Artwork by Sresta Aitharaju
Due to the way that society, specifically White men, perceives my ethnic identity, I feel like a foreign creature who does not belong in my predominantly White community. People are more likely to be stereotyped, oppressed, and defined, based on not just one, but the combination of multiple aspects of their identity. Women of color do not have the privilege of being just a woman or just a person of color. In the workplace and in social settings, women of color are more susceptible to sexual and racial harassment due to a legacy of fetishization and misrepresentation. Our experiences entail being underpaid, taken advantage of, abused, and demeaned physically and emotionally. This harassment isolates us from the rest of society and causes deep discomfort.
Asian women endure certain stereotypes that provide a clear link to violence and harassment. Between 2020 and 2021, Stop AAPI Hate, a database created to track anti-Asian violence, received 3,795 reports of anti-Asian discrimination. The most striking statistic is that Asian women reported these hate incidents 2.3 times more often than men. This plague of violence results from common stereotypes of Asian women including being quiet, slender, exotic, and docile. Asian women are seen as objects of desire, wielding a dangerous foreign sexuality. Through various historical precedents from immigration restrictions and United States military presence in Asia to Hollywood films and the model minority myth, Asian women are simultaneously hated and desired.
This is demonstrated in two dominant tropes of Asian women: the Dragon Lady and the Lotus Blossom. The Lotus Blossom depicts Asian women as submissive, sexually subservient, feminine, and meek. An example is Anna Mae Wong, the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood who was always cast as a disposable Asian love interest. In contrast, the Dragon Lady trope paints Asian women as deceitful, villainous, and cunning, using their sexuality as a means to manipulate others. Lucy Liu, a more modern Hollywood example, plays masculine, deceitful and violent roles. Misogyny, xenophobia and racism deeply intertwine to impact our real lives.
My personal estrangement has been exacerbated by being not only brown and Asian but also a woman. According to societal standards, I am a submissive, sexual, and exotic woman. As a result, I live my life absorbing unwarranted, microaggressive comments from complete and total strangers. Examples include: “I have never seen anyone like you before,” and “You can not be from here,” and “Where are you really from.” It seems like they never end.
Since I was fourteen, I have been working in the service industry, in restaurants and ice cream shops. Sometimes I reflect on what this “service” actually entails. I take the phone calls, clean the floors, wait on tables, yet there always seems to be something more that I have to sacrifice. Am I supposed to giggle when I hand you your food and you grab my hand, just to feel my skin? Am I supposed to blush when men old enough to be my grandfathers tell me they wish I was older? Am I supposed to be grateful for the extra tips when I smile and bat my eyelashes like an object of your desires?
In these moments, I want to be tiny, I wish myself into extinction, hoping to disappear little by little. I envy my male and/or White counterparts, who blend in so easily. I remember how I once aspired to have attention from men like that too. I thought I wanted to be admired, but admiration does not equal love. There is nothing loving about being admired by White men, as their affections are a product of colonialism, occupation, and a bloody history of sexual violence towards Asian women.
Exotic is not a compliment.
I do not want to be the desired object of control, to be dominated, to possess no power.
When I was younger, the only representation of people who looked like me on television and in the media were Disney princesses. I relied on representation, not of my Indian identity and heritage, but simply of someone with brown skin. I found comfort in Jasmine (the Middle Eastern princess), Tiana (the Black princess), Pochahontas (the Native American princess), and eventually Moana (the Polynesian princess). This was my entire hometown’s only exposure to women of color. Because this community had no grasp on my culture, I was always compared to these princesses. When people discussed my ethnicity, it was always which one of these princesses I looked like, because these were the only ways they knew how to categorize and understand me. Asian women are more vulnerable to violence and oppression, due to stereotypes and false ideas constricting our complex identities.
We, Asian women, will not be denied our humanity, and deserve to be seen as individuals with our own hopes and dreams. It exhausts me to fight against these stereotypes and assert my own identity. And though I can not control how other people view me, I venture forward using my voice and story to fight the silencing of Asian women.