When I first began researching the increase in pairings between white females and Asian males, I initially wondered if K-pop was partially responsible for this increase in pairings between white females and Asian males. I was fascinated by how unprecedented this increase was, as during the past 30 years or so, it was rare to see white women married to or dating Asian men. I can only count one white woman who married an Asian man, out of all of my parents’ close friends and family.
First off, the most obvious reason why many white people had been hesitant to date Asians derived from racism and a lack of understanding. The racist mentality behind this treatment was exemplified during World War II, as Americans of German and Italian descent were largely accepted, but Japanese-Americans were shunned and even placed in concentration camps, as examined in Smithsonian Magazine. Thus, Americans’ disgust towards Japanese-Americans came not from the crime of being a part of a government that was allied with Hitler, but from the crime of looking different.
Fortunately, because of the forces of globalization and greater cultural acceptance, discrimination against Asians decreased. One important example in this transformation was the Asian Civil Rights movement, which was a branch of the larger Civil Rights movement. Asian Americans began to call themselves “Asians” instead of Orientals in the Civil Rights era, as political writer and activist Scot Nakagawa noted. The term “Orientals” was particularly detrimental for Asian masculinity, as it carried the connotation of Mickey Rooney’s short, bucktoothed, squinty-eyed caricature in Breakfast at Tiffany’s who was physically unappealing and utterly unaware of appropriate behavior. Thus, by calling themselves Asians, they were able to reclaim their humanity and shed Rooney’s reductive stereotype.
This coincided with a more general acceptance and respect for Asian culture and way of life, which was another important step towards an increase in interracial marriages, as the Pew Research Center found even just over the past 30 years, the percent of Asians who engaged in interracial marriages increased by 4%. Americans were increasingly able to recognize through media channels, newspapers, and a booming travel industry that these Asians were living similarly to themselves, with westernized fashion, leisure activities, and government. It also made them more interested in Asian cultures, and because of the processes of globalization, Asian and white cultures were able to exchange ideas more freely.
Additionally, although most marriages and dating between Asian men and white women only happened when they were perceived to have a similar socioeconomic status. For instance, a Columbia University study found that for an Asian man to marry a white woman, he has to make $247,000 more than a white man. As more and more Asian men began to enter more advanced fields, the likelihood of Asian men marrying white women increased. Besides being more educated and thus more accepting of race, Many white women, who may have struggled to accept Asian men’s lack of traditional masculinity and looks, found that wealthy Asian men were able to more effectively compete with white men regarding wealth and were perceived to have more potential than Asian men as providers for a future family. As more Asian men have become increasingly wealthy, they are able to denounce the negative connotations that their dirt-stained, impoverished railroad work of the past. Unfortunately, it has brought forth a new negative perspective, which maliciously implies that the bigger the paycheck, the more attractive an Asian man is.
There is a larger number of Asian women married to someone of a different race and ethnicity than Asian men, as noted by the Pew Research Center, because historically, Asian-American men had been categorized as effeminate “naturally subordinate” nerds who could “never in a thousand millenniums be a threat to steal your girl,” as “Fresh Off the Boat” creator Eddie Huang wrote. Asian women Asian women are seen as extremely attractive by white men, as they appear to be “naturally inclined to serve men sexually and are also thought of as slim, light-skinned and small, [which adhere] to Western norms of femininity,” wrote The New York Times writer Audrea Lim.
However, when these traits are applied to Asian men, this makes white women, accustomed to hyper-masculine and assertive men like Harrison Ford and James Bond, find Asian men unattractive, thus inhibiting Asian male-white female pairings. This is because what appears to make Asian women dainty and beautiful emasculates Asian men in the eyes of white women. This didn’t change until these past couple of decades, as Pew Research Center found that younger generations have adhered less to gender norms and have become more bent on destroying toxic masculinity, reflecting how even traditional white masculinity has become increasingly less structured. For instance, men like Timothée Chalamet and Harry Styles who possess feminine qualities are still viewed as attractive by many American women.
However, before the feminization of Asian masculinity could be accepted, Western society first had to understand that Asians could demonstrate Western masculine traits, as exemplified by famed martial artist and actor Bruce Lee. Through his action-packed martial arts movies, Dan Kwong, an Asian performance artist and writer, said that Lee found a way to connect his “screen persona” with “society’s traditional model of masculinity, the idea that you need the ability to kill and destroy.” Thus, by proving that Asian men were just as “macho” as white men, Lee unknowingly opened the hearts and minds of white America to the rise of K-pop several decades later, which emphasizes Asian men’s more feminine side.
The androgyny of the singers in K-pop reflect how not only has Western society become more accepting of the feminization of white masculinity, but it also has become more accepting of Asian men’s more feminine features and traits. K-pop reflects the fact that its predominantly female audiences are not looking for Asian actors to replicate traditional white masculinity, but rather to repudiate it, as Chiung Hwang Chen, a professor of communication and media studies at Brigham Young University-Hawaii stated.
This also comes into play with second-generation Asians now, as many Asian men who marry and date white women often have taken the steps of integrating into white society already. As they already understand and prefer Western pop culture and speak fluent English, there are fewer cultural barriers they need to cross to be seen as competitive with white men. For instance, the Pew Research Center found that “[w]hile 24% of foreign-born Asian newlyweds have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity, this share rises to 46% among the U.S. born.”
Therefore, after doing this research, I now better appreciate that we now live in a world where the A in Asian no longer stands for alien, awkward, asexual; but rather, amazing, accomplished, and just as attractive as anyone else. ❦
Sophia Chiu is an award-winning writer who has been published in numerous literary magazines. She enjoys all things film and writing- related. Currently, she is on the executive teams of the Inklings Literary Magazine, Wallflower Poetry Club, and Political Awareness Clubs at her school, and co-hosts a podcast analyzing young adult literature and film. When Sophia is not writing, you can find her reading anything she can get her hands on, adjusting her Spotify playlists, and practicing her French (merci!)
