the self-fetishization of east-asia: koreaboos & weebs aren't the only problem

It's no secret that east asian culture  and trends have been booming in the West. There was a whole thing about celebrities getting  their BBLs removed, and East Asian traits becoming more desirable. Quite frankly, it's been a growing  trend for a while now.

But I feel like it's gotten so noticeable that even if you aren't fans  of K-pop, anime, K-dramas, Douyin, makeup, Korean skincare, or those four asian girls that  people salivate over, you feel their presence. "And the Oscar goes to. .

. Parasite! " *Applause* "Wow, BTS!

! " *Music* "This month, I'm going to be swapping my current skincare routine for a 10-step Korean  one. Welcome to Korean Skincare 101.

Now first of all, can we all just cheer about  the fact that I finally got an actual microphone? I know i'm holding it weird, like it's  supposed to be standing on something, but I'm just gonna hold it because  I couldn't find a place to stand it. Now because of how popular East Asian culture has  become.

. . .

I mean really it's only South Korea, Japan, and kind of China? A type of non-East Asian  has emerged: one that fetishizes appropriates or just oddly obsesses over East Asianness. Behold  the koreaboos, the weebs, or even worse.

. . the weeaboos.

"Oh~ like I can't think of words, I  can't be in english right now. . .

desu~" But as fun as it is to cringe at Oli London and Russian  girls who swear that they're fully Korean, this video idea came to me after wondering what  factors led them to fetishization. The obvious answer is colonialism and the East-West dichotomy  they pushed onto the world. The exotic oriental caricature, painted by European powers.

But  there's a less obvious and less pleasant factor that I want to consider. Does East Asia and  East Asian people fetishize themselves in any way? There's certainly no coincidence between  how we've only popularized terms that refer to fetishizing Korean or Japanese culture, and Korea  and Japan carrying out the most successful culture export plans targeted at the West.

Rarely  do we hear about fetishization of Vietnam, Laos, Philippines and other less powerful East  Asian countries. A large focus of East Asian activism in the West has also been based on  physical characteristics. Calling out East Asian fishing for example, or being proud of East  Asian features.

There is one last controversial question that arises from all this. Can being  fetishized ever be desirable or empowering? Fetishization refers to the quote, "The intricate  ways in which minority subjectivities are objectified based solely on stereotypes and in  ways that deny people their humanity.

" Usually people think of fetishization in a physical  sense. For example, liking East Asian people not for their personhood, but for their monolids  or cute baby face. But what's really interesting to be aware of is the fact that this East Asian  identity, and really other collective identities such as South Asian or Middle Eastern, were  born in the West.

Identifying as East Asian in an actual East Asian country, is actually not that  common. My relatives don't think of themselves as belonging to this large collective identity called  East Asian. They primarily think of themselves as Chinese, because of how ethnically homogeneous the  country is.

It is only because western countries like Canada and America have considerable ethnic  and racial diversity, that led minorities to find solidarity with other similar minorities.  Because the countries that make up East Asia are culturally and politically distinct from one  another, when you actually grow up in an East Asian country, all these countries that Westerners  see as belonging to one same group, are pretty distinct. To you, this is just one of the many  differences between an East Asian person who lives and grew up in an actual East Asian country, and  a person like me, who is Chinese-Canadian.

I was born in Canada. I grew up in Canada. I've been to  China a total of three times in my life, and my Mandarin skills are embarrassing.

Mama, Baba, I am  sorry [dui bu qi] So if East Asians who grew up in the West like me don't have a personal, immersive  understanding of our distinctive culture, norms, politics, and mannerisms, then one of the large  factors that play into feeling East Asian is our physical appearance. Many white passing Wasians  feel less Asian than Asian-passing Wasians, even if their connection to their Asian roots are the  same. People who follow an East Asian makeup style are assumed to be more Asian.

