Apparently, Asian males in America are the newest ethnic fetish. Like the latest Prada bag or Juicy Couture outfit, the Asian boyfriend may well be the new arm candy for non-Asian women on the cutting edge. At the same time, Details magazine, in their latest issue, displayed an Asian male in metrosexual garb and proceeded to list unflattering stereotypes (to say the least) under the headline “Gay Or Asian?” So how can we reconcile these contradictory conceptions of Asian males? And what is this “Asian Male Fetish,” and where are the women who have it?

You probably already know that Asian women are much more likely to date and marry interracially than Asian men. It’s not news to anyone. What you may not know is how quickly the gap is closing. The 1990 Census showed that Asian American women were almost twice as likely to outmarry than Asian American men. But by 1998, while nearly 45 percent of U.S.-born Asian Pacific American women took white husbands, some 36 percent of young Asian Pacific American men born in the United States married white women. Add to that the fact that most people are much more likely to date outside of their race than they are to marry outside of it. Yet despite the statistics, the Asian American males we spoke with didn’t hesitate to share their frustrations. “I know a lot of Asian girls who won’t even consider dating Asian men. And it’s a shame, because they’re missing out,” said a 27-year-old Korean man living in San Francisco. “Yes, I normally only date Asian women. But for me, that’s just because I feel more comfortable with them. But I think for a lot of my Asian guy friends, that’s not the reason. They just assume that non-Asian girls aren’t interested.”

But why aren’t more non-Asian women dating Asian men? To be fair, let’s consider the evolutionary explanation: Consider that men are traditionally the hunters and, therefore, expected to initiate any romantic relationship. It follows that even if more non-Asian women were willing to date Asian men, they’re much less likely to make the first move. Across the board, culturally, ethnically and otherwise, women are just not socialized that way. And while many white, black or Latino men wouldn’t think twice before asking the China Doll in the corner if it hurt falling from heaven, most Asian men would hesitate before claiming the bar stool next to Barbie. Is it any wonder why? With so many less-than-flattering stereotypes of the Asian American male peppered across the American pop culture landscape, it’s easy to see why this group, in the context of our steroid-pumping, aggression-applauding, bigger-is-better society, continues to feel so marginalized.

“Most American women think we’re perfectly normal to have as friends or colleagues, but that’s as far as it goes,” said one Asian American man in Washington (who prefers to remain anonymous). “I get the sense that they’re not even considering us as sexual beings. They just assume we’re inherently nerdy and not-too-well-endowed. So why would we even want to hit on them?”

From Bruce Lee to William Hung

“In U.S. industry cinema, from the early 20th century to the present, Asian male sexuality is presented as deviant — that is, because of their race, normal sexuality has not been available to the Asian American male,” observes Celine Parrenas Shimizu, filmmaker and assistant professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “While images of Asian men in American popular culture have changed over time, the constant is that they’ve always been contradictory — whether they’re aggressive and conquering or gentle and nurturing, the sexuality of Asian men is pathologic.”

Indeed, while early Hollywood considered Asian American film star Sessue Hayakawa a bona fide heartthrob, the sexuality of his characters was anything but enviable. His character in The Cheat (1915) was an early example of sexual ambiguity, feeling more comfortable in the company of women (at a time when gender roles were clearly defined in society), and then turning out to be an attempted rapist. In Broken Blossoms (1919), his character is an outwardly gentle man who develops a very inappropriate attraction to a very young white girl. Professor Shimizu explains that while images of kung-fu masters like Bruce Lee did their part to elevate the perception of Asian male masculinity in the 1960s, they failed to make a tangible connection to sexuality — Bruce always saved the day, but he never got the girl.

“I see some of my students trying to figure out how to formulate an Asian American masculinity that is different from the white mainstream and, importantly, one that is not dismissive of women or feminism,” Professor Shimizu explains. She argues that Asian Americans suffer a “pain and a kind of trauma associated with Long Duk Dong,” the stereotypically geeky Asian foreign exchange student character from the 1980s teen movie, Sixteen Candles, and other popular representations of Asian men, which she sees her students “actively imagining and remaking in their videos and research.”

In the past few years, the theme of Asian male masculinity and sexuality has received more attention in the media, perhaps most notably in the case of Better Luck Tomorrow. Yet even this movie, in which a group of high-achieving young Asian men create their own sense of masculinity by undertaking a money-making scheme, is less a blueprint for winning respect in American society than it is a vision of the model minority gone awry.

So how can a traditionally desexualized group start to define its masculinity within a culture that glorifies all those trappings of masculinity and sexuality which are often directly contradictory to the traditions of Asian upbringings?

“Culturally, we’re socialized not to be strutting around,” explains James Hou, a filmmaker whose 2003 adult documentary, Masters of the Pillow, is the result of a controversial 1998 paper by University of California Professor Darrell Y. Hamamoto. Hamamoto’s paper called for a grassroots “porno movement” to eroticize Asian American sexuality and create a cottage industry that would promote increased visibility of Asian Americans in popular culture. “I see why these stereotypes exist, but the problem is can Asian Americans show a different side?” says Hou, who insists on Q&A sessions after each screening of his film. “Sexuality and power go hand in hand; most Asian Americans have never seen Asian men in a sexually powerful role, and what I’ve found in my screenings is that many of them have never questioned it. We’re always kicking ass but we never get any ass. We never assert any sexuality. It shouldn’t feel weird to see Asian men in this role, [but it does.] If people watch my film and feel uncomfortable, then they should ask themselves if they would be equally uncomfortable if it were a non-Asian male. You cannot go into an adult video store in the U.S. and find an Asian male in a non-homosexual role. And he’s always a ‘bottom.’ But the Asian women are everywhere, having sex with everyone but the Asian males.”

