Keri Birmingham
Professor Jee Yoon Lee
UW20 Asian American Experience
December 9,2011
Eurasian: The New Face of Asia
[ABSTRACT]

My project is to prove that Eurasians are becoming the new face of Asia through the entertainment industry and mainstream media. Mixed-race models, musicians, and actors of Asian and Caucasian descent are becoming well known in Asian pop-culture such as Maggie Q, Sirinya Winsiri, and Karen Mok. Although, in the past Eurasians born in East Asia were perceived as children of subjugated Asian women that were shamefully dominated by Western imperialists in history, they are now viewed as internationally ideal. To elucidate, foreign imperialism to East Asia has caused economic ties that have influenced Asian popular culture through mainstream media and entertainment that is based on Western culture and their standard of beauty, which is Caucasian. However, global businesses search for any kind of marketing that will entice their target audience, which is now the European-Asian spokespersons and entertainers that provide an opportunity to reach out to audiences that were once racially divided. Their international appeal by the media has created a beauty standard and has inspired Asians, mostly in East Asia to dye their hair, wear colored contacts, or surgically widen they eyes to resemble more European looking eyes. European and Asian mixes are becoming the role models for Asians in Asia, where multiracial people are hardly found, and therefore portrayed as a valuable rarity, redefining the Asian perspectives of what makes beautiful Asians. In conclusion, this new identity is used to represent Asia as they become more prevalent in the global market and advertise internationally through the media.

[EURASIAN STARS]

Mixed race people have been the product of the United State’s belief in the “melting pot” where different cultures come together and blend into a harmonious unification with a common culture. This metaphor was challenged by multiculturalism, where cultural differences within society are preserved and remain distinct and so, the mixing of people was then associated with the assimilation of immigrants to American culture. After all, racial categories are universally preferred and if you you’re not one or the other, what are you? However, for the international corporate world, the White-Asian mix is a trendy fusion that appeals to both America and Eastern Asia, the richest regions in the world. Eurasians flood the East Asian media, making up 60% of the Bangkok Entertainment industry and stars like Karina Suwandi, Dennis Oh, Maggie Q, Karen Mok, and Jennifer Seeto are celebrated for their mixed race ethnicity (Beech). To modeling agencies, Eurasians personify the “global look,” which is important for international appeal (Beech). There are different theories for the Eurasian craze such as, the world getting smaller and businesses expanding, and the demand for a one-size-fits all face that will sell products. Also, mixed-race people are perceived as a novelty and overall have been judged as “more beautiful” than the “pure” race according to the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail (Hope). This standard of beauty has been shaped by the mainstream media in both the Western and Eastern world, causing Asians to aspire to look like the Eurasian cover model by surgically altering their eye shape, nose, breasts, in order to achieve a more Western appearance like the European-Asian mixed people. However, this fascination with Western beauty and Eurasians has been established over time from Europe’s imperialism and colonization over Asia in history and North American influence over Asia’s economy.

[WESTERN INFLUENCE AND IMPERIALISM IN HISTORY]

In the late fifteenth-century, Europe’s imperialism to Asia begins with its series of voyages to China. With this, economic ties develop to open Eastern Asia to the North Atlantic. Western influences are established when Asia is transformed and converts its economy from feudalism to capitalism. However, with this new authority, a distinct separation between races defines Europe’s superiority and power over the Chinese, as Western foreigners exploit East Asia sexually and for its resources. Overall, the imperialist’s dominance over Asia creates the illusion of the Asian mystique. East Asia is then identified as an exotic land of paradise that indulges sensual erotic fantasies and so, the Eurasian is born from the subjection of Asian women. This practice of producing Eurasian offspring was also a means by which Western people could control the Asian population, as the hybrids were included into North Atlantic society.

