In the past three years, and largely due to the worldwide detriments caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its horrendously high death rates, Asian people across the world have been the targets of thousands of hate crimes. In the United States specifically, where Asian people make up a slim 7.2% of the population, the hate crimes that have been reported and circulated through media outlets outline a consistent pattern of concentrated attacks towards Asian women. While this is an incredibly disheartening trend to watch occur in real time, it is essential to note that this is not a new trend, as the abuse and open fire towards Asian women as a subpopulation has been ingrained into American society for decades.
This recurring trend of violence against Asian women, while exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, can be largely attributed to the late 20th century, and more specifically, the invasions of the United States military during the Vietnam and Korean Wars. Thousands of American soldiers lived in camptowns, and their establishment led to prostitution rings where they would circulate thousands of young Asian women from across the continent for their own sexual pleasures. Now, in America’s attempt to salvage the facade of American dignity, this extremely important detail was left out of American textbooks, left to only be circulated by the victims of these illegal rings.
Despite its disregard in written literature, tangible evidence of the oversexualization of Asian women at the hands of the United States military became incredibly popular in pop culture, with movies reintroducing an era that had been shunned in textbooks. Unfortunately, yet not surprisingly, these movies also depict a dehumanized version of these women, portrayed as uneducated and overly sexual. The most infamous example to date can be found in the movie “Full Metal Jacket,” where a Vietnamese prostitute is seen chasing American soldiers and intensely marketing her body as a reward for these men in return for their sexual validation.
Although movies that portray Asian women in such a boldly stereotypical fashion are cornered as social pariahs of the film industry, the less gaudy versions of these strictly sexual characters still play out in real time. In the modern day, we continue to see movies that depict Asian sex workers as easily accessible, including the recently released movie “Hustlers”. However, the oversexualization of Asian women due most directly to pop culture can be seen with the worldwide circulation of anime and manga. The Japanese art forms, foundational to the celebration of Japanese art and culture, have now become a worldwide phenomenon, with anime tv shows such as Hunter X Hunter and Demon Slayer becoming household names. These shows and comics, while celebrating the beautiful culture of their inception, have had negative repercussions, as many of their younger female characters are often wearing smaller and tighter clothing. As a result, the marketing of these young characters, combined with the previous stereotypes of Asian women has led to a branding of the entire subgroup. This stereotype has translated dramatically into the modern era, as we have seen with Asian women being attacked at an astonishingly high rate with many of the hate crimes tied to sexual assault and harrassment.
The most modern example of this issue can be seen with the 2021 Atlanta Spa Shootings, where 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long shot into three separate spas in the Atlanta area, killing eight and wounding one. The stereotyping of Asian women becomes glaringly obvious with the unfolding of this tragedy, where it was revealed that all of the victims were Asian, and mostly Asian women, and that the shooter’s motivation for his hate crimes was his sexual addiction to Asian women. It was understood that his motivation was to shoot any Asian person he saw, as a twisted sort of punishment for his own addiction. He pleaded guilty and was convicted on four counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Stereotypes of any already marginalized group are incredibly dangerous and only add to the discrimination that they already experience in modern day America. However, the oversexualization of Asian women in particular has consistently been deadly, and its permeation in American society will only serve to expand the target on the backs of Asian women across the country.
Written by Margarita Williams of Thomas S. Wootton High School