I feel more asian if  I followed like, Korean-style makeup. Now I want to apologize in advance for all of the names I'm  going to mispronounce in this video-- I am very, very sorry about that. We're just gonna have to  go with it and cringe every time I say something wrong.

So there's this wonderfully written article  by Bareehafd, who talks about how as a South Asian individual who grew up in America, they saw  their physical traits as what connected them to their heritage. Quote, "I always thought of my  body as a canvas for identity the black body hair growing out of my stark brown skin as an ode to my  roots, skin that the sun greets like an old love glowing bronze with gentle strokes of light and  wrapping around almond-shaped eyes in the darkest of browns. Eyes under brows, stubborn and erratic  when ungroomed, like the mind behind them.

I look at my body and see an inseverable connection to  a culture I was once so wholly immersed in. " This notion that our tangible physical traits are what  define identity is, maybe, self-fetishization. .

. and East Asian communities in the West focus  frequently on physical traits, because we are connecting ourselves to this extremely broad thing  called being "East Asian", which is full of very different and individual cultures. But they're  grouped together because of a similarity in physicality.

But simply looking East Asian can't  be the main representation of a culture. Bareehafd writes, "The children who wear saris and lehengas  on Tiktok and Instagram to sport their patriotism, who speak of brown skin and thick eyebrows  as if these are cultural highlights, rather than just a simplistic representation  of identity. By only focusing on the tangible components of what makes them South Asian,  they suggest that it is solely the physical qualities of a brown person that defines them. 

By diminishing everything but the physical their representation of their own bodies, results in  a sexualized representation of brown bodies on the whole. In other words a fetishization of  who we are as people in the United States. " This is why I don't find it very activist of  people who try to say that certain types of makeup are for East Asian people only.

Because it  reinforces this idea of physical traits defining us. I know this is kind of controversial to say,  but I'm gonna put it out there as one possible contributing factor. Perhaps, this contributes  to why oftentimes East Asian natives who live in East Asia, don't find cultural appropriation to be  as problematic as East Asians living in the West.

"Like, if you ever been to Asia you know we love  when people share our culture. We love love love when we see foreigners in Qi Pao. We love when  we see them in kimono.

We love that sh--! " Native East Asians don't find so much of their  identity tied to their physical appearance because their appearance doesn't differentiate them from  anyone else there. Pretty much everyone looks like that.

Instead, the focus is more on actual  cultural practices, experiences, niche slang in language, and mannerisms that can only be fully  understood by someone who grew up in that cultural environment. This is not me trying to blame East  Asian Americans or Canadians for feeling more defensive about their physical qualities. I will  not ignore the long history of Westerners treating cultural clothing as dress up and excluding East  Asian features from beauty.

I know what it feels like to just want blonde hair and blue eyes rather  than my small monolids and dark hair. It can be very empowering to appreciate these physical  features that have been looked down on for so long through appreciation and drawing attention to  our different appearance. We can help normalize East Asian traits.

They're not exotic or ugly  or strange. They belong to normal human beings. What becomes a problem is when the depiction  of physical features is treated as cultural representation itself, without acknowledging  that its power lies in the deeper culture it represents.

"By focusing solely on the body, they  eliminate the value and significance of cultural traditions that are ever changing outside of  static qualities like skin color. " Wwitching gears a little bit, while still talking about  physical appearance, something I know a lot of people take issue with is the sexual fetishization  of East Asian girls and women due to their more innocent and cute appearance. It is very  problematic--- don't get me wrong--- but I also notice that East Asian entertainment is generally  more cute-oriented.

There's a whole concept of aegyo in Korea, kawaii in Japan, and sa jiao in  China, which is quote, "To deliberately act like a spoiled child in front of someone because of  the awareness of the other person's affection. The literal meaning of sa jiao is to incite  tenderness by childishness, in order to be coquettish. " K-pop idols are frequently asked to  do aegyo, and it's seen as an important skill.