[INTERRACIAL RELATIONS]

Interracial relations were a ‘forbidden fruit’ to the East and West and perhaps this was why the Eurasian was born, but for most, crossing the racial barrier was a betrayal to one’s lineage and ethnicity (Moran 61). Westerners portrayed Asia as a land of bliss, where the effeminate submissive men were easily subjected to the will of the Europeans, Asian women were a sexual promise for colonists to the East, and thus the depiction of Asians was created. History of British colonials in Hong Kong established the idea of racial mixture often fed the colonial imagination that racial mixtures in colonial encounters was not only seen as colonial transgression, but that the mixture often led the idea of “abnormality, as well as moral and intellectual regression” (Lee 14). China was “a society based on segregation” and laws and rules were created to ensure the separation between the two races. However, Europe’s eastward thrusts to conquer and colonize Asia and the Asian mystique of the indulging, decadent, sensual oriental that will indulge in the foreigner’s sexual delight birthed the Eurasian. The domination over Asia conceived the conclusion that Asians were subject to slavery.

Western expectations of Asian women involve their superiority over them, as Asian women admire the white man. In their perceptions, the feeling of dominance, wealth, power, and masculinity is experienced with their interactions with Asian women and Asian culture. Where imperialists exploited East Asians, Asian women now, use the European creation of the China doll for money opportunities. “ Asian women are aware of these Western perceptions of Asian Mystique and know how to play them to their advantage,” as most Asian brothels in Thailand and Laos are catered to Western foreigners and their fetish for Asian women (Prasso 394). This catering can also be linked to the “implicit understanding that the man is going to pay for sex, because the expat obviously has money and the [Asian] woman is in need of money or has less of it” (Prasso 324). However, Asians have been heavily influenced by the North Atlantic presence and it’s significance over Asian media and its effect on Asian popular culture. For example, “if you interview Japanese women, they all say they want to meet American boy and see American movies and want to meet someone who looks like a movie star” (Prasso 302). Ultimately, the sex appeal created between the East and West has caused 1 in 5 Asian women in America to be married to non-Asian men, and the growing population of mixed-race youth, even though in the history, “…western legislators built a labyrinthine system of legal prohibitions on marriages between whites and Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Hindus, and Native Americans” (Moran 17).

[PERCEPTIONS OF EURASIANS]

Historically, Eurasians have often been interpreted as a form of “degeneration, transgression, adulteration, impurity, regression, and moral laxity” (Lee 4). For East Asians, Eurasians were a product of the “bar girls” that catered to the foreigners’ sexual desires and used the Western fantasy perception towards Asians as a tool to get ahead. The Chinese used terms such as, “half-caste or messed up breed,” since the Eurasians were the personification of “…the humiliating treatment and derogation to which the Chinese were subjected by Europeans” similar to the present day assimilation to “American” culture (Lee 17). Eurasians were liable to distrust by both the colonials and Asians for having a different identity and for not having an identity at all, being neither European nor Asian. Yet, Eurasians were more “welcomed into the colonial elite because they could perform or mimic the part of the public Englishman. They also represented—or performed—the Chinese for the English” (Lee 25). In China this was a shameful betrayal against the pure Chinese lineage. However, in the Philippines, “having a wealthy white husband is a status symbol, a value perhaps dating from Spanish colonial rule when the mixed-race lighter skinned people, the mestizos, held the country’s wealth and privilege” (Prasso 264).

During tours of duty in various Asian countries during the mid twentieth century, a considerable number of United States “...soldiers carried on relationships with local women, many of who moved near bases to work as housekeepers or in bars and clubs as sex workers”, like those during the European imperialism in China (America’s Forgotten Children). The United States government issued special visas to children fathered by American troops and employees during the Vietnam War because the mixed race children faced discrimination and identity problems. During the age of Imperialism in Eastern Asia, “mixed race offspring could escape the harsh limitations of discriminatory laws by passing as white,” (Moran 42). Ultimately, Eurasians were considered more white during both time periods of Western influence to Asians. However, to the West Eurasians were considered to be more Asian because of the reputation of how the “bar girls” used the Asian sex appeal to receive financial support from American and European fathers.

