Breaking Down Yellow Fever and the Asian Fetish (with Kaila Yu)

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Intro – 0:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: This is Relationscapes—the podcast where we explore the stories and ideas that shape who we are and connect us with each other. I'm journalist Blair Hodges, and our guide in this episode is author Kaila Yu.

KAILA YU: I became an import model, which is just a girl that models for Japanese cars mostly. The import scene was huge. The models became mini-celebrities within the scene. So then girls would come up to me and be like, “My dream is to be an import model.” And I would be like, “Please dream bigger. This is not my ultimate dream.”

BLAIR HODGES: Kaila Yu is an expert on the topic of yellow fever, the way Asian women's bodies have been exoticized and sexualized, and how American pop culture has flattened Asian women into stereotypes of being obedient and submissive. From military brothels to pin-up calendars to Pornhub, Orientalist stereotypes have shaped how the world sees Asian women. And also, how many Asian women, including Kaila herself, come to see their own worth. This is the story of how Kaila Yu worked hard to become the fetishized fantasy and why she decided it was time to break free. Her new book is called Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty. And we're talking about it right now.

 

Asian Fetish Pride – 01:46

 

BLAIR HODGES: Kaila Yu, welcome to Relationscapes.

KAILA YU: Hey! How are you?

BLAIR HODGES: I'm doing well. I'm excited to dig into this book with you. It's such a good read.

KAILA YU: Thank you so much.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And right at the top, I wanted to give kind of a quick explanation and a disclaimer about the use of the term yellow fever, if that's okay with you.

KAILA YU: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: Because I figured, who better than a white guy to explain this concept?

KAILA YU: [laughter] Yeah!

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, so yellow fever, it's basically a kind of sexual obsession and objectification of Asian women. It's called yellow fever because at different times and places in history, both religious and scientific, people would try to categorize the different races of the world according to color. And the basic categories people came up with were red, yellow, black, white, and sometimes brown. People of Asian descent, despite all their diversity, were kind of lumped into this category of yellow, supposedly because their skin looked yellow.

Anyway, there's a lot of scientific racism involved. There's religious racism involved here. And modern scientists, of course, recognize this isn't a scientifically based way of understanding race anyway.

KAILA YU: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: But yellow fever, that term has stuck around. And again, it refers to a kind of Asian fetish, as though men are overtaken by a kind of disease that makes them attracted to Asian women. Or maybe that their attraction to Asian women takes them to fever pitch. [laughter]

Okay, so considering how even the term yellow fever itself has this really gross background, you say there's plenty of men today who aren't ashamed at all of it. Here's a quote from the book you write:

“The craziest thing about the Asian fetish is how confidently men announce it with absolutely no shame and a good measure of pride.”

So to sum it all up, if you're an Asian woman, you're likely to be on the receiving end of a lot of proudly creepy comments.

KAILA YU: Yeah. So I have a social media account where I post about Asian fetishism being bad. I posted a recent video titled, “Do you have an Asian fetish?” And then the number of men were like, “I do, I do!”

BLAIR HODGES: You're like, welcome to my feed! [laughter]

KAILA YU: Yeah. Explaining why they did and explaining in ways that were not great.

BLAIR HODGES: I think my sense is they think it's complimentary, maybe, right? Like, if they tell you this, they're like, “I'm flattering you.”

KAILA YU: Yes, yes. And when I was young, it seemed like it was, because I was invisible in high school. I didn't encounter the Asian fetish in high school. Nobody in my high school had it. So it was like, oh, there are guys that actually prefer me! You know, at first you might see that as a compliment if you had none of the opposite.

But it's difficult because I don't think all guys who prefer Asian women are problematic, but the ones that are, are so problematic.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. This is the question I had—you mentioned “preference,” right? Some people ask you, what is the difference between having a fetish versus a preference?

KAILA YU: Yeah, that's the big question. And really only the guy knows, because what's going on in his head, right? But it's like, do you treat Asian women as interchangeable objects that are disposable? And basically sex is the primary driving factor.

Like, if you've dated a number of Asian women, then you marry an Asian woman, I would say, oh, well, maybe it's not a fetish. I don't know. It's still a case-by-case basis. Like, if you're seriously falling in love and pursuing a real lifetime relationship with someone—

But a good example is The White Lotus. Did you watch White Lotus 3?

BLAIR HODGES: No, I have not seen White Lotus 3.

KAILA YU: So there is a viral scene that you can see even though you didn't watch it, but it's about this guy who has an Asian fetish, he's played by Sam Rockwell, basically a guy who—he's like, I need to find myself, so I'm going to go to Thailand and sleep with thousands of Asian women, as many as I can. And then he kind of “finds himself.” But yeah, he just treats them as this tool for him, for his self-awakening.

BLAIR HODGES: And it could be any women there, right? He's just going over there, he doesn't even have any particular people in mind, right?

KAILA YU: No, I think he said “Asian women of all types—tall, short,” you know.

BLAIR HODGES: It's like he's not talking about anyone specifically.

KAILA YU: He's just not at all.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, it's just a category. Now, some people might prefer darker hair, lighter hair, or taller or shorter—these are preferences. But yeah, you talk about the dehumanization that happens with the fetish, which is just being Asian itself becomes the thing. And as you said, it's interchangeable.

And as we'll get into as well, there's also cultural beliefs about what Asian women are like—we'll talk about this a little bit later on—that make the fetish problematic. But first, I wanted to say, you mentioned high school and growing up.

You talk about internalized racism and growing up with that, and buying into the ideas that the culture was sort of putting on you. And it wasn't just about women either. It was also about Asian men. So there are stereotypes about Asian men. Talk about that and the kind of internalized racism that you imbibed as you were growing up.

KAILA YU: Yeah, you could really see the difference in society's perception of Asian men. Because when I was growing up, it was like the guy in Revenge of the Nerds, that guy, or that guy in Sixteen Candles—really cringy, extreme nerd characters. Not even like any Asian men that exist in real life, really. But that's what we were being shown.

And for some reason, the Western media has chosen to emasculate Asian men. And then there's the whole perception of Asians as generally being the model minority, so being nerdy and really obedient. But now, flip side, K-pop's big and BTS is all over screens. And now you have a bunch of women who are in love with Asian men. So it just shows how it's just media-produced.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, it can really flip on a dime.

KAILA YU: Yeah.

 

Little Mermaids – 07:54

 

BLAIR HODGES: I want to talk about your childhood a little bit more. So you really related—in this particular chapter, you talk about relating to Disney’s The Little Mermaid a lot. There's so much pop culture then and now that taught you unhealthy things about a woman's worth. And it also played a part in how you related to your own father.

This is a great chapter.

KAILA YU: I always want to preface this by saying my dad was an amazing, kind father who provided everything and was always there. But in the Asian culture, men are not taught to verbally affirm their children, or they're a little bit, you know, sometimes just hands-off, and the mom does the mothering.