In this study on aegyo, one korean female  respondent said say there are two similar female workers. One is very formal. She is  very skilled at work.

Then the men say she is spiteful. There is another worker who is slightly  less skilled, but has aegyo. Then a lot of male workers tried to help her out.

To the female  senior/boss, it would not seem very good. But if there are men at the workplace, especially if  they are in charge, then it would be effective. All this other research I read found that it's  extremely popular for young women to act in this cute, childish way towards their husbands or  boyfriends.

And, the men respond quite positively. In this research paper, they ask their respondents  how important aegyo is in a romantic relationship on a scale of one to five. Fifty percent said  four and twenty percent said five.

A lot of them, including women, believed that men liked women  who could do aegyo, and that women needed to be able to do aegyo to be likable. Korea, as well  as some other East Asian cultures, encouraged the idea that a woman's cute helplessness is crucial  to both professional and social success. Korean women are literally criticized for not having  aegyo and parents teach their children to do it from a very young age.

So yes, it's really cringe  when white people try to copy aegyo or go like, "kawaii~". But we also can't ignore the cultures  that pressure women to act in infantile ways. In fact, aegyo is often thought of as being innate. 

People say things like, "Oh, they just have aegyo. They were born with it. " This idea of aegyo being  given to people by nature, furthers the idea that to be cute is inherent.

It ties the idea of cute,  baby-like cheerfulness as being part of a person's essence. And perhaps, that supports why some  Westerners end up believing that East Asians are just by nature, cuter. There is a smaller group  of East Asians who dislike this way of behavior because they believe it subjects women to a  childish image.

One respondent in this study said, "For instance, in group work, there is always  one person who does aegyo when apologizing for not doing his or her work. It's like  saying, 'Oh, I'm weak, I'm innocent, I'm cute, and so you must help me do everything! '' It's  like putting oneself into extreme passivity and that is not good.

With all that being said, it is  possible that I, being Canadian born and raised, do not comprehend the deeper complexities  of cute culture, aegyo, kawaii, and sa jiao, have connections to more foundational social  beliefs. For instance, being good at aegyo is not just about being good at pouting and talking  in a high-pitched voice. It's actually taken as a sign of social intelligence, knowing when  the right social situation is to use aegyo, and how to use it well in that situation, is  seen as socially and emotionally intelligent.

It's also commonly used as a method of gentle  rejection to subdue negative interactions in an effort to maintain social harmony. There are  researchers who propose that this cute childish behavior is actually a strategic way for women to  empower themselves in more conservative countries. So maybe I too, am reducing aegyo, kawaii, and  sa jiao to merely their physical components, wthout fully understanding  the culture they represent.

I would really be interested in knowing what  some native East Asians think about this. Now, we arrive at the part where people click  off because I'm basically only referencing academic journals and no Tiktoks. So um, exotic  fetish, yellow fever, oriental gaze, colonialism, and white people bad.

I think that'll hold  people's attention for a little longer! Edward Said coined the term "Orientalism", which  refers to when Asia is labeled as having some inherent essence that is distinctive from  the West, leading to stereotypical images and tropes of Asian-ness. Quote, "Fundamental  to the Orientalist fantasy, is the assumption that the eternal uniform orient is incapable of  self-definition, and thus necessitates objective Western scientific categorization.

" Asian-ness is  something that's often thought of as mythical or exotic, and it's positioned as opposite to  the rational scientific modern West. To really sell this story of East versus West, the essence  of each is defined in broad abstract terms, rather than actually pointing to any  specific social practices or institutions. Think of the very general dichotomies people  make such as "rational versus spiritual" "individualistic versus collectivist" "modern  versus traditional".

. . These are used to describe Eastern countries versus Western countries. 

It's quite absurd to think that these very, very general terms can encapture a geographic  half of the world. In the 18th century, French philosophy started to show more interest  in areas like Persia, Arabic-speaking lands, and China, which resulted in a counter-movement  that championed the East as superior. But Said points out that this seemingly positive  counter-movement is also caught in the problem of Orientalism.

