As a younger Taiwanese lady dwelling within the Inland Empire, former singer and import model-turned-writer Kaila Yu mentioned she typically felt “uncomfortable” in her pores and skin, rising up round Eurocentric magnificence requirements.
“I felt like my options weren’t fascinating,” Yu mentioned of her childhood. “I felt very insecure about all of that.”
The now 46-year-old L.A.-based creator explores themes of sexuality and race in her debut memoir, “Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Magnificence,” — out all over the place books are bought.
The candid memoir-in-essays format explores Yu’s upbringing within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, mixing “susceptible tales from her life with incisive cultural critique and historical past,” in response to the synopsis. “Fetishized” explores Yu’s advanced, intimate emotions round illustration and objectifying stereotypes, whereas how the media and colonialism have performed a component within the “oversexualization of Asian girls.”
“Rising up, Asians had been so invisible, objectification was higher than nothing,” Yu writes within the e-book, which the New York Occasions referred to as “uncooked and lyrical.”
-
Los Angeles creator Kaila Yu’s e-book cowl. Yu delves into stereotypical portrayals of Asian girls in media and popular culture, framed round her lived expertise. (Courtesy of Crown Publishing)
1 of 5
Los Angeles creator Kaila Yu’s e-book cowl. Yu delves into stereotypical portrayals of Asian girls in media and popular culture, framed round her lived expertise. (Courtesy of Crown Publishing)
Born to Taiwanese immigrant dad and mom, Yu grew up in Upland, attended Upland Excessive College, and later earned a bachelor’s diploma in Asian American research from UCLA.
With the rise in anti-Asian hate amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the March 2021 spa shootings in Atlanta that killed eight individuals, together with six Asian girls, Yu mentioned she was impressed to start writing her e-book. What occurred on the spa stood out to her as a primary instance of how the “fetishization of Asian girls results in real-life violence on Asian girls,” she mentioned.
Yu’s new e-book unpacks her profession working as a former import automotive mannequin and lead singer of the pop rock band Nylon Pink till 2015. She opens up about sporting scantily clad outfits, writing hypersexual lyrics that had been “extra efficiency,” she mentioned, than reflective of her true self.
Following a “need to be seen as lovely,” Yu felt she performed into stereotypes related to Asian girls by totally different moments in her profession — hoping to show to each herself and others that she’s “worthy of affection.” The creator mentioned she grappled with unattainable magnificence requirements which led her to change her physique by totally different procedures — together with a double eyelid surgical procedure and cosmetic surgery — after years of feeling “othered.”
All through her memoir, Yu displays on the trauma of shedding her sense of self “in pursuit of the picture she thought the world wished… reckoning with being an object of Asian fetish,” she writes. Battling a drug habit, feeling misrepresented and “dehumanized” within the appearing/modeling business, and in search of to be fascinating to “the White male gaze,” she mentioned she typically felt empty.
Yu’s e-book explores problems with racism and fetishization, unpacking the dangerous impression of “yellow fever” — a problematic time period describing a usually sexual Asian fetish — which scholar Robin Zheng defines as a major “choice for Asian girls (and males).”
The identify, which derives from the mosquito-borne illness, emphasizes the phrase’s derogatory nature, Yu mentioned. It has roots in outdated “orientalist” beliefs that Asian girls are additionally “by some means extra docile,” whereas additionally seen as “unique, extremely sexual beings.”
“Like mosquitoes, fetishists suck the humanity out of Asian girls, turning them into 2D intercourse objects,” Yu writes.
“Fetishized” additionally explores problematic Asian feminine illustration in media, which Yu mentioned consists of “hypersexualized” fashions or actress portrayals. She cites examples like pin-up mannequin Sung-Hello Lee, the book-turned-film “Memoirs of a Geisha,” or totally different music movies or movies portraying violence or intercourse. Offering an sincere critique, Yu’s memoir appears at moments in tradition that, she mentioned, “lowered (Asian girls) to our bodies and menu gadgets… as subservient props.”
She mentioned all of this bolstered dangerous stereotypes about Asian girls and sexuality, which many — herself included — felt they wanted to observe of their appearances and careers.
Asian girls are sometimes “not celebrated for our energy, humanity, and intelligence,” Yu writes within the e-book. Due to fetishization, they’re as an alternative “lowered to a fantasy becoming a male-dominance narrative.”
Now, Yu finds hope that various Asian illustration in media has grown tremendously — and with extra optimistic portrayals — from earlier than.
However with Asian lead roles nonetheless considerably underrepresented, Yu mentioned extra work must be finished.
As an creator, luxurious journey and tradition journalist, Yu has since written about different harms towards Asian communities, amongst different issues. Her writing on leisure, journey and way of life has been featured within the Los Angeles Occasions, Nationwide Geographic and Rolling Stone.
Yu hopes that “Fetishized” provides to the advanced, nuanced conversations about her neighborhood.
Yu’s debut memoir, “Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Magnificence,” will be discovered all over the place books are bought. Extra data and future occasions are shared on her social media, @kailayu.
Employees author Allyson Vergara contributed to this report.