And in The Little Mermaid, in the Disney version—because it's very, very different from the original. The original, I think, was maybe meant to be a cautionary tale because it was kind of terrifying. But in the Disney version, King Triton is so in love with—not, you know—like, he adores his daughter so much that when she doesn't show up for a performance, he just cancels the whole thing, and he's just so protective and fathering.

But in the original, the father is just there. He exists, but we never really talk about him in detail. And so basically, the story with the Disney version is, well, even though she's very loved by her father, she falls in love with this guy and gives up everything for him without speaking a word to him.

BLAIR HODGES: Including giving up her voice—her literal.

KAILA YU: Voice, her voice, her body, her family. Yeah. And he, conversely, falls in love with her purely for her beauty because she can't say words.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. So you're learning these lessons. One of the most heartbreaking stories is when you talked about getting ready for—like little kids do—you made this little performance you wanted to perform for your dad, a little dance kind of show. And you worked so hard for a long time, and then he just kind of got up and left. Like the opposite of—

KAILA YU: He was, like, going to get some more barbecue or something. I don't know what the real reason was, but my young self saw it as, “Oh no, this was for you,” you know?

BLAIR HODGES: You had this drive to impress him and captivate him and feel that kind of fatherly love that he wasn't enculturated to convey. Not a lot of physical affection—you rarely saw him hug you or your siblings, for example.

That's going on, and then you're also learning, okay, Ariel's beauty is kind of her ticket to connection. This is it. Maybe it's because I'm not beautiful like her. Maybe that's what I ought to become.

KAILA YU: Yeah. I mean, I think in all the Disney princess movies, it's taught that the very beautiful princess wins everything at the end—but mostly the man. Mostly the man. And then probably riches, because they're usually princes, you know.

 

Desirable Geisha – 10:52

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. You carry these ideas into high school, and it's sort of a little ugly-duckling-ish story. You said you didn't have a lot of confidence in your appearance. That was important to you. But you're also encountering more Asian people in pop culture. Memoirs of a Geisha made a big impact.

So what did you love about this book at that time? How did it fit into this story?

KAILA YU: I mean, the book was beautifully written—it's just such a beautifully written book. But the problem with it is that it was written as if the woman, the geisha, was writing it in memoir first person. So I've talked about this book recently, and many people don't realize it was written by a white man.

And the issue with that is because there's Orientalism in there—

BLAIR HODGES: Define that. Orientalism.

KAILA YU: It is kind of like treating the East as magical, with the stereotypes of these submissive women who are fawning at men, but, yeah, just steeped in these romanticized stereotypes. But it tends to also treat the East as inferior, as in, “Oh, you know, opium smoking, lazing around.”

With that book, it was very much about women fighting, first of all, for men—and the youngest, prettiest wins, which is the theme of a lot of movies, frankly.

BLAIR HODGES: But yeah, you say that the book confirmed all your misguided beliefs about female rivalries, about feminine worth, and about outer appearances. So you're reading this as a teen, and you say the book—maybe it should be read and taught in high school, but not just presented as this true account of what it was like to be a geisha or something, because these aren't the lessons you want to teach. You want to critique these lessons, these ideas?

KAILA YU: Yes, it would be a great critique—as in, we all ignore the fact that it was basically a child prostitution movie, child sex trafficking movie, and that the centerpiece of the book and the movie is about selling off virginity. Geishas have all said this is not an institutionalized practice as it was presented in the book, where everybody was in on it.

Maybe somebody secretly slept with one of their people on the side or something. But, yeah, it wasn't this formalized practice where everybody sells off their virginity when they come of age.

BLAIR HODGES: Your book really debunks a lot of things like this. I think I saw the film, and I just kind of took it as, you know, it's historical fiction—but I didn't realize how much of it was just straight-up fiction.

KAILA YU: Yeah, it's quite not historical.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And you connect it with the history of sex tourism and war, which doesn't—it's not highlighted in the book. These things aren't critiqued in that book.

KAILA YU: Well, okay, so she says—or he writes this in her voice—that, “Oh, the Americans were actually super nice to us,” or whatever. But one of the most shocking facts in my book that I came across, of which there were many, was when Japan fell in World War II. Japan had this practice of comfort women, which is very troubling—where they would basically kidnap Korean women mostly, but other East and Southeast Asian women, and sex traffic them for their soldiers. They'd have to just be prostitutes, basically, these prisoners.

So when the Americans came in, they're like, “Oh, we better set up a comfort station for them or they're going to rape the local women.” So they set up this station, and some of the women there were, I guess, volunteers—they said, whatever that means.

BLAIR HODGES: But yeah, how could the women—the economy was such that, how voluntary could that be?

KAILA YU: Yeah. So basically, the women's accounts of it were that the sex was so ghastly and animalistic that they couldn't believe it. They had to service anywhere from 10 to 50 men per woman per day. Then finally it had to be shut down because it was overrun with STDs. And when it was shut down, the local rapes went from 50 to 330 a day.

So that just is a snapshot. And if we think this is only limited to the past—I didn't even get into this in the book, and I keep finding out new facts as I'm digging because it's deep—is that we still have a US base, I believe, in Okinawa, and there's a big problem with local rape. I think two soldiers last month were convicted of rape.

BLAIR HODGES: Wow.

KAILA YU: So it's still happening right now.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, it's still present. And behind all of this, you talk about starting to learn about the patriarchy game. And it's basically that desirability determines survival.

KAILA YU: And it wasn't that formalized at the age—you know, you're just like, “I gotta be pretty no matter what.” That's the only way to get things.

 

Delicate Butterfly – 16:05

 

BLAIR HODGES: Right, let's talk about the next trope you mentioned in the book, which is the butterfly. So you're a sophomore in high school, and you discover an Asian American model, Sung-Hi Lee, and this was a big deal to you. You became obsessed with supermodels. I hadn't really thought a lot about girls becoming obsessed with supermodels, I have to say.

Like, I would always picture boys being obsessed with it—they might hide magazines under their mattress or pin up stuff in their lockers or something. I hadn't really thought much about girls becoming obsessed with supermodels. And you're straight—t

KAILA YU: Right—

BLAIR HODGES: So it wasn't about sexual attraction. Tell me about that—how you became so obsessed.

KAILA YU: I mean, I guess I never discussed that with other women personally, so I don't know if everyone felt this way. But I do know a lot of girls look up to the Victoria Secret models and they know them by name, so maybe they do feel the same way. But for me, I felt like such an ugly duckling. So that just felt like the pinnacle of womanhood — to be a supermodel. Of course, though, when I was watching these Cindy Crawfords and the Rachel Hunters and these models, there were no Asian ones.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KAILA YU: Until I discovered Sung-Hi Lee on the Internet. And I didn’t look like her, but she was Asian, so it made it a little more aspirational. Like, I could actually do this. I couldn’t be a supermodel — I’m not tall enough anyway — but she’s doing this.

She’s my height, and she’s having wild success with it online, it seems.

BLAIR HODGES: Did she have Chinese ancestry?

KAILA YU: She’s Korean.

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, she’s Korean. Okay. And you’re Taiwanese, right?

