New Asian Women

Trying to google for related materials on Asian women and Ming Tan’s ‘How to Attract an Asian Woman’ came up top of the list.

While John Gray was heavily critiqued for endorsing longstanding myths of men and women (see further discussion on Whitebait’s post), Ming Tan has attracted a fair share of scathing remarks from incensed (mostly Asian) women.

However, it is pretty obvious from the thumbs up given by other (presumably Caucasian male from the Amazon record) readers, that Ming has successfully appealed to those ‘suffering’ from what one critique termed as ‘the epidemic of yellow fever’.

If John Gray has reinforced the feminine stereotype, then Ming has possibly augmented the image of hyperfeminised Asian women.

Of course, Ming’s book is but one amongst the many divergent feminine representations emerging in Asia. The West may still be dominated by the likes of Dragon ladies (aka Lucy Liu in Ally McBeal, Sandra Oh in Grey Anatomy) or exotic bodies (eg Susie Wong, arguably the Madam Butterfly), but the tide is set to change in Asia. Women not adhering to such stereotypes are gaining voices gradually but surely. Perhaps sensitive to such shifts in mindsets, media productions in Asia have begun to portray women in a different light. Blogs as a medium that privileges individual voices over critical mass have perhaps exacerbated this trend.

Here I set the prelude to a series of blog posts where I hope to capture some of the arguably most influential representations of women in popular culture, that have served to reinvent or in some instances, challenge the notions of the Asian feminine.

This is far from an exhaustive study, but I do hope like-minded individuals may contribute to the limited literature I will be collating in this blog.