It’s kind of crazy when you think about what we’re doing, how it’s very normalized. But yet, I don’t regret it because this is the society I live in and it made me more comfortable in my body. I also ended up getting a labiaplasty, I think is how you pronounce it. And that one I don’t think was a necessary surgery, because I think a lot of it was body dysmorphia to want to erase the assault. Looking back on that, that’s what I’m thinking was going through my head. That wasn’t what I was thinking at the time. At the time I was just like, “I need to fix anything I can.” That’s what I was thinking when I was in my twenties. 

AA: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, so many women listening to you right now will really be able to relate. Whether it’s makeup, even shaving our legs and armpits, these things that we’re like, yeah, if we were living in an egalitarian society that’s not patriarchal we wouldn’t have these standards, we wouldn’t have these pressures, and yet we do. And just weighing, like getting Botox, especially as I age, I have so many friends who are doing all kinds of procedures and I feel the pressure on me too, and I’m constantly weighing what feels right to me. And I have three daughters who are all young adults now, and my daughters fall in different places on different things, even on shaving. I have two daughters who don’t shave their legs, and they’re like, “It’s so anti-feminist to shave your legs.” They’re not preachy, but I know they believe that and they’ll say it. And I’m like, “It’s just not a battle that I want to fight. I know, I know. I feel better when I shave my legs. I know it’s not a feminist act, but I’m okay with that. I’m spreading my energy elsewhere.” But it’s a struggle and everybody’s going to feel differently and decide what’s best for them. But I love your honesty where you’re like, “It’s complicated. And yeah, I’m working within the system I’m working within, but it does make me feel better because I’m in this system.” Just being honest about it and having integrity about it.

KY: Right. I would love to get to the place where Pamela Anderson is, and I think she’s standing alone because nobody else is following her. 

AA: Totally. 

KY: But just to show up and be glowing on the red carpet with no makeup on. And a bunch more celebrities could do that, but instead everyone’s showing up with that new face lift where they look 20 years younger and better than they’ve ever looked in their entire lives. 

AA: Well, “better”, right? I mean, just because we’ve decided that that’s better. 

KY: Yeah. If everyone could be more like Pamela Anderson then some of the pressure could be alleviated, you know? But I’m not even brave enough to do that yet. 

AA: Yep. It’s tricky. It is tricky. And I do think it’s so important to analyze the issues, really be educated about it, and then not judge other women for what they do. 

KY: Yeah, don’t judge. 

AA: Yeah. We’re all kind of suffering under these pressures. So yeah, we should do what feels right to us. And speaking of that, I want to talk about what we can actually do to push back. And this can be about beauty standards that women of all races and nationalities encounter, but also I do want to ask you, on behalf of many white listeners who are listening to this right now and are like, “I don’t even think I knew about Asian fetishization.” What can we do to push back against that? What can we do to be allies and supportive in that effort? 

KY: That’s a good question. I think awareness is a first step. But I guess the question is that it’s the individuals with the Asian fetish that I would like to read the book, who are probably not going to read the book, honestly. Maybe the thing is to push back when a man is proudly proclaiming their Asian fetish, but usually they’re not going to do it to women. They’re going to do that to other men. For another man to be able to call that out as possibly problematic. But then it’s tricky, again, because I think there’s a world where it’s possible for a man to have a preference for Asian women and not have it be a fetish that’s damaging and dehumanizing. But I think it’s important to have the awareness out there, knowing the colonialist histories of it and how problematic it is. Because here’s the thing, a lot of trolls will say that Asian women have a white fetish because they’re with the white guys. But it just doesn’t work flipped over, because Asian women have not started wars to colonize England or the United States or France and then taken the men as their reward, as the spoils of war. They don’t sign up for sex trips to Thailand to go sleep with as many white male prostitutes as they can get. It doesn’t work on the flip side. 

I will say that there are possibly some Asian women who have internalized racism, because there are some Asian women who say, “I am just not attracted to Asian men.” And that internalized racism is basically from when you’re growing up in a Western country and you’re watching movies and television and the hero of every movie and the quarterback and the star is always a white man, so that’s what you look at as the ultimate ideal. And then you see how much it’s changing in the media now, because growing up, Asian men were kind of emasculated and not treated as that attractive. But now that K-pop is popular, there is a growing faction of women who are very attracted to Asian men. So it’s all fabricated, all of it. I think maybe the way we could push back is just being more discerning about how the media influences us. 

AA: Yeah, it’s actually a thing. 

KY: It’s a thing? Oh wow. 

AA: Yeah. I even don’t want to say the term, but people would say they come back with “Asian fever”. 

KY: Oh wow. 

AA: And I never thought, I mean, I would hear my peers, young men that were my age who went on missions to Asian countries would talk about that and would only date Asian women after that. It felt icky to me, but I didn’t know why. You know what I mean? I was just like, “Ugh, something about that just does not sit well with me.” So I’ve appreciated learning from your book and learning from you why that felt so icky. Something in me detected it was, but I just didn’t know. There are going to for sure be some listeners who have an LDS background who are going to have lights going off right now that are like, “Oh, that’s what that was. So if I encounter that, if I hear it in a conversation, I have something to say, like, ‘Oh, you realize that that’s a fetish–’”. 

KY: That’s crazy. I’ve never heard of that before. 

AA: Yeah. Well, to be honest, those missionary efforts really are in the tradition of colonialism. It really is. Going to another country and imposing a Western religion on that country. It is a very hierarchical power dynamic and it just persists. I am sure it’s not just in the LDS church, I’m sure other Christian missionary programs that are going into other countries kind of carry that historical context with them, and it continues even now in a religious context. 

KY: Wow. That’s more for me to research.

AA: Yeah. And I’m curious now, too, I need to look this up. It’s just from my own lived experience. I’ve never looked it up to see if anybody’s written an academic paper on it or something, but something to look at anyway. Kaila, we’re kind of to the end of our conversation, and I am just wondering if there are any takeaways that you’d like to leave for listeners. And then before we go, where can we learn more about you, pick up a copy of the book, and find your work. 

KY: Yeah, I think the takeaway is basically that the Asian fetish isn’t harmless. I think that most people hear it and are like, “Oh, that’s weird, that’s funny,” or “That guy’s strange.” But I think it’s important to know where it originates from, and it originated out of blood, out of colonialism and war. And it ends in blood, sometimes. One highly publicized instance was the Atlanta spa shootings, where a man with a sex addiction decided to take it out on his objects of sex addiction instead of fixing himself. And he was very religious too, but he shot and killed eight people, and six of them were Asian women. And then the media tried to say it was not racially or sexually motivated, which it was. And even though most of the time the Asian fetish probably isn’t going to lead to violence, it happens enough that it is important to be aware of that. 

AA: Mm-hmm. For sure. It’s so, so important. And then where can listeners find all of your work?

KY: Yeah, you can find the book in all bookstores, but I always say support your local independent bookstore. And my name is Kaila Yu, and you can find me on my website by my name and on all social media. 

AA: Awesome. Well, again, I do want to really tell listeners this is such an interesting issue and such an interesting book. Again, it’s called Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty, by Kaila Yu. Thank you so much, Kaila, for being here today. I so enjoyed this conversation. 

KY: Yeah, thank you so much.

Listen to the Episode

here

&

Share your Comments with us below!