KAILA YU: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay. So there’s also kind of a flattening that happens there. Or sort of like a pan-Asian thing that’s happening too, like interchangeability.

KAILA YU: Yeah. Well, even Asians can’t always tell a Korean from—often you can, most of the time you can. But sometimes people would mistake me for Korean, so it’s not always super obvious.

BLAIR HODGES: But how early on did you know she’s not Taiwanese? And it didn’t matter to you, but did that come up as a kid even? Like, you’re noticing that and you’re like, oh, wow, that’s totally cool with me.

KAILA YU: Well, I think that since there was nobody else, you take whoever you can get. And she was the only one. She was like—she’s East Asian, you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, like “close enough.”

KAILA YU: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: This is where the butterfly trope comes up. So talk about the butterfly trope and how it applies to Asian women.

KAILA YU: Yeah, kind of. Sung-Hi Lee was called the Korean Butterfly on the Internet—and I don’t think she even connected these dots. She would pose nude with butterfly wings. And she had a butterfly tattoo above her pubic bone. And people called her the Korean Butterfly. But then I traced back the history of how much the butterfly was applied to Asian women, starting from Madame Butterfly in many other situations.

Madame Butterfly is a crazy kind of story because it’s still one of the most famous operas to this day. And the basic premise is that a military man goes to—Madame Butterfly is in Japan, I think? He takes a temporary wife, and then she falls madly in love with him.

She’s underage, he’s a man. And then he leaves back to America and marries a white woman, and she is pregnant and pining for him every day. Then he returns with the wife, and she commits suicide and gives them her baby. And then rinse and repeat for Miss Saigon, except in Vietnam. And then rinse and repeat for—I’m forgetting the name of the movie, but there’s a movie starring Anna May Wong, except in China. So interchangeable—just keep the exact same story but move it to a different Asian country.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, right. And behind this, the idea of the butterfly itself, when you think about it as a symbol for a woman—butterflies are very beautiful. They’re also very delicate. They’re also very collectible. And they’re also very silent, too.

KAILA YU: Yes. Yeah, yeah. There’s this quote—because Madame Butterfly is from the book, I don’t know if this is how you pronounce the French, Mademoiselle Chrysantheme—

BLAIR HODGES: Right. And it is in Japan. I googled it.

KAILA YU: So in that book, I’m not quoting him exactly, but he’s like, “Oh, she’s as dainty and cute as a kitten. Does she have thoughts in her head? I don’t know. I don’t care,” you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, my gosh, yeah. He says, “It is a hundred to one that she has no thoughts whatever. And even if she had, what do I care?” So it’s even worse.

KAILA YU: I made it nicer! [laughter] There’s no way she has any thoughts!

BLAIR HODGES: But if she did, I don’t care anyway. So bad. And this is beloved stuff. Like, it’s still performing.

KAILA YU: Yeah, I mean, they’re still performing it. I think they perform it with a disclaimer now or something.

BLAIR HODGES: And this is when you start really dreaming of becoming a pinup yourself. And again, this is definitely not in my wheelhouse. I grew up in a conservative religious tradition, so the idea of girls becoming a pinup was just taboo from the beginning anyway. Like, that would never have been in the cards for the people I was around.

But here you are. This is your dream.

KAILA YU: Oh, that was very taboo for my family too.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay!

KAILA YU: My parents were definitely not okay. They’re extremely strict Asian American parents. But I think I reacted to that by really rebelling. I was like, I want to do what I want to do. And I also do not want to live up to the model minority Asian expectation.

 

Model Minority versus Asian Baby Girls – 22:09

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, let’s dig more into that. In particular, the model minority trope. So for people that aren’t familiar with it, maybe just define the basics of it. And this comes up throughout the book because a lot of the personas and a lot of the cultures that different Asian folks find themselves attracted to or develop are a reaction to the model minority trope.

KAILA YU: Yeah. So it’s basically a trope invented by white supremacy to pit Asian Americans against other minorities. They can point at Asian Americans and say, “Well, they’re successful, they’ve become financially stable, they’re raising great families—why can’t you?” And that ends up pitting—because there is traditional—

BLAIR HODGES: “They’re good at math.”

KAILA YU: Yeah, very good at math.

BLAIR HODGES: Are you good at math? [laughter] No, just kidding.

KAILA YU: I’m actually bad at math. I’m actually bad at math.

BLAIR HODGES: Me too!

KAILA YU: But yeah, that they’re obedient and—

BLAIR HODGES: “Family values” really means things like women being submissive, obedient—

KAILA YU: Yeah. And then many Asians play into it because they’re like—they don’t say this, but being white adjacent means you’re kind of almost white. And this also causes a rift among other people of color who are like, “Well, you don’t suffer the same injustice as we do. We don’t even consider you a person of color.”

So it’s this weird place.

BLAIR HODGES: And as a teenager looking at that, you’re like, that’s not me. That doesn’t fit.

“Asian Baby Girl” is a persona you introduced me to. I wasn’t familiar with this one, but it seems like a direct reaction to model minority status. So talk about this Asian Baby Girl persona.

KAILA YU: Yeah. So when I was growing up, we were being that—but that word didn’t get invented until about 10 years ago, when it became so apparent that everybody was doing this at some point.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KAILA YU: When I was growing up, there was this whole movement of Asians reacting against, “We don’t want to be our obedient little—” you know, the immigrant parents come here so their children can have better lives, but we were like, “No, we want to be cool and American.”

So that started with the import culture, which is the car show scene that inspired The Fast and the Furious ultimately. People would be fixing up their cars, and then the girls would be hanging out with the guys with the fixed-up cars, wearing sexy clothing—because that’s what you do at car shows.

And then the rave scene started to happen. Asian Baby Girls are really associated with raves for some reason, and they would always be scantily clad on ecstasy at raves.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KAILA YU: But it became a very sexualized aesthetic. It didn’t start like that. The origins of the Asian Baby Girl are Asian Baby Gangster, and these were more Southeast Asian—Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian. They were being gangsters to survive. But then I think East Asians came along and were like, “We want to be gangster too.”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KAILA YU: So growing up, there were all these middle-class Koreans and Chinese guys who were like gangster—they’re watching Four Weddings and Sunnyside or whatever—and I was like, you grew up middle class, why are you in this gang? But they just wanted that cool gangster image.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. You’re rebelling against the model minority thing, rebelling against middle-class status. You’re hardcore, right?

KAILA YU: [laughter] Yeah, yeah!

BLAIR HODGES: There’s also a toughness to ABG, too. Like, there’s a harder edge to it, which goes against stereotypes of Asian women as being submissive and obedient.

KAILA YU: Yeah. And I think even with the men, when they were in this car show scene and trying to be gangster, they were reacting against the emasculated kind of thing that was happening in the culture. And also model minority.

BLAIR HODGES: The idea is that Asian men are weak and effeminate. Like, they can't grow big, burly beards and whatever.

KAILA YU: You know, they're like, "we're gangsters."

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, they're gonna be gangster.

KAILA YU: Yeah.

