Portrayals of Asian American women characters in film and media as highly sexual and seductive have had a lasting detrimental impact. In early silent films, some Asian Americans roles were characterized by white actors wearing yellowface. However, there were also Asian American actresses such as Anna May Wong who became acclaimed stars. Both portrayals were frequently degrading and dehumanizing, either merciless and alluring, or dainty and subservient. These characters, often fitting into the “Lotus Blossom” or “Dragon Lady” tropes, were stereotyped to be exotic and “other,” always present to fulfill the fantasies of white men. Throughout these generalizations was the ever-present concept of sexuality — these characters pleasured white men with their seductiveness, or they used their charm to harm them. They were shown as two dimensional and emotionless: lacking in humanity and almost robotic. These stereotypes aren’t harmless — they have the capability to shatter the self-image and relationships of Asian American women as well as lead others to objectify them.

The predominant trope in early films containing Asian American female characters was the “Lotus Blossom,” otherwise known as “China Doll” or “Geisha Girl.” Onscreen, they are objects of desire: submissive, gentle and fragile. However, they are dispensable and unimportant, merely items for pleasure. The Lotus Blossom is always available to cater to the whims of white men and is the image of the perfect, docile wife. Sensual yet virginal, these Asian women were exoticized and hypersexualized and extremely common in the era of 1900s Hollywood. A key example of the Lotus Blossom trope is the 1957 Technicolor film, Sayonara. Set in Japan during the Korean War, an U.S. Air Force Major falls in love with a lovely Japanese woman. Throughout the film, American men are portrayed as the “knights in shining armor,” ready to protect the weak and gentle Japanese women from cultures that have been manipulated by duplicitous governments. Sayonara perpetuates white male dominance, showing America’s righteousness and power over post-war Japan. Analogous to this, Asian women are depicted as passive and helpless, only able to survive by the protection of white men. While Sayonara attempts to challenge racism by its narrative and “inclusion,” the stereotypical sacrificial nature of its Japanese female characters cannot be overlooked.

            Indeed, many filmmakers created roles for Asian American women in cinema, but never seemed to round them out: somehow, they were always flat and two dimensional. Anna May Wong, credited with being the first Asian American female superstar, attempted to combat this problem throughout her illustrious career. Ironically, her first lead role was “Lotus Flower,” in the film The Toll of the Sea. Wong left for Europe when her success in the U.S. seemed unlikely (due to laws that prevented interracial marriage as well as on-screen kissing between different races), and soon, she became a household name as a result of the notable film Piccadilly. However, in the 1930s, Paramount Studios negotiated with her: they would give her lead roles, as long as she returned to the United States. Hoping to take on more realistic characters in the future, Wong accepted their bargain, but her positivity was short-lived. Once again, filmmakers pushed upon her various cliched roles such as the “wicked concubine” or the sweet, subservient wife. In a 1933 interview, she admitted, “I was so tired of the parts I had to play” (Liu, 2021). When she traveled to China, even the Chinese scorned her, angry that she played so many degrading characters which contributed to further stereotyping of Asian women. It is here that Anna May Wong, like so many other women, unknowingly plays into Deniz Kandiyoti’s idea of the patriarchal bargain. Kandiyoti believes that “women, through their actions to resist passivity and total male control, become participants with vested interests in the system that oppressed them” (Kandiyoti, 1988). Many women “bargain” with the patriarchy by playing into the idea of white male dominance in order to earn more power of their own. However, by doing this, they unintentionally support the system that discriminated against them in the first place. Wong is an unfortunate example of this: while she tries to give more substance to her characters and pave a path for less known Asian American actresses, her role in such dehumanizing films perpetuates the harmful exoticism and sexualization of women like her. Her attempt to round out characters by her acting skills is admirable, but given the lack of resources and the overwhelming power of her directors, she is still incapable of changing the stories within films, or the root of such racism. This is, indeed, quite similar to Yamada Mitsuye’s experience of “passive resistance.” Mitsuye describes her resistance against Asian American female stereotypes by saying, “it was so passive that no one noticed I was resisting; it was so much my expected role that it ultimately rendered me invisible” (Mitsuye, 1979). In her mind, she believed that she was fighting against unhealthy generalizations, but in truth, she was contributing to them by not being forward enough. Anna May Wong’s resistance was also not as obvious as she wished it to be: while she tried to portray her feelings through acting, the films she played a role in were not truly changed. This leads to a vicious cycle of continuous racism that never quite fades away.