Because their interest in the East is  determined by their greater interest in the West, which is treated as the standard. This makes it  so that the East cannot be thought of without the West, taking away its own independent nature.  As East Asia developed, one of the strategies used to contest European imperial power, was to  participate in the West's Oriental narrative.

It led to movements such as Pan-Asianism, which  believes in some commonality that distinguishes all of Asia from everyone else. In the early and  mid-1900s, Japan used this idea of Pan-Asianism to promote and justify their imperial conquest. They  claimed to represent all of Asia, Japan convinced many Asian countries that their imperialist  project was much more preferable to European imperialism, because they were a part of the  East.

I don't think I need to talk about all the atrocities that came from Japanese imperialism,  but let's just say that it did not unify Asia the way they claimed. This is just one example of how  Asia has participated in constructing reinforcing and circulating the Orient ideology.  It is an example of self-Orientalism, which I see as a type of self-fetishization. 

It continually happens with little criticism, and I think it's because fetishization is  popularly thought of as someone fetishizing another. It convinces us that Asia themselves  could never contribute to their own fetishization, or Oriental caricature but self-Orientalism has  played an important role in driving East Asia's soft power. What is soft power, you ask?

Soft  power is when you punch something really lightly while giggling, like this. *punch* *hehe*  So its impact is pretty soft. Soft power is power in international relations acquired  not through money or military strength, but through things like cultural exports and  entertainment.

Shaping the preferences of others to your advantage. Japan strongly focused on  obtaining soft power to rebrand the nation from being an imperialist power that had killed  and conquered countless number of people, to "cool" Japan. I'm not even kidding, they  actually set up what's called the Council for the Promotion of "Cool" Japan in 2013 as a strategy  to promote Japanese products to the world.

The government worked to figure out what Japan's  cultural DNA was. What was the Japanese aesthetic? One policy maker of the Japan brand project said  that, quote, "It is necessary to revisit Japan and consider how to properly discern Japanese  cultural DNA and strategically standardize it, so as to successfully input it into Japanese  products and services.

But here's the thing. If you're properly representing a culture,  then standardization shouldn't be possible. Culture is fluid, it's complex.

Reducing  a culture to one standardized aesthetic or style is superficial. But let's be honest, if the  goal is to attract foreigners to your culture, then giving actual educational historical lessons  is not going to sell. A consequence of "cool" Japan has been the tokenization of indigenous  traditional cultures, and other minority cultures.

Their objects and practices have been occasionally  included in promoting Japan, but only insofar as it's considered beneficial to the nation's image.  Socially and culturally marginalized voices that are not considered useful, are paid little  attention. Cultural diversity becomes promoted as a value that exists between different nations,  but is ignored as being within Japan itself.

Now everyone knows that one of Japan's most successful  cultural exports is anime. I won't talk too much about the misogyny and over-sexualization of  girls in anime because I feel like that's widely known. What I did find interesting was that  anime directors such as Mamoru Oshii say that they deliberately de-Japanize.

. . de-JaPANize?

? Both of  those sound wrong. De-Japanize anime characters because anime is offering an alternative world  to the audience, not stories taking place in Japanese society.

That's why you have characters  with unnatural hair and eye colors. Well then, how does this lead to obsessive anime fans who  wish they were born in Japan and view Japan as way cooler than America? *cough* Orientalism.

Toshio  Okada, an anime producer and author, explains that what grabs the Western audience's attention is the  quote, "Japanese way of life, which is embodied in the "mu-kokuseki". . .

Racially, ethnically, and  culturally unembedded imagery of animation. But since Japaneseness is actively erased from anime,  then what obsessive anime fans really yearn for is an animated, virtual Japan. Okada's argument at  least serves to remind us that a sense of yearning for a particular country evoked through  the consumption of cultural commodities, is inevitably a monological illusion.