 

The Joy Luck Club – 26:26

 

BLAIR HODGES: “You have reason to fear us,” you know. Okay. And this is where The Joy Luck Club comes up. So this is another cultural touchstone. And this is about a Chinese American woman. So this time you're seeing a piece of media that isn't just about Asian women, but this is about Asian American women. And talk about how The Joy Luck Club informed you at this time.

KAILA YU: Yeah, I mean, that book was beautiful because I finally felt seen, and it did tell the Asian American experience. It was like four Asian American daughters and their Chinese mothers. So it would weave back from the Asian American experience, where I could relate to, and then it would go back to China, where the mothers were extremely submissive.

And I was just like—the reaction I got was, thank God I did not grow up in China because those women are suffering. And, yeah, it didn't mean to, I think, but it ended up publicizing that submissive Asian woman trope, which I guess, you know, that's present in East Asia for some reason.

When Asian fetishists get ahold of it, it turns sexualized and submissive—like, as hypersexual, yet submissive. But in Asia, it's just submissive.

BLAIR HODGES: And again, see, I think we're pretty much the same. Like, I graduated in 2000. When did you graduate high school?

KAILA YU: 1996.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, cool. So, yeah, basically, this time there was all this stuff happening. Like, you're seeing Sung-Hi Lee, you're seeing supermodel—like, this was the heyday of supermodel. You're seeing pop culture, like The Joy Luck Club. You're seeing Weezer’s Pinkerton album, which I think is, like, their best album. But then if you listen to it now, there's so many problems with that album.

It's like—yeah, like, I saw them perform it this summer, and he's singing “Across the Sea,” which is, like, the most offensive.

KAILA YU: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: Just unabashedly performing, talking about writing—some 16-year-old girl from Japan is writing him a fan letter, and he wants to imagine her doing unspeakable things, you know. And I'm like, Rivers, you're like 55. It was creepy back then, buddy.

KAILA YU: Like, I mean, he's married to a Japanese woman.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. I'm like, Rivers, no.

KAILA YU: How do you feel about him singing this song?

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, Rivers, don't do it.

KAILA YU: I've heard he's super nice.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, no, super nice. But this is like, right? We're kind of in this heyday—like we grew up during this particular time. And you're witnessing all of this, you're reacting against it too. And you know, you saw the idea of the submissiveness of these Asian women, especially moms. But your mom was pretty hardcore in terms of strictness.

And, like, you were kind of—you were in this weird spot of, like, your mom had come to this powerful position in her home and you're resisting against that to be the submissive girl to your boyfriend, which is like the opposite of that.

KAILA YU: But I guess there's like some teenage—like you never want to be like your parents at a certain age.

BLAIR HODGES: Sure, it's common.

KAILA YU: So whatever they are, you react against them. And mine was like a strange reaction. Yeah, yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: So this boyfriend made an impact. Don is the one I'm talking about. Is he the one that kind of started encouraging you to also pursue modeling?

KAILA YU: Yeah, I mean, I already had it in my head, but I think when I brought it up to him, he was like, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah. Because he was a huge—every Asian guy of that generation knows Sung-Hi Lee, and they were a fan.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay.

KAILA YU: So, yeah, he was like, yeah, I want my girlfriend to be her.

BLAIR HODGES: And it showed you that, like, he believed that you could belong there too, which, you know, must have felt good.

KAILA YU: Yeah, I think he was like the first guy in my life to tell me I was beautiful. So I think that—I mean, we were together for like four years, but I was like very, very in love with him. And he gave me all that verbal affirmation that I never got.

 

Body Modification – 30:10

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. So this is feeding into—okay, the model thing is the way. And this is where you talk about your decision to get breast implants, and there's a lot of different opinions about body modification. Some people would say that it's pro-feminist because it's about personal empowerment and owning your looks and feeling good in your body, and it's your choice.

And others might say that it's anti-feminist because a lot of it is dictated by patriarchal, men-driven beauty standards. And how did you think about it at the time? Did any of that even cross your mind?

KAILA YU: None of that crossed my mind back then. I was just like, I'm flat, and, like, Pamela Anderson's on TV. So it's like—I didn't need it to be that big, but, you know, I needed something.

BLAIR HODGES: Did you talk to your parents about it?

KAILA YU: Oh, totally, because I said to my mom—because I had decided to do it in college—and I said to my mom, she had been—you know, as an Asian kid, you're always getting red envelopes from your relatives. So that's basically just filled with cash. Like, relatives will give you cash on your birthday, but my mom would always take it and deposit it for us.

And then I was like, I'm getting these breast implants. I'm gonna put it on a credit card, like, no matter what. So give me my money. And, like, I strong-armed it into doing it. And then she ended up finding the doctor and—thank God, thank God she was involved—because she, like, deeply researched it, like, did her mom thing.

But, like, who knows who I would have found as a 19 or 18-year-old girl?

BLAIR HODGES: You know, that seems like kind of a harm-reduction strategy, like, "okay, as a parent, I see where this is going. I'm not gonna try to control my kid, but I'm gonna try to, like, get involved in a way that keeps it as safe as I possibly can," I guess.

KAILA YU: Yeah, I would have gotten them no matter what!

BLAIR HODGES: It seemed like authenticity was really important to you. One of the things that stood out to me is you didn't want it to be detected. You didn't want it to be obvious. You chose a relatively "modest" size, quote-unquote, right? You didn't go for, like, huge breast implants. You wanted a natural look.

And so that's interesting to me—that you wanted the body modification. At the time, big boobs was the thing for pinups. Like, that was it. But you kind of went this different route where you're like, no, I'm gonna kind of get this smaller, and this is how I want to look.

And I just want it—I don't want it to seem like I have breast implants.

KAILA YU: Well, I think I grew up with, you know, Cindy Crawford, and she wasn't, like, oversized. I think she was, like, a good fit for her frame. And I think that's true of a lot of the Sports Illustrated models of the time. Pamela Anderson wasn't actually, like, my—I wasn't, like, a die-hard fan of hers, but she was the aesthetic of the time.

And then, like, I think Britney Spears came along, and she's also, you know, fair-sized. And the kicker is that Sung-Hi Lee had very natural-looking—not obvious—I pretty much just brought her photo to the—

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, yeah, so you had this literal model. That was a model.

KAILA YU: Yeah, yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: Where are you at now on breast implants?

KAILA YU: I wish I could say I regretted them, but I've always been very happy with them.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, why do you wish you could say you regretted them then?

KAILA YU: Because I am such a feminist, right? So there is no reason to have breast implants but for the male gaze, really. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: And sometimes the female gaze. It depends.

KAILA YU: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes. But, like, it makes me feel sexier when I'm with my man, you know. Like, it makes me feel more feminine, and it makes all of that more enjoyable.

BLAIR HODGES: So the ambiguity in the book was powerful because you don't give me a definitive answer. You don't give readers, like, either “this was right” or “this was wrong.” You talk about the complexity of it—that, yes, like, it can be pro-feminist in the sense that at the time you definitely told yourself, I'm doing this for myself.

