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Asian fetish

Sexual obsession with Asian people expressed by non-Asians

  • 17 min read
  • 8 chapters

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Through Asian people, Ethnic groups in East Asia and Ethnic groups in South Asia

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The origins of the sexual fetishization of the people of Asia are unclear. Male Dutch colonists fetishised Southeast Asian women in the Dutch East Indies, on the basis of the darker skin and hair colour of the Indigenous women. Similar accounts were reported in other colonized territories such as the British Raj, where it was common for English men to have Indian mistresses against a backdrop where Indian women were sexualised through what scholars describe as a typical colonial gaze and viewed as seductive, sensual and exotic. After World War II, Japanese women gained prominence in American beauty pageants, at a time when large numbers of Japanese war brides were entering the United States.

Targets of Asian fetishization report a number of harms and psychological burdens as a result of being fetishized, such as anxiety and doubt about the motivations of those who display interest in them, and difficulty asserting their individuality when being reduced to their race and gender.

The term yellow fever (not to be confused with the viral disease yellow fever) is sometimes used to describe the fetishization of East Asians and Southeast Asian men/women by non-Asians, as well as having a preference for dating or marrying men/women of East Asian and Southeast Asian origin. The usage of "yellow" stems from the color terminology for race that is sometimes applied to people of East Asian descent.

While most research in the field focuses on heterosexual males with an Asian fetish (and amongst them, mostly White American heterosexual males), Asian fetish can also be homosexual, directed at Asian men, and be held by people of all races who are not Asian.

History

Although there are multiple theories about the origin of the Asian fetish, it has been posited that modern Asian fetishism in the United States emerged in the aftermath of US involvement in the Pacific War during World War II.

In the 1800s, after the opening of Japan by Matthew Perry, word began to spread in the United States about the sexual appeal of Asian women. Nationalistic fears that Asian women would seduce White men and destroy White families led to the passage of the Page Act of 1875, which prevented Chinese women from entering the United States. However, another purpose of the ban was to limit the reproduction of the Chinese working class in America.

As early as the 1920s, it was noticed that Dutch men preferred South East Asian women over Dutch women. When the Dutch East Indies was a colony of the Dutch Empire, a new beauty ideal was established, which ranked Indigenous women with light brown skin and lustrous black hair at the top. The American consul general to the Dutch East Indies remarked that, to the average man, a mixed-race woman in the colony was considered more attractive than a "pure" Dutch woman, because the complexions of Dutch women were too pale.

After the surrender of Japan in 1945, the U.S. military occupied Japan, and U.S. soldiers began to interact with Japanese women. Although the American military initially forbid relations with Japanese women; the U.S. servicemen were "enamored" by the femininity of Japanese women, and formed relationships with them anyway. There was a perception that Japanese women were superior to American women, and there was a widespread sentiment "that a Japanese woman's heart was twice as big as those of her American sisters".

In 1959, Akiko Kojima, a Japanese woman, became the first non-white woman to win the Miss Universe beauty pageant. That same year, Miyoshi Umeki, also a Japanese woman, won an Academy Award. This period marked the beginning of the phenomenon known as the "Oriental Wave", during which Asian women first gained prominence in Western media. The wave mainstreamed a stereotype of Asian femininity: slender, shy, and intelligent, yet also sexual.

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