            Another stereotype that was prominent throughout films which portrayed Asian American women was the “Dragon Lady” trope. This characterization is a contrast to the “Lotus Blossom'': Dragon Ladies are often strong, domineering and deceitful, using their sexuality to manipulate and harm men. They are aggressive seductresses, mysterious and cold, weaponizing their sex to get what they want. Moreover, they are frequently the villains of the story, perishing in the end as punishment for their crimes. The concept of the Dragon Lady stemmed from long standing perceptions that female Asian immigrants were sex workers and carried sexual diseases, and thus dangerous to the United States. Fear of Asian women manifested in media and film, creating this dangerous stereotype. While this trope does disprove the idea that Asian women are meek and passive, it is still highly based on objectification and makes Asians out to be “the enemy,” which can have disastrous real-life consequences. It also creates the misconception that Asian women are nothing more than their bodies: that they cannot be independent and strong without utilizing sex. Anna May Wong once again appears here, as she starred in the film Daughter of the Dragon, a key example of the Dragon Lady stereotype. She took on the role of the villainous daughter of Fu Manchu, who goes on a killing spree to carry on her father’s vendetta. With large headpieces and strong makeup, even Wong’s exceptional performance couldn’t override the obvious stereotype of Asian women as exotic and “other” — this time dangerous, as well.

            However, Asian American women are not the only ones being constantly sexualized and objectified: the belief of the “Sexual Woman” has been around for some time across countless civilizations. As historian Eleanor Janega says, “sexually desirous or available women have been treated with suspicion, whereas men have been assumed to have ‘logical’ sexual desires” (Barker, 2019). Due to society’s patriarchal systems, there is a double standard when it comes to the sexual life of men and women. It is normalized for men to have large sexual appetites, but when it comes to women, they must have sex in the “right way”: mostly for the fantasies of men or for procreation; they are even seen as promiscuous and labeled as prostitutes. In fact, some of the cruelest insults of the English language are related to the bodies or sexual nature of women. The ironic thing is, however, that whenever a man wishes to have sex with a woman, the woman must be “up for it” and readily available. This idea of the “sexual woman” is clear within the stereotypes of Asian American women, where Dragon Ladies are seen as devious and conniving because they use sex the “wrong way” — as something other than for the pleasuring of men. As Charlotte Perkins Gilman says in Woman and Economics, females are made to “develop exaggerated sexual traits” (Gilman, 1898) in media and film, causing society to perceive them as lacking humanity and individuality. The intersectional identity (coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw) of Asian American women, especially, makes them more vulnerable to this discrimination as they must combat the prejudices of both race and gender. Something that is more specific to the Dragon Lady trope, however, is the idea of the “betrayer”: a topic that Leslie Bow explores in her paper, Betrayal and Other Acts of Subversion: Feminism, Sexual Politics, Asian American Women's Literature. There has always been a notion of disloyalty which surrounds Asian women in American culture — they are either defiant betrayers of their home countries, or ruthless seducers of white men. Either way, they are portrayed in an extremely negative light, causing communities to be wary of them.

            As a young Asian American woman myself, I have both seen and felt the detrimental consequences of such inhumane stereotypes in film. Film and media is something that is widespread — it has the capacity to make or break our perception of others, especially minorities. For example, if a person has never seen an Asian American woman before, their only knowledge of that certain group of people comes from news and films. Therefore, if these news and films are highly bigoted and racist, it is only natural that this person will acquire negative preconceived notions. I immigrated to the U.S. with my parents and grandparents when I was 6 years old and from then on, my life was extremely Americanized. There were few Asian American people who lived nearby and the films I watched consisted of mainly white actors, so I grew up amidst “American” ideologies. I fangirled after the standard white male superstars and the same popular blonde actresses, lamenting that I wasn’t white and blonde myself. The stories I wrote consisted of blonde and blue-eyed boys and girls. As I grew older, I refused to watch Asian films — in my mind, Asians were boring and emotionless: “other.” Even though I was Asian myself, I thought I was different: I had grown up in America and I was surely “better” than the rest of them. Without even trying to understand my people or my culture, I had already internalized the racism and sexism from my surroundings and created a negative image in my mind of who I thought Asian people were. It wasn’t until I returned to China for the first time in the summer of 2019 that all my beliefs were disproved. To my amazement, Chinese people weren’t so different from Americans — they were human after all. I began submerging myself in Asian culture: watching dramas and films and learning about Chinese actors and singers. I had missed out on so much of the rich culture and history of Asia because of my own prejudiced views. And those views, of course, stemmed from the harmful portrayals of Asian Americans in U.S. media.