But then over time, you did start to reflect on, okay, now I see how men-driven beauty standards are working and how that affected my self-esteem. And so you see it now as more complicated, and you kind of leave it in the complication. That's where it is.

KAILA YU: Yeah, it is difficult because, like, they say this thing, you know—pretty privilege or whatever—like there's this whole thing that, like, you can face the world if you put on a fresh coat of lipstick and just, like, face the day. But it's kind of like your appearance can open doors. Literally. Even just, like, the barista is nicer to you or whatever.

But the ultimate power move, I think, is Pamela Anderson going out there and wearing no makeup everywhere. Like, I'm not brave enough to do that. We still live in the patriarchy, but she's like—if more people were brave enough to set that example, we could move that forward more.

I wish I could join.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. See, you're kind of living in an ambiguous in-between. Like, intellectually, you're on the same level, your heart's there, but you're also still living in this particular culture and you feel the weight of it.

KAILA YU: Yeah.

 

Asian Fetish Predators – 35:22

 

BLAIR HODGES: Well, this takes us to, I assume, one of the hardest parts of the book to write, and certainly to talk about. So in college, you were finally ready to pursue pinup modeling. And you say that yellow fever combined with your desperation to break into modeling led you straight into what you call the predator's den.

And he takes us to some of what I imagine are the most terrible moments of your entire life. What was it like to write about basically being tricked and trapped into what became a pornography video?

KAILA YU: Well, it's crazy because writing about it was maybe the most healing thing. My editor, Amy Lee—I shout her out all the time—because she's amazing. She's Asian American, and she really championed the book from the beginning. And every chapter, I would write it and then give it to her chapter by chapter.

And we'd, like, say, how does it fit? You know? And she'd cut things out or tell me I needed to write more about this, et cetera. But, like, I was able to process it with someone who was very compassionate to the situation. And then in our society, female victims blame themselves more than anybody else.

And for the longest time, I didn't even know it was assault. I was just like, I know I didn't want that to happen. I don't know how it happened. There was no "Me Too." And there was no understanding—Like, I knew I was tricked into it, but I couldn't voice that because no one would understand back in 2000-whatever.

BLAIR HODGES: Probably felt like you "chose" to go to that place.

KAILA YU: Yeah. Like, why were you there? Why were you there?

BLAIR HODGES: You were looking at ads, right? Like, you saw ads for modeling, and you would go to these places.

KAILA YU: In the school newspaper.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, in the school paper! So you're thinking, okay, this is a legit place. So you show up, and this guy's got this creepy apartment and gets you in there. And then he basically coerces you into these sex acts. And you were a virgin at the time.

KAILA YU: I was a virgin. There's no way. I had a boyfriend at the time who I was madly in love with, who I was not doing anything with. So he took something, and he knew I was a virgin because I told him, because he wanted to do more. We ended up doing less because I told him of my inexperience.

But that was still the first time I experienced these things.

BLAIR HODGES: And you're thinking of blame, like, hey, I chose to go there.

KAILA YU: And definitely, I was like, why were you there? Why didn't you scream and, like, run out of there? But I don't think people understand. Like, they don't understand the situation. Like, if you're alone in a room with the power dynamics of someone who's decades older than you, you're highly inexperienced. He's obviously done this before, and he knows what he's doing. And there's fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And I did some combination of freeze and fawn.

People are like, why don't you scream? Like, you don't know if it's safe to scream. No, if he, like, strikes you, or I could have disappeared.

BLAIR HODGES: Right. You know, you have no idea. You don't know this guy. And I think people really don't know if they're up against the wall, how they're going to react. Like, those reactions aren't necessarily consciously chosen—whether you do fight, flight. Like, that's just the body reacting. So it was really… It was tragic to learn about your experience there.

And I just admire you for talking about it. And it almost went away. You got out of there and you thought, like, okay, I'm going to be more careful. You still want to pursue modeling. And I think it took, like, a year or something, right, before suddenly you're getting contacted by people who are saying, “We saw you—how disgusting this is.”

KAILA YU: And that just shows how dissociated I was. Because obviously, filming it was, like, for what, his personal collection? You know, it was obviously going to be produced, right? But I completely stuffed it down and just never thought of it again. I didn't tell anyone. And, yeah, a year later, what happened is I fell deep into drugs.

I think this was, like, my unconscious coping mechanism. And my GPA dropped down to, like, a 1.2 or something really low. And then I just begged my mom to let me drop out of college. I was like, I need to just get out. And that was actually the saving grace because, like, if I was on campus while this tape became public—because it was my classmates that discovered it and watched it together, by the way—this is so horrible.

BLAIR HODGES: And then treated you like you were, like, terrible for it.

KAILA YU: Yes. Yeah. My best friend was like, “You're disgusting. I can't believe you did this.” Like, I still can't understand the logic of it. By the time they informed me, I was already living with my boyfriend back in, I think, Chino Hills. So when I got the call, at least it wasn't in my dorm room, you know, and then having to, like, walk out to everybody on campus.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And you say that you felt almost more violated knowing now that thousands and then hundreds of thousands of—who knows how many people witnessing this assault—that felt almost as violating, or maybe just as much as the actual assault itself?

KAILA YU: I would say arguably it's maybe more because nobody considered it assault, although I have watched it before, and it is very evident that I am not having a good time, like, and uncomfortable, and possibly even very frightened at some points. But then the thing is, if you watch porn today, some people are into that.

So, I mean, that's, like, maybe a popular category of that.

BLAIR HODGES: And not only that, but Asian porn in general. You say as a category, it's, did you say it's the top searched category on Pornhub—Asian?

KAILA YU: Yeah, I think this was like 2023 or something. But yeah, there were like 10 different top ones. Like in the top 10, there was Asian, like Japanese, or like Panay, which is Filipina. And yeah, I can't remember the rest, but there's a number of Asian terms in the top 10. And what the difference is, when you look at the list of porn stars, there's very few Asian porn stars, so…

Meaning the women are interchangeable. Like, it's just whatever.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, that blew my mind. Yeah. If you said you look at, like, the top list of, like, actual porn stars, I think you said there was only one Asian model in the top 25.

KAILA YU: Yes. Yeah, she wasn't in the top 10.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes. Like, Asians, like a top category, but they're not named—they're just… yeah, they're interchangeable.

KAILA YU: And then another thing was that, back in the 2000s, I think Complex magazine—I hope I'm getting that right—came out with a list of the 20 top Asian porn stars. Now at that time, you couldn't even name the one Asian singer, you know, and you have 20 porn stars. Like, maybe you could name five actresses.

 

Pinup Modeling and Asian Tropes – 42:16

 

BLAIR HODGES: All right, so the porn industry—you talk about that throughout the book as well and how your video got out, how terrible that was. But you still make a push to go toward modeling still, and you thought maybe that would be game over for you. But I think your agent and other people were like, no, no, no, we're gonna… you know, we can overcome this.