Since it  is little concerned with the complexity of "real" culture. Japan majorly influenced other East Asian  countries to focus on their soft power as well. In this article about pop culture diplomacy  in Japan, Koichi Iwabuchi calls it "competing in a global beauty contest.

South Korea is  widely known for their successful cultural exports. Their music industry, fashion and beauty  industry, film and media, food, are all extremely popular here in the West. And I just want to  talk a little more specifically about K-pop, since I listened to K-pop and I know that the  South Korean government wasn't originally a huge funder of the industry.

But they certainly are  pushing it now. The K-pop entertainment companies have been trying to tap into the American market  for a long time now, and their efforts have really ramped up in the past few years ever  since BTS kind of broke that barrier. More and more K-pop groups have English-speaking members,  release English versions of songs, and try to win American awards and titles.

I hear a lot of Korean  people and East Asians in general, saying that they are so glad to have K-pop spreading Korean  culture across the world. BTS received the Hwagwan "Order of Cultural Merit" from the South Korean  government which reinforces the idea that K-pop is a reliable image of South Korean culture.  Yet at the same time, K-pop idols are treated as commodities that need to be polished and  presented, as consumable to fans.

They are trained to perfection. They are prohibited from dating so  that we feel they belong to us. They are all held to one single beauty standard so that many will  have to get plastic surgery to look a certain way.

There's literally a standardization of product.  And just as how the Japanese government tried to instill the Japanese DNA into their cultural  exports, Korea did the same. It's a strategy of getting foreigners to become interested in one  thing-- say, Kdramas, but then lure them down the Korean wave pipeline and become obsessed with  K-pop, K-beauty and korean food as well.

I know a lot of K-pop fans say, "But Western celebrities  have to have a good public image and look perfect too! " Which is true, but you gotta admit that it  is super rare to find celebrities like Lil Nas X, Doja Cat, or Lizzo, who don't act like perfect,  cool K-pop idols on their TikTok accounts. *music* Idols would never be allowed to publicly rife with  each other the way Kanye and Pete have.

The K-pop industry fetishizes their own idols so that us  fans all the way over here, are already consuming fetishized versions of Korean people. This is  not me scolding anyone for listening to K-pop because then I'd just be a complete hypocrite. I  just want to acknowledge that there is a tension between praising K-pop as a good representation  of Korean culture, and the way they commodify its people.

Just as an added safety measure in  case there are any mad K-popies out there, here: I have a photo card of Jungkook, okay, don't  cancel me. One last soft power sector I want to talk about is Tourism. In an attempt to  attract Westerners to experience East Asia, many East Asian countries promote an Oriental  image of their culture and history.

There are two interesting papers that I'll put on the screen  here. One analyzes a tourist promotion video for Oman, and one is for China. Both these papers  talk about how these tourism promotion videos fuel exotic fantasies and frame these countries  as either stuck in ancient times or following western modernity.

For instance, in this scene  in the Chinese promotional video, Grace Yang and Carla Almeida Santos write, "What may first catch  the viewers eyes is the Qi Pao they are wearing. It's use here conspicuously invokes notions of  traditional oriental and perhaps a slight hint of exotic, constructing an image of Chinese women  that is in dichotomy to western women with their casual modern clothing. In addition Qi Pao, a  body hugging silk dress that accentuates women's curves, emphasizes sexual difference.

The young  woman therefore becomes an object to be gazed upon silent with their cryptic and hesitant smiles. The  whole scene has blatant references to old themes of oriental femininity perpetuated by numerous  Hollywood films and popular social discourse. Similarly, the Oman promotional video presents the  country as a lost ancient land, that is waiting to fulfill the fantasies of the Western tourists. 

They focus on making Oman look pre-modern, showing a rural and tribal society to add an  exotic appeal. The only place that is shown to be modern are, conveniently, the hotels and the  resorts that the tourists stay in. It portrays the people as exotic tradition bearers, who are  stuck in the past, but are also just in reach for you to spectate.