            Rosalind Chou unpacks how these portrayals affect Asian American women’s self-esteem and self-image in her paper “Asian American sexual politics :the construction of race, gender, and sexuality.” She describes the experience of a girl called Iris, whose classmate called her eye shape “ugly.” Iris then divulges the reaction of her mother: “Mom told me something like ‘you’re beautiful anyways’, but on a separate occasion she said she used to pray that when I was born I would have double eyelids” (Chou, 2012). Her mother is very contradictory in her attempt to comfort her daughter: it is obvious that she has internalized racism as well, hoping that her daughter would have more western features. Looking western, in her opinion, meant looking beautiful. Damaging beliefs such as this one would likely be passed down to her daughter, harming Iris’s perception of herself. Sexualized stereotypes in film and media can also have a detrimental effect on the relationships of Asian American women. Chou divulges the story of another young woman named Charlene, who had an abusive boyfriend that fetishized and objectified her. Chou explains, “In an effort to please him, Charlene would dress in cheongsams to fulfill his sexual fantasies” (Chou, 2012). Cheongsams, otherwise known as qipaos, are traditional mandarin gowns that Charlene’s boyfriend likely used to sexualize her. Rather than treating Charlene as a human being, he cannot see past her Asianness: she is everything he sees in film and media and so he believes her to be the epitome of those dehumanizing stereotypes. She has no choice but to appear submissive and inferior in front of him in order to please him. Charlene’s experience is a clear example of how sexualized stereotypes of Asian American women in films can translate to real life — it is plain that her boyfriend views her as the passive “Lotus Blossom.” This is only one of many complicated relationships where Asian American women aren’t seen as an individual, but rather as an object to be fetishized and exoticized. Another horrendous manifestation of stereotypes in real life is the Atlanta shooting that occurred in March of 2021. Six Asian American women were fatally shot at three spas. Even more disgusting was the murderer’s excuse: he declared that he did not kill out of racism, but rather to curb his “sexual temptation.” There is one thing that is untrue — he did indeed kill out of racism, for his objectification of Asian American women stems from it. He saw these women as nothing more than sexual objects and he murdered for his own vile fantasies. Stereotypes like the Lotus Blossom and the Dragon Lady can have disastrous effects in society, sometimes leading to abuse and even death. What I find to be the cruelest consequence, however, is that Asian American women end up vilifying themselves as a result of film and media.

            While these stereotypes have led to devastating results, Asian American women’s representation in Hollywood is definitely changing for the better. Recent films like Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere All at Once are examples of cinema with diverse and rounded out Asian characters. Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings also made a big splash in the media, along with Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon. Asian cinema is on the rise, but so is anti-Asian hate crimes in the real world as a result of Covid-19. As stereotypes in the media fall away, it is crucial to remember that the U.S. still has a long way to go in terms of racism against Asian Americans, whether it be men or women. Asian women are still objectified and fetishized, as proven by the horrific Atlanta shooting, and they continue to be disproportionately sexualized in the media. It is more important than ever to create new and inclusive stories in order to tear down the beliefs that Asians are “exotic” and “other.” Illustrating three dimensional and humane Asian Americans will slowly influence the mindsets of Americans, just as those harmful and stereotypical characters did. Film and media have the great responsibility of changing the prejudices of society, and they can do that in a positive way. As the spotlight on Asian Americans shines brighter, it is up to us to demand more, to fight for more — it isn’t easy to transform the ideologies of a whole society, but as film did once before, it can do so again.            

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