KAILA YU: Yeah, I definitely thought that because, you know, I did pinup modeling and Playboy kind of stuff. And although some might think they're in the same category, people in the industry very much separate that. Like, if you've been in hardcore or whatever, Playboy will not make you a playmate or even feature you in their magazines.

They're very anti that. So I did pose for Playboy at the beginning, but they never featured me again. So that's probably the reason.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, it was also super weird too. Because you say, like, that photo shoot—you showed up and they're like, “Okay, this photo shoot's like a lesbian photo shoot.” And you're like, “What? Like, I'm not gay.” But you're also… this is Playboy. This was, like, your dream.

KAILA YU: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: This is, to me, another instance of coercion of your experience.

KAILA YU: I knew I was appearing in Girlfriend.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, so you knew before you…

KAILA YU: But I hadn't met the girl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew the topic of it, but when I showed up, I didn't know who the other girl was.

BLAIR HODGES: But did you feel empowered to be like, I don't want to do that, can we do something else?

KAILA YU: Oh, no.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, yeah. That's what I mean. It's like you're still in a vulnerable position of being like, okay, like, that's what they're telling me, and this… I really want to make this work. So… okay.

KAILA YU: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's not a lot of choice for actresses or anybody. You take, like, the roles that are available.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. You talk about leaning into Asian tropes here as well. So it'll be like the scenes or, like, the clothes that you wear. You're figuring out, like, okay, I gotta Asian it up, basically.

KAILA YU: Yeah. I mean, when you dress up like a schoolgirl, you just get, like, so many more views. Or if you, like, wear a little Chinese dress, like, oh, why is that so much more popular? Yeah, it's just kind of the natural, I guess, progression of experimenting with things.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And you wanted to keep progressing. You end up connecting with Sung-Hi. She had a website that was kind of the beginning of these sort of website subscription things. And… and this is like your hero and she's wanting to feature you on her website.

KAILA YU: Yeah, it was life changing at the time. But, you know, I followed her website. I was a member, so I knew the instant she started featuring other models. Like, I submitted myself. And she was actually one of my first breaks. Like, when she featured me, then I was present to all her entire audience.

And then the other magazines that had featured her before were reaching out to me. And so, yeah, it was a big break for me when she featured me, and then plus her photographer, who later became my website webmaster photographer, was, like, just still one of the best photographers I ever shot with. So the photos were stunning.

BLAIR HODGES: Did you get negative feedback from other women in your life, including young women? I'm thinking, like, girlfriends whose boyfriends are looking at Playboy or whatever. Or, you know, people who feel like… just have moral problems with, you know—you talked about the gradations of porn. Like, there's hardcore porn where there's actual sex acts involved versus softcore porn where it's like photographs of nude people.

How were other people interacting with you at the time? Were you getting, like, slut-shamed? Were you, you know… and how did you reckon with, like, oh, yeah, it would kind of suck if my boyfriend was, like, looking at somebody else or something?

KAILA YU: Well, it's interesting because I used to have my AOL screen name available on my website for people to chat with me. And maybe it's just because mostly men were messaging me, but a lot of the hate was from Asian men slut-shaming me. Yeah. So that might just be because it was majority Asian men messaging me, period.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, that's like the venue, like AOL. [laughter]

KAILA YU: Because there was plenty of love from, like, ones that were fans or whatever. But yeah, there was a lot of hate too.

 

Import Car Modeling and Eye Modification – 46:19

 

BLAIR HODGES: Did you find any young women fans who were sort of like you to Sung-Hi, where it's like, oh, wow, I want to be beautiful like this?

KAILA YU: So many. Like, when I was doing that, I went off and did the import scene. So I became an import model, which is just a girl that models for, like, Japanese cars mostly. But the import scene was huge. It was like, you know, there was a show taking place every weekend. There were like 20,000 people attending each one.

BLAIR HODGES: So yeah, car magazines made it into, like, the Fast and Furious film franchise.

KAILA YU: Yeah. So the girls became, like, mini-celebrities within the scene because we had nobody else. Like, there were no other people. So we made our own celebrities within the racers and the models. So then girls would come up to me and be like, “My dream is to be an import model.” And then I would be like, “Please dream bigger.”

BLAIR HODGES: Really?

KAILA YU: This is not my ultimate dream, you know. And then at that point I was like, I want to be a singer or actress or, like, something beyond this.

BLAIR HODGES: So you'd begun mentally moving on and saying this.

KAILA YU: Yes.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay.

KAILA YU: Yeah, very much.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And your self-scrutiny was being heightened at this time too. Like, this is when you got eye surgery.

KAILA YU: Yeah, well, I was looking at photos of myself all day long, so I was definitely nitpicking, like, oh, I should fix this and this, and she looks better with this. But, like, my eyes were, you know, the thing with Asian eyes, it's what we get. The racist comments are mostly about our eyes, or, like, there's gestures and everything and slurs.

And even in Asia, it's like, oh, bigger eyes are, you know, more desirable.

BLAIR HODGES: So you talk about sort of the specific things. I didn't know about any of this—the eye stuff.

KAILA YU: Yeah, yeah, it's very, very specific, I guess, to the Asian American experience. But, like, in photos, I would hold my eyes a little bit bigger just to, like, widen them. So it's like, why don't I just get surgery so I don't have to do that anymore?

BLAIR HODGES: And the history of the surgery was interesting too. Like, it's specific to Asian communities, basically. And it again goes into these beauty standards. And, you know, there's probably some… I'm sure there's some racism there as well, of kind of erasing or sort of minimizing, I guess, Asian appearance too.

KAILA YU: Well, the doctor who popularized it is named, I think, Dr. Millard, and he was stationed, I think, in Korea during the Korean War. And he didn't invent it—somebody else had done the surgery before—but he popularized it, using it to, like, make prostitutes or wives more westernized for the GI. When he described the Asian eye, he would say it was passive and dull, and the surgery would make them more expressive. So they came from racist ideology.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And just straight up efforts at assimilation. I mean, as you know, people of Asian descent went from being vilified—there was the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States, limiting immigration and all this—to then eventually becoming the model minority. You know, that's a big cultural shift. And part of it were these types of things, like surgeries. It's just part of the history that you lay out in the book.

I remind people, the name of the book is Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism and Beauty by Kaila Yu. Now she's a freelance writer for the LA Times, Rolling Stone, NY Times, Business Insider, and other publications.

Formerly, she was a model and a lead singer—which we'll talk about in a minute—of the all Asian American female rock band Nylon Pink.

 

Shifting to Music With Nylon Pink – 49:50

 

BLAIR HODGES: So you talked about being in the import car scene. You wound up having a short little moment in Fast and the Furious, which I saw on your Instagram, where you say, like, "Ready!" because you're, like, helping start a race. And then you're in a video game, like, you're one of the girlfriends that racers can win. [laughter] You're, like, okay, but by now you're kind of starting to feel like, "I don't know if this scene is for me."

And this is when you decide to pursue a music career. And I think the irony here is that you thought you'd be getting further away from transactional sexiness as your way of making it. Okay, now I'm going to be a musician. But the music scene actually ended up becoming much of the same path.