[TRADE GROWS]

“Since the mid-1980s, more than half of the increase in world production of goods and services has occurred in East Asia” (Garnaut 7). The economic ties between Asia and the North Atlantic have been maintained and today, the connection is even stronger, with the West influencing both the Asian economy and popular culture. “The multilateral trading system based on the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT)…[was a response of]…the comparative advantage ad export capacity of East Asian economies…[to the United States]” (Garnaut 5). Because the links between the Western and Eastern markets have made America and China the richest countries, the demand for globalization has expanded regional businesses into international corporations. However, like Europe’s colonization of Asia, “Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea and the coastal provinces of mainland China are all densely populated by the standards of the established industrial economies of the North Atlantic” (Garnaut 8).

[WESTERN MAINSTREAM MEDIA SPREADS TO EAST ASIA]

East Asia’s market and audience standard is American now, due to the North Atlantic demand for cheap Asian manufacturing. Asia is the supplier for American interest, just like how imperialism exploited Asia for goods and controlled it through colonialism. This parallel has produced a foreign influence over Asian culture, except in this technological age; the rate is greater and reaches more Asians through mainstream media. Additionally, because businesses control advertisements that are a large aspect of broadcasting, Asian standards of culture and interests have become Western. Also, the presence of the North Atlantic influence can be clearly represented in Asian commercialism, which features what is bankable and appealing to the target audience. East Asia wants to see its standard of beauty from it advertisements. In conclusion, spokespersons for international corporations are more Western, and since Eurasians are more Western to Asians, and more Eastern to Americans according to how they have been shaped through history, they are globally appealing. Eurasians can once again be exploited for Western use in Eastern Asia.

[CONCLUSION: EURASIAN INFLUENCE]

As North Atlantic corporations reshape the Eurasian identity the way that the Philippines viewed them as a mixed-race people that held the power over Asia by utilizing Europe’s dominance over the East’s economy, the new standard of the trendy image for Asia becomes the European-Asian mix. Since the West perceives these Eurasian spokespersons for global corporation as the new beauty standard in the Asian media, Asia popular culture further perpetuates this in films, music, and the entertainment industry. Asians take these Eurasian celebrities with their successes and use them as role models since they are recognized for their beauty and bankability. Looking more Western like the Eurasians has inspired nipping and tucking, sucking and implanting, all for better looks. “In Taiwan, a million procedures were performed last year, double the number from five years ago. In Korea, surgeons estimate that at least one in 10 adults have received some form of surgical upgrade and even tots have their eyelids done” (Cullen). Eastern Asia now considers the more Western appeal as a beauty standard that defines Asia’s identity. For instance, Thailand sent a blue-eyed woman to the Miss World competition: Sirinya Winsiri, who made it “difficult for normal Thais to compete” (Beech). However, this new image is how Asia represents itself to the rest of the world now, since the world is becoming smaller and the mixed-race Eurasians are what global markets have announced as internationally appealing.

[WORKS CITED]

"America's Forgotten Children." Dir. Aljazeera. The Stream. Aljazeera: Television. <http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/americas-forgotten-children>.

Beech, Hannah. "Eurasin Invasion." Time Magazine World. 23 Apr 2001: 1. Web. 9 Dec. 2011. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,106427,00.html>.

Cullen, Lisa. "Changing Faces." Time Magazine World. 5 Aug 2002: 4. Print. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,332097-3,00.html>.

Garnaut, R. (1994). Asian market economies : challenges of a changing international environment / Ross Garnaut. Singapore : ASEAN Economic Research Unit, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1994.

Hope, Jenny. "Brits believe mixed-race people are the 'most attractive and successful'." Daily Mail Online. 15 Apr 2010: 1. Print. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1265949/Mixed-race-people-attractive-finds-British-study.html>.

Moran, R. F. (2001). Interracial intimacy : the regulation of race & romance / Rachel F. Moran. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c2001.

Prasso, S. (2005). The Asian mystique : dragon ladies, geisha girls, & our fantasies of the exotic Orient / Sheridan Prasso. New York : Public Affairs, c2005.

Wu, J., & Chen, T. C. (2010). Asian American studies now : a critical reader / edited by Jean Yu-wen Shen Wu and Thomas C. Chen. New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2010.