Asian Women in the Media and "Yellow Fever"

I found our class discussion today on representations of Asians in the media extremely interesting, and I wanted to expand on a specific facet of that based on personal experience and representations in media—the idea of "yellow fever" and why it's even a thing.

"Yellow fever" often refers to men having a sexual or romantic preference for East Asian women (note - it is apparently not a condition that affects women). According to an article written for The Telegraph, "the most recent figures form 2.4 million users of Facebook dating apps showed a clear skew in preference for women of East Asian descent by men of all racial groups, except, ironically, Asian men".

It sounds absolutely ridiculous when noting that such a large amount of men have an apparent preference for East Asian women, but it's something that I've actually encountered multiple times. I remember my most recent experience with this—I was at a bar with some friends, and a White guy came up to talk to me. He said something along the lines of, "I'm really into Asian girls, do you want to go out some time?" My response was extremely unfavorable (okay, okay I cussed him out), and he ended up yelling at me and storming off because "it was a compliment" and I had no right to get upset.

In what way is it a compliment to tell someone that you find their entire race attractive? This is an entirely different concept than liking brunettes, or finding people with blue eyes good looking. East Asian refers to anyone from about 10 different countries (Asian refers to about 48 countries). The liking of such an enormous group of people based on race points to something a lot deeper than simply physical attractiveness; every time somebody is "attracted" to a race, there are stereotypical assumptions being made based on their ethnicity. So what is it about East Asian women in particular?

Maybe it's because they're stereotypically assumed to be "submissive", "docile" and "delicate".

(Side note: there's no reason this woman's eyes should be blue. Yet they are, which speaks to the "whitewashing" of media. Even Asian characters aren't allowed to be fully Asian, at least in marketing materials.)

Or perhaps it's because they're so often portrayed as "exotic", "sexy", and "dangerous"?

Maybe it's a combination of the two: that they're allegedly timid and sweet on the outside, but a sexual creature in bed with a secret life of gun slinging and samurai sword fighting badassness... which interestingly relates so perfectly to what we've spoken about before—that women in general (regardless of race) are expected to behave like this. In this case, it's just the heterosexual script (from the Kim article) taken to the extreme. If East Asian women are submissive, they will prioritize the sexual needs of men, always seeking to please them. Yet, because they're secretly exotic and sexual, these men don't need to trade off for sexual inexperience. It's the whole package, right? Especially because East Asian women are often stereotyped and not allowed depth of character, they turn into this one-dimensional trope that is reflected in the media and in turn, reflected in the mere existence of a concept like "yellow fever".

This is one of my favorite scenes from Better Off Ted, a great television show from 2009 that was cancelled after one season. It sums up the "exoticism" angle pretty nicely:

Finally, this video a great commentary about why it's so problematic to romantically and sexually prefer Asian women:



On attempting to think of characters in popular media that go against these typical tropes of Asian women reflected in this video, I'm coming up a little short. The only ones I can think of are periphery characters, or have other problematic representations. So obviously, there's still a lot of progress to be made. Perhaps if Asian women are no longer portrayed in such stereotypical ways, it could change the public (often male) perception of them as romantically and sexually desirable due to their race. And then who knows? Maybe someday we can eradicate "yellow fever" for good.

Reading:

Kim, J.L., Sorsoli, C.L., Collins, K., Zylbergold, B.A., Schooler, D., & Tolman, D.L. (2007). From sex to sexuality: Exposing the heterosexual script on primetime network television. Journal of Sex Research, 44(2), 145-157