Like, it opened up the same doors of, actually, your sexiness can be an asset here. Let's lean into that. And I thought it would be cool to have you read from this section. This is on page 164.

KAILA YU: Okay.

BLAIR HODGES: This will give people a sense of your voice in the book. But it's also it's just a great passage about this pivot in your career.

KAILA YU: It's arguable that in the hypersexual landscape of the 2000s, I just acted like a typical pop star. The stark difference was that white pop stars had more narrative autonomy and didn't have to navigate the intersection of fetishization and objectification. While plenty of white and black pop stars were hypersexualized, there were other less objectified performers showcasing a wider gamut of femininity, like Alanis Morissette, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Colby Calais, and Pink.

Asian women were particularly boxed in. White men directed our media narratives, and only within this recognized framework could we find mainstream success. Yes, I believe there is no demand for me as a wholesome singer-songwriter with a guitar. I felt required to sell sex. My instant success after Candy Coated Sugar Sex was no exception.

It was the proof.

BLAIR HODGES: —And that was, like, a song that you'd released.

KAILA YU: Yes.

The problem—sexualizing myself and feeding into the butterfly trope—came with a significant mental toll. Playing the insatiable Asian pinup chick was exhausting and inauthentic. I constantly wore a fabricated persona. I was intoxicated by the tension. But performing sexiness to a live audience to receive said adulation felt like an impossible task.

I could easily contort my body and play the part of a coy geisha with a still camera. But in front of thousands of people, I couldn't sustain this false sex appeal for extended periods. For me, hypersexualization was a form of emotional violence and dehumanization, an unconscious version of self-objectification and fetishization. It was a rejection of my true self and a defiant act of self-hate, albeit unknowingly below a layer of consciousness.

My assault video taunted me with the irony of performing the tropes that first led me to the assault. Salt. It's the result of years of internalized racism manifesting from a subconscious belief of inherent inferiority. I felt I needed to fetishize myself to have value. None of it came naturally, and I slowly annihilated everything authentically me.

My website videographer once said, “You don't know how to be sexy. You just happen to be naked, young, and hot. So you just have to exist to turn a guy on. In real life, you are a shy bookworm.”

BLAIR HODGES: Okay. When he said that, what did you say to him? 

KAILA YU: Well, he was just like, I was always around these models that exuded, they were just sexy women. And I turned it on for the camera. But it was like "you don't have to do that much at that age," right? You know, he was right that if you're just, like, young and cute and…

BLAIR HODGES: Like, you knew the poses.

KAILA YU: Yeah. And I knew, like, how to look cute. [laughs]

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. It's almost like he felt like you didn't buy it yourself. That you're like, okay, I can perform this for a time, and then I'm done. This isn't, like, part of me, really.

KAILA YU: Yeah. It was very, very performative.

BLAIR HODGES: The other point that really stood out to me here was that there were many different models of femininity for other people, for white singers and performers in particular. And you didn't have that luxury. So you did feel more like, this is the branding box. I have to fit in it. I don't have different options.

KAILA YU: Yeah. And I tried different things. Like, when I first started my music career, I came out with a little ballad that I thought was really cute, but nobody cared. [laughs]

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah! You're like, okay, well, that didn't work. Let's try the next thing. [laughter]

 

Losing Katt and Getting Sober – 54:51

 

BLAIR HODGES: Your drug use amplifies at this time. And this is when you start trying… using cocaine. There's ketamine use. You describe how it felt, and sometimes, you know, your descriptions are sometimes… that it felt amazing. And you talk about the negative repercussions.

But did you worry about accidentally romanticizing? Because you're very honest about your experience with drug use. Did you worry about, okay, I don't want people to get the wrong impression here. I mean, it was destructive for your life. And you come around to talking about that, but you don't start off with that.

Like, you take us to what it was like for you at the time.

KAILA YU: Yeah. I mean, I was so devoid of self-love that, like, my first ecstasy use felt like love. Like deep love. But it's never as good as that first high. Like, you're always chasing that first high, and it's like, pretty good, but it just progressively gets worse, and then your recovery gets really worse.

But you're already addicted to chasing that thing that, like, never appears again.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. So you're dealing with the drug use. And as you're writing about it in the book, though, did you worry, like, oh, I don't want people to kind of, you're not trying to encourage people to use drugs.

KAILA YU: Well I didn't even think of it that way, I guess, because it turns out so bad at the end.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I'm used to authors preloading caveats at the outset. “Now, let me tell you, this is about to almost ruin my life. But here's what it felt like…”

KAILA YU: That's funny, I think my book probably needed a trigger warning, but it doesn't have any. And some of the horrible stuff comes with no surprise, you know, like, there's no warning for it.

BLAIR HODGES:. No, I think it's true. People that read through will find out this was a very negative thing, in fact, including the alcohol. And all of this ended up playing a part in the loss of one of your dear friends who you had drifted away from. This is Katt. She performed in Nylon Pink with you.

And you talk about how you felt guilty for introducing these other women in your band. And one of them was 17 at the time that the band began,  introducing them and kind of leading them into these over-sexualized tropes and helping contribute to negative consequences in their life. And you've written a beautiful apology as sort of a prayer to the universe to Katt here, kind of telling her that you're sorry.

KAILA YU: Yeah, I mean, the whole thing with Katt is it could have been me or any of the other girls. The sobriety thing is such a funny thing. You never know who gets it. You know, I'm, like, sober in the recovery community, and you just . . . some people get sober, and some people actually, I honestly don't think Katt ever wanted to get sober. She actually said so.

I think aging was really difficult. I think, you know, when you're like, fetishizing yourself, objectifying yourself, the aging thing is particularly painful. And I'm so glad that I got sober, because I feel I'm not more beautiful than I was when I was 20, but I feel more beautiful because inside I have self-love, and I've done a bunch of work, and I kind of want to promote that.

Your 40s can be so much better than your 20s. I would never want to go back to my 20s, but my 20s were hell.

 

A Reckoning – 58:26

 

BLAIR HODGES: Well, you really take us through it in the book.

I want to turn now to the chapter called A Reckoning. And this is after you've pivoted careers again. With the music scene, you're ready to move on from it. You're becoming a writer. And then in 2021, there was a white gunman in Georgia who entered Young's Asian Massage and opened fire there. And then he went to two other spas, and he killed eight people in total, and six of them were Asian women.

And you say this tragedy was a turning point. It unleashed what you call a volcano of memories about your modeling career, about your singing careers, and suddenly these regrets were flooding out. What was coming out of you when you saw this terrible act of violence that was targeted against Asian women in particular?

KAILA YU: Well, I think the whole Asian community, when they heard about it, knew exactly what it was, which was driven by race and fetishization. But then we felt very gaslit by the media, because they were like, no, it's not, like, racially targeted. And they never have, I think, addressed that. And I think the police officer or captain that day was like, oh, the guy's just having a bad day or something, he said.

