Asian American Empowerment - Savvy Fashionista or Asian Stereotype?

By Emma Johnson
©2004 The New York Times
February 22, 2004

An animated image of a buxom, scantily clad Asian woman who speaks broken English has turned a popular SoHo boutique into a free-speech battleground.

The store is Saigoniste, which sells high-end housewares from Vietnam. Some Vietnamese-Americans are protesting its marketing campaign, whose centerpiece is a creation called Ho Chi Mama promoting lacquer platters and bowls with broken-English slogans. In response, the store's owners defend Ms. Mama as a hip voice of contemporary Vietnam who has helped make their business a success.

Ms. Mama was introduced in an animated video on Saigoniste's Web site when the store opened in November 2002; she is shown chauffeuring famous New Yorkers to Saigoniste on her Vespa. Cynthia Ashworth, who owns the store with Hugh Duthie, removed the video from the Web site last month after learning that The New York Times planned an article about it.

Broken English can also be found on some of the handwritten price tags; a recent tag read: "Ho Chi Mama say {hellip} Soft glow of tea light turns every dinner into hot date."

One person who objected to the fractured aphorisms was Linh Thuy Song, a Vietnamese-American from Ann Arbor, Mich., who visited New York last summer. In the Saigon shopping district where such goods are sold, Ms. Song said, women who work in boutiques "are very educated and speak five languages."

"I don't mind that she's a modern, sexy woman," Ms. Song said of Ho Chi Mama. "I mind that she doesn't speak proper English."

Ms. Song also objected to the fact that the character's name echoed that of Ho Chi Minh, the president of the former North Vietnam, whom many former South Vietnamese consider a tyrant. And she objected to the fact that the name played on the degrading terms "ho" and "hoochie mama."

Ms. Song e-mailed a complaint to the store, and when the marketing approach did not change, she started an online petition, which has more than 900 signatures.

In response, the store's owners wrote a statement maintaining that Ms. Mama is a modern fashionista who has support from Asians and non-Asians, and they promised to remove the broken English. While some copy on the Web site and on price tags was rewritten, Saigoniste's marketing tactics, including tags with poor grammar, remain. "Our intention is not to offend, but to turn a stereotype on its side," Ms. Ashworth said. "Ho Chi Mama is very empowered, very cool."

Text of the Petition

To: Saigoniste Owners Cynthia Ashworth and Hugh Duthie

We the undersigned are writing to express our outrage at your store's use of a Vietnamese caricature, "Ho Chi Mama."

Your play on Ho Chi Minh's name and having her speak in broken English is ridiculous. By keeping Ho Chi Mama, you perpetuate stereotypes that Vietnamese and Asian Americans have been battling for centuries. The "fortune cookie dialect," romanticism for colonialism, and disregard for complaints made to your store in the past year, are all reprehensible. Ho Chi Mama is offensive and a reflection of your ignorance. We find no humor in your effort to belittle and repackage Orientalism for consumption.

We are a people, not a marketing tool.

Love Vietnam? Love the people? Then love our voices and anger. It's beyond being un-PC to market a country like a hip shopping mall. To maintain that it is right to keep Ho Chi Mama by virtue of her popularity with your Asian and non-Asian patrons denies culpability. Fortunately there are Asian, non-Asian, and particularly Vietnamese who make it a point to not patronize your store explicitly because of Ho Chi Mama. Stereotypes affect more people than those who frequent the Soho and Nolita areas in New York City. Stereotypes affect communities everywhere.

We ask that you remove Ho Chi Mama from all forms of marketing (product tags, window display, website, etc.) and submit a public apology to the signatories of this petition. While your shop maintains that Ho Chi Mama is not offensive to a majority of people, this petition will demonstrate otherwise.