A deeply personal memoir-in-essays, reckoning with being an object of Asian fetish and how media, pop culture, and colonialism contributed to the oversexualization of Asian women--from;Kaila Yu, former pin-up model and lead singer of Nylon Pink. No one fetishized Kaila;Yu more than she fetishized herself. As a young girl, she dreamt of beauty. But none of the beautiful women on television looked like her. Growing up as a teenager in the late 90s and early 2000s, Asian representation was scarce, and;where;it existed, the women were often reduced to overtly sexual and submissive caricatures--the geishas of the book turned film Blending;vulnerable stories from Yu’s;life with incisive cultural critique and history, Raw and;intimate, <Fetishized< is a personal journey of self-love and healing. It’s both a searing indictment of the violence of objectification and a tender exploration of the broken relationship so many of us have with beauty, desire, and our own bodies....

Autorentext

Kaila Yu is a freelance writer for the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Business Insider, Conde Nast Traveler and more. Formerly, she was a model and the lead singer for the all–Asian American female rock band Nylon Pink. Fetishized is her first book. You can find Kaila online @kailayu.

Klappentext

A “raw and lyrical” (New York Times) memoir-in-essays from former pinup model and lead singer of Nylon Pink Kaila Yu, reckoning with being an object of Asian fetish and how media, pop culture, and colonialism contributed to the oversexualization of Asian women.

AN NPR AND DEBUTIFUL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

No one fetishized Kaila Yu more than she fetishized herself. As a young girl, she dreamt of beauty. But none of the beautiful women on television looked like her. In the late '90s and early 2000s Asian women were often reduced to overtly sexual and submissive caricatures—the geishas of the book-turned-film Memoirs of a Geisha; the lewd twins, Fook Mi and Fook Yu, in Austin Powers in Goldmember; Papillon Soo Soo’s sex worker character in the cult Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket; and pin-up goddess Sung-Hi Lee. Meanwhile, the "girls next door" were always white. Within that narrow framework, Kaila internalized a painful conclusion: The only way someone who looked like her could have value or be considered beautiful and desirable was to sexualize herself.

Blending vulnerable stories from Yu’s life with incisive cultural critique and history, Fetishized is a memoir-in-essays exploring feminism, beauty, yellow fever, and the roles pop culture and colonialism played in shaping pervasive and destructive stereotypes about Asian women and their bodies. Yu reflects on the women in media who influenced her, the legacy of U.S. occupation in shaping Western perceptions of Asian women, her own experiences in the pinup and import modeling industry, auditioning for TV and film roles that perpetuated dehumanizing stereotypes, and touring the world with her band in revealing outfits. She recounts altering her body to conform to Western beauty standards, allowing men to treat her like a sex object, and the emotional toll and trauma of losing her sense of self in the pursuit of the image she thought the world wanted.

Candid and intimate, Fetishized is a personal journey of self-love and healing. It’s both a searing indictment of the violence of objectification and a tender exploration of the broken relationship so many of us have with beauty, desire, and our own bodies.

Leseprobe
Introduction

An absurdly wealthy white male friend with a famous predilection for Asian women once told me, “I prefer Asian women, because if you line up a row of a hundred Asian women and a row of a hundred white women, the Asian group will be way more attractive than the white group.”

I rolled my eyes, thinking, Not true; it’s just that you, an Asiaphile, think practically all Asian women are beautiful. But I smiled and said nothing.

Even more recently, I wandered into a store on Melrose with a date. “You should wear this,” he said with a laugh, jokingly pointing to a dominatrix-style leather corseted bodysuit like something Lady Gaga would wear onstage. As we passed the register, I stopped to play with two handsome huskies, one pure white and one with an unusual dappled brown coat and cornflower-blue eyes.

“You know, this one can say ‘Ruff, I love you,’ ” said the dogs’ owner—a portly man in his sixties with wild, curly brown hair—as if to impress us. “Let me show you.”

He waved his hands in the air. Both dogs proceeded to howl, but not quite as he described.

“Where are you guys from?” he asked, seeming eager to chat. “I’m that rare LA native,” he added, referring to the fact that so many in Hollywood are hopeful transplants, chasing a silvery dream of fame or riches.

“Oh, me too,” I said. I grew up in Southern California, although more accurately, in the muggy Inland Empire.

“No, where are you from from,” he insisted.

I knew what he was asking and yet answered accordingly, not needing to make this a teachable moment. “My parents are from Taiwan.”

I held my breath in anticipation of what would drop out of his mouth next. My date hadn’t been familiar with the concept of the Asian fetish, and now he was observing it in the wild.

“Asian girls are the most beautiful women,” said the dog owner, gazing at me as if I were a glazed doughnut. Curious about what he would say next, I let him continue. “I want to start a class where Asian women teach Jewish women how to be the best wives. They could learn a thing or two. You ever heard of Gloria Steinem? Yeah, women’s liberation is the worst thing that ever happened to American women.”

Note that Asiaphiles often espouse that Asian women make the best wives, something you rarely hear out of the mouths of Asian men. The craziest thing about the Asian fetish is how confidently men announce it, with absolutely no shame and a good measure of pride.

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When I was growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, Asiaphiles were limited to creepy, pasty fifty-year-old men like the dog owner at the clothing store. Nowadays, with the popularity of K-pop and anime, and the increased visibility of Asian women in social media, TV, and film, it seems the Asian fetish has been accepted as mainstream. Handsome, tall hipsters with tattoos and famous musicians proudly proclaim their love for Asian women. It’s like everyone simply accepted that white men love Asian women, reminding me of the blog Stuff White People Like, which went viral in 2008, listing Asian girls as number eleven. Although the blog was meant to be satirical, it states, “95% of white males have at one point in their lives experienced yellow fever.” Yellow fever doubles as the name of an unwanted disease transmitted by mosquitoes, further derogating the term. Like mosquitos, fetishists suck the humanity out of Asian women, turning them into 2D sex objects. The “Asian Girls” entry has more than twenty-three thousand impassioned comments, whereas other blog posts average around a thousand comments. That blog post has become only more relevant today.

Today, Asiaphiles are everywhere I turn. Open up TikTok, turn on the radio, and I’m met with musicians flaunting their unfiltered appreciation for Asian women as if they were commodities rather than breathing women. Multiplatinum artist The Weeknd has been accused of having an Asian fetish, rapping, “Got a sweet Asian chick, she go lo mein,” reducing us to bodies and menu items. Asian women populate his…