"All of my ex-girlfriends are Asians so I mean I would totally be down to date you, 'cause you're Asian..."
That moment was probably my first encounter with "yellow fever." I had heard about it before but just assumed that it was a resurfacing of the actual fever that was caused by mosquitos, not a weird preference that men seemed to have for Asian women.
Growing up, I was made fun of because I didn't look like everyone else in my class. I was one of the only Asian girls and was constantly teased because of my skin tone and my eye shape. So in high school, when a guy who was interested said this to me, I was pretty dumbfounded and I didn't understand what had just happened. After I had told a few of my older friends they all laughed and said, "Oh him? Yeah, he totally has yellow fever. You're so lucky that you look so exotic. I'd love to be Asian." They didn't say that exactly but it was something along those lines. I just sat there looking at them, wondering about all of those years I spent wishing that I looked like them, blond hair and beautiful, green, hazel eyes. Since when was it a thing to be liked just for being Asian?
I recently watched a video on Facebook that was all about Asian women becoming fetishized by movies as exotic, mysterious, and basically subservient. The video showed clips from James Bond movies, Memoirs of a Geisha, among other popular movies that have portrayed Asian women as nothing more than a sexual fantasy or deviance. There have been several YouTube videos made on this topic by Asian women.
Asian women who seem to be just as confused as I am about why yellow fever has become so popular in the past few years.
It's come to a point that sometimes I will go out of my way to avoid people who have been known to have the fever because I want to be liked for more than just the way that my eyes are shaped or my culture. The biggest reason why it bothers me so much is that when a guy likes me just for being an Asian, where does the rest of me go? My personality? My ambitions for life, my characteristics? My whole being suddenly disappears and the only thing the guy can see is the color of my skin and my ethnic background.
I love the fact that I am Asian, I love being from a deeply rooted culture and I am learning, after a long time, that I do like looking the way I do. But, I want to be liked for who I am and not for my culture or the way that I look or my skin tone. Do I have preferences? Yes of course. But am I so close-minded that I will only look at and try to date according to that preference? I really hope not. I guess the difference come is how you view people. Do you see a person with flaws and characteristics who might just be interesting or do you only see me as an Asian woman?