But it did later come out that he, like, had problems with a sex addiction, and he chose to take it out on people, you know, like the objects that he considered objects. And it just happened during a time when I was already reflecting back on my career because I was posting about that on TikTok.

I was, like, reminiscing on the 2000s era. And I did feel that I very much played into it. And we're not—I had never seen an example, really. But this is funny because I'm saying I had never seen an example of this leading to violence, but I was assaulted by a guy with an Asian fetish.

Yeah, I haven't even really realized that until I started talking about that on a podcast. It's like, wait a second . . . like, yeah, that's how disassociated and, like, disconnected you are with everything. So the problem with the Asian fetish at the end of the day is that it often leads to violence. You know, it's . . .

It's, oh, fine and cute if you, like, think that Asian girls sexy, but, like, it's important to know that there can be consequences.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Especially when the Asian trope deals with being passive and submissive. And if an Asian woman isn't that way, then that can precipitate violence. Like, if a man feels that, you know, he wants to be in control, this is a control thing.

KAILA YU: Because in the chapter I reference Elaine Cha Chao's article, I think it's called, like, What White Men Say in Our Absence. And she's like, she's somewhere and I think . . . I can't remember if she's speaking Chinese or they're speaking Chinese. But these white men don't know that she can understand them, and they're just saying some terrible things.

But then she lists off all the instances of violence against Asian women by white men. [laughs] Sorry, you’re a white man. But it’s a long list—

BLAIR HODGES: You don’t have to apologize! [laughter]

KAILA YU: But I'd never heard of most of these instances. So we're not even aware within our own community of how much violence is happening and not publicized.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And I mean, the book is so intellectually and historically rich. I can tell you've done a lot of work. There's so much intellectual work and emotional work that you've put into producing this that I have to say I was surprised to find out that it was that recent that, you know, 2021–2022ish, that you really started unpacking fetishization as an idea, and sort of patriarchy, and all of these things that you've become not only so well-informed about, but able to articulate and teach other people about too. That’s a pretty amazing turnaround. I know you'd become a writer, and you already kind of had that in you, but it seems like that was a learning curve.

KAILA YU: Yeah. I was learning along the way of, like, writing this, like, all the historical facts I included. I was an Asian American Studies major at UCLA, so—

BLAIR HODGES: Okay.

KAILA YU: I didn't even know most of the stuff I'm putting in the book before. So that just shows how not publicized this information is.

 

Freedom in Freediving – 1:02:46

 

BLAIR HODGES: Let's talk about other ways that you've addressed healing for yourself. You took up freediving. This is a really cool sport, basically, like going underwater for a long time. You found it to be a really cool way to reconnect with your body. And you'd had other body modification done by now, too. You talk about vaginoplasty and about kind of reckoning with all your body modification. Freediving was a way to reconnect with your body in a more healthy way.

But what was interesting was how at first you fell into some of the same temptations you had earlier of trying to see your body like just an instrument or something to be used. So this was a big lesson here at the end of the book when again you're like, okay, I'm going to do this healthy thing for my body. But it could have gone in a really unhealthy direction.

KAILA YU: Yeah. I'm, like, the word popping in my head, it's validation. I'm just like trained to want validation. And then I learned about these freedivers who were like, that's the one sport where you could start middle-aged and become a champion. I think the champion freediver woman, Natalia Molinchov or whatever, is like, she started when she was 40-something.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KAILA YU: And then I just read about it. It is very meditative at that level. Not the level I'm at. I'm just not at a very deep level of it, but I just imagined myself a champion.

BLAIR HODGES: Another mountain to climb.

KAILA YU: Yeah. But unfortunately, I'm physically challenged. Like, my ears don't work.

BLAIR HODGES: When you try to adjust for the pressure at depth.

KAILA YU: Yeah. I've never figured it out, actually. And maybe that's for the best, because I discovered that I was using my body as a tool again to get validation, but in a totally different way.

BLAIR HODGES: I loved to see you come to that realization and then embrace the sport instead because it's calming and it can do other things for you rather than just try to validate some kind of goal or something. That was cool.

KAILA YU: Yeah. I just love marine animals, so I just want to be around them. [laughter]

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 01:04:51

 

BLAIR HODGES: Cool. Well, I always like to close with regrets, challenges, and surprises. Is there anything about the book now that it's coming out—and you know, it's coming out now—so maybe there's nothing so far that you can look back and say, oh, I wish we had done this. So maybe not that one.

But what was the most challenging part about it, or what was the biggest surprise to you, as you put the book together?

KAILA YU: Yeah, the regrets. I don't know if I have any regrets, but there's stuff I wanted to include, but it just didn't fit. Like Ex Machina. I really wanted to do that film because it's so fetishy. But it just didn't happen to fall in the timeline of my story and make sense.

As for challenges, I just had an amazing editor, and there was so much more I wanted to include like, "oh, this a cool story from my life." But my editor would always just be like, “what does that have to do with fetishization?” Well, I think people maybe just want to hear the story. [laughs]

BLAIR HODGES: It's a good story! [laughter]

KAILA YU: So luckily she did that, because I'm very happy with the finished product. And then what was the last thing, surprises?

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, for example, was there anything you learned about yourself through the process?

KAILA YU: Well, this was surprising. I added the daddy chapter at the very end, because a girlfriend of mine had read the book and she was like, but what about your relationship with your dad? And I added that at the end. And then people really resonated with that chapter, which was kind of just an add-on at the end.

And then I spoke to somebody the other day, and there have been a couple fathers that I've read in my book who have daughters, and they've been really resonating because it's kind of like a cautionary tale of what you don't want your daughter to do. And then one person was like, I read that chapter about your dad and I went and gave my daughter a hug. So hopefully...

I mean, men of this generation already know, and they're probably already giving their daughters plenty of verbal affirmation. But how much more the daughter might need, than, you know.

BLAIR HODGES: It's a great way to start the book. It sets the stage well for what's to come. Again, the book is called Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty by Kaila Yu. Thanks for talking to us about it on Relationscapes, Kaila.

KAILA YU: Thank you so much. I had so much fun.

 

Outro – 01:07:17

 

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening to Relationscapes. You know what I could really use? I could use more reviews and ratings in Apple Podcasts. It would mean a lot to me. I've got a lot more listeners than I've got reviewers, I can tell you that. So be one of the listener reviewers. That would be amazing.

Just go to Apple Podcasts, search Relationscapes, scroll down to the ratings and review section, and let me know what you think about the show. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to be an amazing five-paragraph essay. You know, there are problems with AI and stuff, but, like, if you have to use ChatGPT to do it, then give it a try.

It's easier in Spotify. If you're listening on Spotify, you can just hit the rating. You just go rate it five stars or, you know, four if that's your preference. Anyway, rating and reviewing the show makes a big difference, and I appreciate everybody who takes time to do it.

There's more to come on Relationscapes, where we explore the stories and ideas that shape who we are and connect us with each other. Mates of State provides our theme song. Relationscapes is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm journalist Blair Hodges, joining you from Salt Lake City, and I'll see you again soon.