Final Paper: American on the weekdays and Japanese on the weekends (1970)

 Writing Assignment #1 (633)

As an Asian American, I became more aware of how my race is constructed once I moved to the states, where it is not homogenous like Japan. Being Asian in this country means I’m put into a checkbox with a list of stereotypes and when I don’t fit with the stereotypes, I’m perceived as “other” or “not Asian enough”. Society expects me to be a monolith, skinny, short, wears glasses, can’t speak English/English Language Learner (ELL)/speaks with an accent, has strict parents who want their kids to get good grades and go to top elite colleges and universities, cultural/spiritual, soft/gentle, and the model minority myth is pushed on us in order to make us seem the other races look “lazy” and white people and Asian people are the “hard working” races.

Asian people are seen as very successful (academically and financially) due to the model minority myth but that harms the community because it makes it hard for us to ask for help. In school when we need help with math but are assumed that we can do it, the AAPI community has the biggest earning gap, and overall erases the differences the community holds. 

Colorism is also a big part of the Asian community, just like many other races, where East Asian people are seen as a better/dominant group and South Asian people are seen as lesser due to their skin color. Colorism explains how my South Asian friends feel unrepresentative of the Asian community because oftentimes, the East Asian people are the spotlight of Asian news and issues. 

Gender is heavily affected in our community because the expectations we have from society and our parents are very different. Due to the history of exoticism, Asian women are fetishized and seen as sexual gentle beings and Asian men are desexualized to minimize the threat of Chinese men when they immigrated to the US and were seen as taking jobs away from white men. We still see the fetishization and desexualization of Asian people in the media which is still enforcing those stereotypes. While our parents tell women to be the household and help the husband, men are told they need to be the ones to help the family financially and are supposed to be strong and driven. The interesting part of this is that Asian women fit the “scripts” for women in society while Asian men do not fit the “script” for men in society due t0 the desexualization of Asian men.

Lastly, during the peak of COVID-19 and the aftermath of it, we were seen as viruses and the reason for the pandemic. The Republican party, especially Donald Trump, enforced the idea that Asian people brought the virus and should be responsible for them. That affected Asian people, especially people who are of East Asian descent, the ability to go out because they never knew when they were going to be hatecrimed. 

As a community, we humanize ourselves as a way to fight back the “scripts”. Since war has been a common theme among people who identify as Asian, we know a lot about comfort women and prostitutes. During WWII, many Japanese women were used as comfort women for the American soldiers and the Chinese and South Korean women were forced to prostitution by the Imperial Japanese Army. The Asian women in this society are aware of past dehumanization of women so they humanize themselves. Same goes to Asian men- there’s a collective understanding of the small penis trope. People who identify as Asian and gay/lesbian are put into boxes that are opposite or adjacent to their gender. Asian men who are gay are more feminized than Asian straight men and Asian lesbians are more masculinized, which doesn't fit on either women or men scripts.