Sexualized Asian Women

The hypersexualization of females is fairly prevalent across different cultures. The media seems to be bombarded by it; magazines are plastered with risque images of barely clothed woman and even young girls. In 2011, a French issue of Vogue featured females as young as ten years-old as models, “Stretched and slinked on an array of animal furs.” Their clothing was low cut and revealing. This prompted the French

Today, when society talks about diversity, often times, Asian-Americans are brought into the conversation and are talked about as highly looked up to individuals, but they haven’t always been this way. On television, many times, Asian-Americans are represented as “nerdy” and “socially incapable/awkward”, Asian-American males are mostly shown as being weak and stereotypically awkward, while Asian-American females are either shown as “exotic” or also stereotypically awkward and nerdy, as stated by Takaki in his book Strangers from a Different Shore on page 479,

A group of young adult Vietnamese women are interviewed in the documentary, all of which relate to being pushed to perfection by their parents; perfect bodies, perfect education, perfect everything. The psychologists and plastic surgeons interviewed in this documentary even mention how it is common for Asian women to request surgical procedures in pursuit of what they think is beauty in American culture. Specifically, they most commonly request the procedures that give them larger, more expressive eyes. However, even beyond Asian-American culture, many people in modern society view themselves through a looking glass of societal standards and find something they want to change. Normally, it is rare that people are satisfied with their innate self-image when it comes to physical beauty— though, this notion is even more amplified among Asian-American culture.

In many movies Asian women are sexually stereotyped as “exotic, subservient, compliant, industrious, and eager to please.” If not that, Japanese women are shown to be “inherently scheming, untrustworthy,

Western portrayals of Asian women in media have often been stereotypical, one-dimensional characters such as the submissive and docile Lotus Blossom, the strong and domineering, but deceitful Dragon Lady, or the Asian hooker who is used as nothing more than a mere prop for the male gaze (Kuo, Rachel). However, the Western audience has also been exposed to other portrayals of Asian women through another form of entertainment called anime. Anime, or Japanese animation, has many genres that are named according to the target audience it is made for. For shounen, meaning male adolescents, is largely about action-packed adventures and accomplishing a goal or defeating an enemy (Eisenbeis, Richard). The shounen genre, however, despite its target audience that is

The Western world’s conquest and domination of Asia is the driving source of sexual desire for East Asian women. To understand how the objectification and fetishization of East Asian women is harmful, one must traced it roots and understand how it began. The stereotypes assigned to East Asian women are rooted from the violence of wartime. The stereotypes live through the mass media’s re-imagination by books, movies, musicals and operas. East Asian women will find no peace for as long as these hyper-sexed stereotypes live.

Chang’s writing is focused upon from the view of a sociocultural standpoint, with discovering the internal ideas beneath beauty from the external appearance. It included an experiment with nearly 500 Asian American female participants who took part in a questionnaire package regarding both one’s personal beliefs as well as on social relations with Caucasian-American women. The results of this showed that, there are little to none ethnic group differences in the internalization of the dominant White beauty standards among Asian American women. Despite the lack in differences, the findings made contributions by showing the importance of racial identity and beauty standards in Asian American women’s body image development and psychological well-being.

Raunch culture, the over-sexualiation of woman, is on the rise as we so vividly see both in the movie “Mean Girls” and Ariel Levy’s, a well-known journalist and author’s, article titled Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture”. The movie “Mean Girls” tells the story of a highschool girl, Cady Heron, who moves to the country and to her first public school. She discovers that the best way to survive is to try to blend in with the norms that society provides. In her case, she befriends a group of girls who only focus on their sexual appearances, and belittling the others around them to feel more powerful and feminine in their own eyes. This theme closely relates to Ariel Levy’s article where she awes at the change of our society with statements such as, “Its stars who kept talking about “strong women” and “empowerment,” who were dressed in alternating soft-porn styles-- as massage parlor geishas, dominatrixes, yodeling Heidis in alpine bustiers”.

