We’re exploring the shifting landscape of relationships, gender, and sexuality with the best writers, thinkers, and creators. Join award-winning journalist Blair Hodges to learn more about who we are and how we connect with each other in order to build a better world.
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We’re exploring the shifting landscape of relationships, gender, and sexuality with the best writers, thinkers, and creators. Join award-winning journalist Blair Hodges to learn more about who we are and how we connect with each other in order to build a better world.
Breaking Down Yellow Fever and the Asian Fetish (with Kaila Yu)
Relationscapes
1 hour 8 minutes 50 seconds
2 months ago
Breaking Down Yellow Fever and the Asian Fetish (with Kaila Yu)
What if the image the world loves you for is the one that’s destroying you?
In her memoir Fetishized, Kaila Yu deconstructs "yellow fever," exploring how pop culture and Western beauty ideals shaped damaging stereotypes about Asian women—and how she once embodied them herself. After spending years in the pinup and import modeling world, auditioning for film roles steeped in dehumanizing tropes, touring globally with her all Asian American girl band, and altering her body to match impossible standards, the emotional costs became too much. So he began a new journey to reclaim her identity, beauty, and self-worth.
Full transcript available at relationscapes.org.
About the Author
Kaila Yu is author of Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty. She is a freelance writer for the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Business Insider, Conde Nast Traveler and more. Formerly, she was a model and the lead singer for the all–Asian American female rock band Nylon Pink. Fetishized is her first book. You can find Kaila online @kailayu.
Relationscapes
We’re exploring the shifting landscape of relationships, gender, and sexuality with the best writers, thinkers, and creators. Join award-winning journalist Blair Hodges to learn more about who we are and how we connect with each other in order to build a better world.