And as uncomfortable as American society may be with Asian male sexuality, we can’t seem to get enough of images like that of American Idol contestant William Hung, who rose to surprising fame for his mutilation of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” on national television. He’s been called a Forrest Gump character, Mickey Rooney come to life, and the epitome of the buck-toothed, heavily accented, fresh-off-the-boat, helplessly naive foreigner. The debate rages in coffee shops and on talk shows across the country over just how indignant Asians as a community have the right to be, arguing whether Hung is aware of the people who are laughing at him, or if he knows it but is laughing all the way to the bank. Hou’s explanation: “Hung is not assuming another identity. I don’t think that Western society is behind exploiting him just because he’s a stereotype. He is keeping it real and America responds to that. We have to look at it from a financial model. We definitely have talented Asian artists and dancers, but is it commercially viable to put out an Asian American rapper?”

Case in point: Jin Au-yeung is the most prominent Asian rapper on today’s music scene, with an album put out by Ruff Ryder/Virgin Records and movie credits alongside Ludacris to his name. But while most Midwestern schoolchildren have already sung along with Hung, how many of them might have heard of “Jin tha MC”? The marketing push for him has been nonexistent compared to the self-reinforcing media machine that has sprouted, overnight, around the comparatively talentless Hung. Maybe the distinction is that the identity Jin projects is that of an African American rapper, rather than something that defines him as unique. Or maybe the phenomenon of Hung’s celebrity is proof positive that the majority of this country is just about as ready for an aggressively masculine Asian male as it is for an African American president.

The Newest Arm Candy?

Now consider the increasingly popular idea Esther Pan introduced in Newsweek (2000) — the Trophy Asian Boyfriend. Her widely publicized story suggested that Asian men had become a hot commodity on the dating scene because they were viewed as smart, genuine, respectful, studious and hardworking. “It’s almost like Asian boyfriends are the fashion accessory of the moment,” one woman joked in the article.

Opinions on the actual strength of the Asian-Boyfriend trend are as numerous and varied as the people we spoke to. “I guess I never got that memo,” one 27-year-old Jewish woman from New York said, while a 32-year-old Indian woman in Boston confirmed that she saw more Indian men marrying non-Indians in the past few years than ever before in her lifetime. “Just look at the Sunday New York Times wedding announcements!” she said. Ahn Jung-hwan (a well-known South Korean soccer player and model), Paradorn Srichaphan (a Thai tennis champion), and Ichiro Suzuki (an outfielder for the Seattle Mariners) notwithstanding, there persists a lack of masculine Asian role models in the popular American media. Not surprisingly, Hou says that he hasn’t seen any notable increase in the percentage of Asian-male/non-Asian-female couples during his travels across the country. He did report anecdotally, however, that non-Asian female students at colleges in the Midwest (Univ. of Iowa in particular) have told him that Asian men have become their newest fetish.

“My Asian male friends tell me that their non-Asian friends assume their wives and girlfriends are Asian. Unfortunately, this means that some non-Asians still tend to want to put Asian males in their place,” says James Fujikawa, cofounder of AsianMediaWatchdog.com, a grassroots nonprofit organization aimed at encouraging a balanced portrayal of Asians in American media. “On the other hand, at the same time a lot of non-Asian females have become open to dating other races. My partner is a white woman, and she’s married to an Asian man. She says that she sees many more couples like her own in New York City now, as opposed to five years ago.”

So it seems that on average as a society we have painted the following picture of the Asian male: feminine physical attributes, muted sexuality and a lack of healthy aggression. At the same time, a quick glance through any issue of Inc. or Forbes or Internet Today magazine will lend a different light to the same picture: professional dedication, economic empowerment and strong, genuine values. Doesn’t that sound like the kind of man we’re always complaining about not being able to find? In choosing the man who would father her children, didn’t the cavewoman seek out the best provider? As offensive as the idea of marrying for money or power (or anything other than love) might reasonably be, it’s clear that the Asian male, from Yahoo! cofounder Jerry Yang to leading AIDS researcher David Ho, is much more likely to find himself in top corporate and economic positions these days than ever before. In some circles, this phenomenon is seen as the seeds of an even bigger shift in American dating patterns, and perhaps the Asian-male-fetishizers are just ahead of the curve. After all, the guy with the biggest boardroom could probably just hire someone to kill the dinosaur, right? (And maybe even cook it up in a nice Marsala sauce.) On the other hand, maybe it’s the fact of their own increasing economic empowerment that has made Asian men bolder and therefore more comfortable approaching non-Asian women. Doris Lin, an Asian American woman and the executive director of AsianMediaWatchdog.com, doesn’t appreciate the idea that economic power and family values have become the newest reasons to fetishize Asian males. “I would hope that the increase in Asian women and non-Asian women dating Asian men is due more to them seeing Asian men as whole, non-stereotypical, individual people,” says Lin, who dated across the board interracially before meeting and marrying her (Asian) husband. “I believe that it’s damaging for it to be based on any stereotype, positive or negative.”