These Oriental ideas have  been internalized in many ways by the East. For example, the Great Wall of China was originally  built for and viewed by Chinese citizens as a national security tool to protect the country  from the Mongolian invasion. But when European missionaries visited China, they saw the Great  Wall as a structure full of Oriental glory.

This Western perspective influenced Chinese perception  to the point where today, China has adopted the Great Wall as a symbol of national identity.  These idyllic tourist videos further stereotype ethnic minorities similar to Japan's instrumental  use of ethnic and indigenous culture. As we see in the China promotion video, ethnic minorities  are associated with wild nature, old buildings, doing traditional dances with not a single Han  person in sight.

Han people are the overwhelming ethnic majority in China, by the way. It presents  these minorities as drastically different from the Han people, that they are not influenced  nor affected by the Han. They are fetishized as expressions of the Oriental past.

Now perhaps  right now, the result of soft power strategies is self-fetisization. Which invites being fetishized  by others. Boo, not hot!

But could it eventually lead to proper cultural exchange in the long run?  There's a whole pool of research that shows that exposure to another nation's media can increase  one's understanding of their culture and society. I mean, I'm not surprised to hear that.

But can  this understanding ever evolve past what Iwabuchi calls "the individualized pleasure of media  consumption"? That is something to be debated. One of the most interesting articles I read for  this video was this one, right here, because it talks about the pleasures of fetishization,  which almost sounded like an oxymoron to me.

I only hear about fetishization as something  bad, something objectifying. But this researcher, Angela Jones, wanted to explore the experience  of fetishization for BBW, or big beautiful women, in the cam model industry. Jones points out that  how we understand fetishization intellectually, can be different from how we actually  experience it.

Intellectually, we tell ourselves that fetishization is degrading, and  that we should be valued for our personhood. But, here, some BBW performers enjoy the pleasures  of fetishization, precisely because they are not supposed to. Societies tell fat women that  to have self-respect, they must dress modestly, and to hide their bodies.

Societies ask fat  women to embrace the politics of respectability, and many fat women such as BBW cam models  are rebuking a politics of respectability. The BBW models who enjoyed being fetishized found  pleasure in being able to show off the body that they are so often socially shamed for having.  They are in control of their show and they are the ones who touch themselves and these actions  have political weight to them, because they are going against what they are socially told to do  and the way they are socially perceived.

One cam model said that being fetishized helped a lot with  her self-esteem. She knew that her self-esteem shouldn't depend on camming, but it was what gave  her the motivation to work out, eat healthier, and just take better general care of herself. It  is an especially curious environment for people of color, who are not nearly as popular as white  people in the BBW community.

But in a way, Jones suggests that Asian BBW models can strategically  debunk the stereotype that all asian women are small and thin. When there are several different  ways to be fetishized, sometimes the choice may be to allow yourself to be fetishized in one way, in  order to fight a different type of fetishization. I think what this really shows at a deep level, is  just how much minorities and women are fetishized.

It's hard to win, honestly. So that's why it seems  to be about strategy for fetishized identities, and especially for intersectional ones. There can  be a tension between self-Orientalism while also rejecting Orientalism.

I may be perfectly aware of  how fluid and complex my ethnocultural identity is but I perform a stable, stereotypical identity to  my Westerner peers as a strategy to be accepted. That's even what the countries do. Appealing  to Oriental narratives to be seen as legitimate global powers and earn respect from the West.

At  the end of the day, do I think self-fetishization is the most dangerous and pressing matter? No, but  I always think it's interesting to take concepts like fetishization, which is often used to blame  others, and consider whether we are complicit in any of the blame. If you tolerated this video,  you can like and subscribe if you want.

Leave a comment if that's the way you feel  today. Thank you so much for watching, let's keep talking and I hope to hear  from you soon. Bye!

Captions by Julia M.