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Leilani, Faith, Heidi: Podcaster/Debater (3 group members minimum)
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Leilani: Transcriber (only 1 group member)
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Faith, Heidi: Tech person (only 1 group member)
GROUP 2:
Voices Unfiltered -
Asian Women Fetishization
Introduction
Within this podcast, Voices Unfiltered, the host Faith allows for a diverse topic to be touched on about the long standing idea of the fetishization of Asian women. Faith will bring in two researchers, Leilani and Heidi, to explore how harmful stereotypes have been normalized within our society. Within the podcast, they will bring in research from movies, dating sites, academic sources and so much more. The discussion on this topic shows how Asian women are viewed more as an aesthetic rather than human beings. As the podcast goes on, the controversial topic has been in our world for decades and that's why in the podcast they tend to shine a light on it. The controversy digs deep as the fetishization of Asian women has been extremely normalized for decades and many don't touch on this subject. In Voices Unfiltered they take a quick little break to thank their sponsors of the day Redbull. Some questions that were brought up in the podcast were why were Asian Women fetishized and even how does the fetishization still continue today. All in all, in the end of the podcast they all came together and could feel connected to one another as everyone has a similar experience.
Discussion Questions
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Why were Asian women historically fetishized? How and why does this fetishization persist?
Podcast Audio & Transcript
“In the Background” — Research Section
Links
Cultural Case Studies:
Memoirs of a Geisha - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397535/
Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0232500/
Assigned viewing:
“the self-fetishization of east-asian: koreaboos & weeps aren’t the only problem” | oliSUNvia (2022)
All assigned readings (2 popular news media):
“Ornamentalism: A Feminist Theory for the Yellow Woman” | Anne Anlin Cheng (2018):
MLA Format: Cheng , Anne Anlin. “Ornamentalism: A Feminist Theory for the Yellow Woman | Critical Inquiry: Vol 44, No 3.” Journals.UChicago , Anne Anlin Cheng , 2018, www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/696921.
Ornamentalism was used in our podcast to talk about how Asian women are further being seen as objects and decorations for men because of their unique skin color (yellow), which further emphasis our point of the danger of fetishization that is still persisting in our life.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00335630.2022.2088841#abstract:
MLA Format: LeMesurier , Jennifer Lin. “Race as Supplement: Surfaces and Crevices of the Asian Feminine Body.” Tandfonline , Jennifer Lin LeMesurier , 17 May 2021, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00335630.2022.2088841#abstract.
The case study that we choose further emphasizes the theory of ornamentalism where we see that Asian women are again being seen as objects for their unique yellow skin, even though there was a crime committed against Asian women in the Atlantic, George spa incident. In the Atlantic, George spa incident, the murder who committed the crime of killing 8 women where 6 of them were Asian women, claimed that he killed them to eliminate his temptation and even Amy Schumer (a comedian) even joked that it doesn’t matter what women do because every men will leave them for an Asian women anyways.
All assigned readings (2 scholarly source):
“Odds Favor White Men, Asian Women On Dating App” | Chow & Hu (2013):
MLA Format: Chow, Kat, and Elise Hu. “Odds Favor White Men, Asian Women on Dating App.” NPR 30 Nov. 2013, www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/11/30/247530095/are-you-interested-dating-odds-favor-white-men-asian-women.
The scholarly source that we were given talks about how Asian Women are more likely chosen on dating apps than other races solely based on how they look than who they truly are, which supports the idea that Asian women are going through fetishization still today.
MLA Format: Commons, Photo Courtesy of Creative, et al. “Historical Hyper Sexualization of Asian Women in Western Film.” The Justice, 5 Mar. 2024, www.thejustice.org/article/2024/03/historical-hyper-sexualization-of-asian-women-in-western-film.
The scholarly source that we choose to give us examples of films and movies that represent fetishization like Madame Butterfly, PICCADILY, and so on. We used this to talk about in our podcast to see how fetishization was shown in the past and still persists even today in the modern times.
Cultural Artifacts
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https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTrxP1Rx5/ The creator of this post on TikTok expresses how they can tell when someone is going through “Yellow Fever”, a phenomenon where an individual has a fetish for Asian people. She explains from first hand experience that Asian people are put on a pedestal when it comes to their appearance, and compared to other Asian women.
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https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTrefqK36/ In this tik tok it states “When someone so obviously has an Asian Fetish and their only defense is “So having a type is bad now??” As we look in the comment sections people tend to state how people automatically assume that they listen to things such as K-pop, anime, and so much more. This just goes into how normalized everything is because people think being asian is an aesthetic rather than being an actual human being.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23THv3d0Mag In this youtube video we see how they mention this article that Elaine Chou wrote called “What White men say in our absence” they then state how this made men furious and they stated how this is not at all how white men act. Within this they bring up a good example of how if you date a frat guy you'll be stuck in a “problamatic” group of guys but if you don't date guys who aren't frat guys they're more like soft cutesy and you’ll be less stuck with problematic guys. Within this whole video it's the topic of how white men are toxic while asian men aren't, The main thing is still just the stereotypes within this.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DanlEUTrHls This youtuber explains her first-hand experience of White males fetishizing her by the constant attention from them and dehumanization she goes through when she is out in public.