An Asian fetish is a strong sexual or romantic preference for people of Asian descent or heritage. The term usually refers to women specifically of East or Southeast Asian descent though it may also include those of South Asian descent.
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. "Having learned from their experiences with African Americans who reproduced and demanded citizenship, education and land, the U.S. government sought to fully control the Asian-American worker by controlling their reproduction and their citizenship rights through laws that prohibited Asian-American female migration."
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.
Terminology and usage of yellow fever A common term used for Asian fetishization (particularly with East and Southeast Asians) is yellow fever. The term is used as a derogatory pun on the disease of the same name, comparing those with a fetish for East and Southeast Asians or "Orientals" to people who are infected with a disease. Yellow fever is used in Asian fetishization to refer to the color terminology of people of East Asian descent (and some people of Southeast Asian descent), because historically, persons of East Asian heritage have been described as "yellow people" based on the tone of their skin. Hwang argues that this phenomenon is caused by the stereotyping of Asians in Western society. The term yellow fever is analogous to the term jungle fever, a derogatory expression used for racial fetishism associated with dating between different races.
Research on racial preferences In 2007, a study using a sample of 400 Columbia University students at a speed dating event did not find evidence of a preference among White men for women of East Asian descent. The study found that most people preferred to date within their own race.
A 2008 American study on female facial attractiveness with majority White participants (27 men and 45 women; with a significant proportion of East Asian, and few participants from other backgrounds) found that the faces of White women were rated most attractive. The study showed gradations of computer-generated racial mixes to the participants in increments of one-quarter. The top three rated faces were 100% White, 75% White 25% Black, and 75% White 25% Asian. To the researchers' surprise, Asian women's faces were rated significantly less attractive than White or Black faces in this study.
In 2012, a UK study found that Asian women were rated as more attractive than White and Black women. It was proposed that this was because the features of Asian women were perceived as more feminine, which could explain the high rate of interracial marriages between Asian women and White men in the UK and US. A 2018 facial manipulation experiment conducted in Australia was consistent with these hypotheses, finding both Asian and White participants chose to reduce the "masculine" facial traits of Asian women less than those of White women, which, the authors conclude, suggests that Asian faces may be more feminine to begin with.
In contrast, a 2013 Australian study on facial attractiveness with Asian and White participants found that Asian and White women's faces were not different in attractiveness overall, although a slight own-race bias was observed. However, when rating composite faces (the average of many faces, grouped by race, as opposed to real faces), all participants rated the composite faces more highly and rated the composite faces of White women the highest. In a follow-up experiment, the researchers found that there was no difference in the perceived facial femininity of Asian and White women. Another study that same year, which used a sample of 126,000 OkCupid users in the US, found that all races initiated chats with their own race the most. Another study that same year using a sample of 934,000 online daters in 20 US cities found that Asian women received the most messages on average; however, the authors also noted that own-race preference was the predominant trend. The authors noted that their results "contradict the popular belief that [...] white men prefer Asian women over white women".
A 2015 study using a sample of 58,880 online daters in nine Western European countries found that non-Hispanic White women were the most preferred group of women by far, followed by Hispanic and then Asian women. This tendency surpassed own-race preference as the predominant trend.
A 2018 study using a sample of 187,000 online daters in 4 US cities found that Asian women were the most desired group of women. "Race plays heavily into the results, with Asian women and white men being the most sought after overall."
While the perceived femininity and sexual capital of Asian women may depend on the population studied, Zheng (2016) argues that attraction is influenced significantly by culture, stating "sexualized stereotypes of Asian women contributes to an individual's sexually preferring them, even if that contribution is not obvious or accessible to introspection.": "It is this double feminization that increases the sexual capital of Asian women but not that of Asian men, a fact perfectly borne out in the oft-noted greater number of relationships between Asian women and White men compared to the number of Asian men in relationships with White women (e.g., Feliciano, Robnett, and Komaie 2009), in attractiveness ratings that rank Asians highest among women but lowest among men (Lewis 2012), and in the greater representation of Asian women compared to Asian men in popular media (Schug et al. 2015). This cross-disciplinary body of work supports the claim that it would be utterly unrealistic to deny that lengthy exposure to a culture historically saturated with sexualized stereotypes of Asian women contributes to an individual's sexually preferring them, even if that contribution is not obvious or accessible to introspection."
Effects of fetishization Encounters with Asian fetishists are a familiar experience for many Asian-American women. Asian women may pick up on clues, such as a history of only dating Asians, even warning each other about potential hotspots for Asian fetishists. While several authors have complicated feelings about the subject, most express frustration at opinions from non-Asians that fetishization is a good thing, pointing out its negative aspects and deconstructing the harmful meanings it entails.