I chose to write about this topic related to LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) because since I was 15 years old I have been able to relate and I have had many friends who are of Asian (Oriental) extract. Also, I have also had a roommate who was from Bankcock Thailand. This critique will cover an article written by Alice Y. HOM titled, “Stories from the Homefront: Perspectives of Asian American

Asian American are face some types of stereotypes in today’s society, and it may produce by media or historical propaganda. For example, from the economic views, the Asian American should be successful than other race. From the education view, the Asian American kids should be smart, good at the math or engineer etc. particularly, the stereotype of the Asian women we can easy discover in the media, such as the Hollywood movies. the Asian American actresses are viewed as sexual and erotic objects of the society. From the history, most the Asian American actresses limit in the roles, such as "Dragon Lady", and "China Doll", in addition, both two role's characteristics represent sexual and erotic nature of Asian women. Even in today, these stereotypical

As an Asian-American woman, I want to see better representation for the Asian community; if media is supposed to reflect the real world, then there is no excuse for leaving Asians out in American films. I want to dissect why Asians are still marginalized and stereotyped today when there is a demand for more diversity in media. In addition, I want to cover the history behind the stereotyping and whitewashing of Asians in Hollywood and how that still has a negative impact today. In fact, recent movies have white-washed Asian roles in favor of white actors. In May 2015, Sony released “Aloha,” where Emma Stone portrayed Allison Ng, a part Chinese-Hawaiian fighter pilot. This blatant erasure is also evident in Dreamworks’ casting of Scarlett Johansson

Throughout the semester we have learned that Asian Americans have gone through many hurdles and roadblocks in order to establish an identity for themselves. Although these social stereotypes have been established by other people, Asians didn’t allow this to define who they were as people. Either its projected by films, events or social media, we are able to see Asian Americans taking a stand with one another. Through popular Asian American Culture such as Beauty Pageants and films like Saving Face, we are able to see Asian Americans asserting their power by embracing their social identities. Through Beauty Pageants we are able to see Asian women truly embracing their ethnicity and Gender.

In today’s mainstream media, there exists a visible lack of Asian American representation. When they are given roles in film and television, those roles often maintain the stereotypical ideology which has been dominant for decades. Asian American stereotypes in these media range from hard-working and servile to masters of the martial arts and often put forth a misguided or exaggerated impression of what Asian Americans are like as a group. I argue that these stereotypical representations of Asian Americans manifest themselves in viewers’ minds and affect the way they view the minority group far after the they power off their television sets. These stereotypes are challenged when individual Asian Americans emerge and do not fit the mold that Hollywood has created for them. The quotes “looking at independent media artifacts, we can see the difficulties of self-representation, the potential for changing and configuring problematic images from Asian American and the media”(Ono) gives us a understanding to what independent media is to Asian Americans. Along with the quote “Inspires the creative expression of “Asian Americans who have felt excluded by particular forms of racialization”(Ono). These quotes will illustrate the shifting paradigm within the media from mainstream media to independent self produced work becoming the norm and how it can change Asian American lives demonstrated in these two films WHITEWASHING & ASIAN REPRESENTATION | Diversity Speaks - 2017 LA Film

Although they are the “fastest growing ethnic group” in America, Asian Americans are still not prominent in mainstream media (Zhang 20). Just like every other racial group, they have their own stereotypes. Unfortunately, due to this underrepresentation, there are few instances where people openly speak against these racial stereotypes. In the article “Why Is It Still Okay to Make Fun of Asians?,” Elaine Teng mentioned Chris Rock’s performance at the Oscars. He joked about three common Asian stereotypes, something that people still find socially acceptable to make fun of. American Born Chinese brings up many common Asian American stereotypes and shows how the characters respond to these “jokes.”

One of the most prevalent issue in today’s world is racism. The prejudice and racism against Asian Americans seems to never end. Either it’s a nasty side remark about one’s looks or a judgment about one’s personality and abilities. In high school, one of my best friends was Vietnamese and I remember her going through quite a bit of problems. She was most definitely stereotyped and was supposed to be good at math and science, when in truth, she was horrible at both subjects. Instead, she loved history, cooking, and art. Offensive and wrong situations, similar to these, have been seen throughout history and are still seen today. My only wish is that by understanding Asian American culture and history, we can prevent the creation of stereotypes about people, as well as end the discrimination and make sure these events are never repeated.