“Asian Trophy Wives”: A Label We Could Do Without

brandyalexander
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 12:47 pm: [report]

Ewww.  I am glad you were as offended by this idea as I was.  Yes, some guys have a thing for Asian women, but so what?  Men will always have a thing for younger girls, especially rich men.
There is some kind of power dynamic going on here, but I don’t see where throwing labels in makes the situation any better.  I certainly don’t think its much different than rich old white guys dating young blonde girls.  I don’t even think its that weird that some guys fetishize Asian women… sometimes its what is different and “exotic” to you that is most attractive, and it works both ways, too.
PS- I think you and I share an “asian guy fetish”    Suggestion for next weeks nerd girl porn!

AgentBeryllium
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 01:01 pm: [report]

@brandyalexander & Jessica Wakeman: I too am a lover of Asian guys. I have no clue what it is… I just prefer Asian guys.

Oh yes!!! Nerd Porn next week should be hot Asian guys!

Technically according to my gay friend the term for us is Rice Queens(even tough we’re not a gay man jonk and I decided that the term can be applied to women.)

A rice queen is anyone no5 Asian who prefers their partner to be Asian.

I should ask my man if he would be my Asian Trophy Husband one day. I can be his Tattooed Trophy Wife.

jimnist10
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 01:22 pm: [report]

Being the product of a white guy marrying an Asian (in this case Filipina) woman, I am hardly offended by the term “Asian Trophy Wife”. You’re only as much of a trophy as you allow yourself to be, regardless of whether you’re younger, Asian, blonde..whatever.  What irks me more is that guys find out I’m half Filipina they start treating me like I need a green card. I’m like “Uh…I was born in Manhattan. You don’t need to talk to me like I speak pidgeon English. And no, I don’t speak Tagalog.” Or they start going “Sucky, sucky. Me love you long time.” So mature. I’ll be someone’s trophy wife, just don’t treat me like an idiot.

eightieslingo
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 01:26 pm: [report]

Ten years ago my dad married a Filipino who is seven years my senior. I would categorize her as a trophy wife that turned into a real wife. She spent about five years doing nothing but dressing like a slut and partying. Then she got a job and has been working ever since.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, but for a few years she was definitely an asian trophy wife.

AgentBeryllium
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 01:28 pm: [report]

@eightieslingo Did it ever bug you that your dad married someone that was only 7 years your senior?

eightieslingo
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 01:36 pm: [report]

@msPriss YES. I hated her and my relationship with my dad became very strained. When he married her I was 14, so she was 21. I was just very weirded out by the situation.

AgentBeryllium
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 01:38 pm: [report]

@eightieslingo I totally get that. Luckily my dad didn’t marry her. Bust same thing I was 16 and she was 23.

CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 01:48 pm: [report]

Yellow Fever is the reciprocal of Rice Queen.

SourBall
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 02:12 pm: [report]

Whilst standing atop one’s politically correct soap box, one should take care to ensure that her own polemic is itself not totally caucasian normative.

wild-ting
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 03:42 pm: [report]

This is nothing new. Just walk on any Army or Navy base. I wouldn’t exactly call them “trophy” wives but there is definitely Asian-fetish thing happening. In the old rich white guys case, they “buy” the pretty young attractive women as trophy wives—and they happen to be Asian.

ChoJinn
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 03:58 pm: [report]

Interesting to see some women actually objectify Asian guys: in my not-limited experience, Asian guys are typically eschewed by all types of women except for newly-off-the-boat Asian girls.  Also, I rarely hear any guys describe a girl as JAP, BAP, or any type of trophy wife.  Indeed, I think JAPs and BAPs especially are labels those women (or their spiteful friends) ascribe themselves.  And FYI girls, you should dump any guy who doesn’t run screaming for the hill should you ever describe yourself as a JAP, BAP, or _AP.

cali_candy
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 04:01 pm: [report]

Being a loyal frisky reader for a few months now, I never really got the motivation to register and sign-in until I saw this post. I am Chinese-American and my husband is white. Reading that article made me wonder if I’m a victim of a fetish. All of my husband’s ex’s have been fake blondes (whites), so maybe not. However, I do notice when we’re watching a movie and there’s some Asian chick, he’ll make comments about how hot she is, but not really for any other type of actress.

We’ve commented a lot about the white male/Asian girl couple, which we see alot here in CA. A lot of times I’ve seen couples where the guy is really fat, old, and/or hairy and the girl is really cute and petite. Sometimes she even has an obvious boob job. We always joke about it but deep down I always wonder if people look at us and think we’re the same kind of couple (where I’m just there to please him and he’s my rich sugar daddy).

My husband is 13 years older than me, and I am 6 and 8 years older than his 2 kids. The age difference isn’t that obvious because he looks really young for his age, and he’s not fat and hairy. Plus he isn’t super rich or supporting me. We both are Ph.D. scientists and have a very loving and affectionate relationship.

But he does like to show me off to his friends, maybe as a pride thing, like “see what young thing I got, you’re stuck with with your old hag wife”? Well, not that mean. I once dated a wrestler who had a six-pack like David Beckham and I showed him off to all my friends too.

So I guess if I am a trophy wife or not depends on what the definition is.

Oh and another thing, when my husband and I met, he was separated (but not divorced) from his first wife, who was living in another state. He didn’t tell me he was still married until maybe a month into our relationship, which was a pretty douchey thing of him to do. But in retrospect if he had been honest from the beginning, I wouldn’t have dated him and would probably be alone and miserable right now. So, we’ve been together for 6 years now and got married this past June. I was reading somewhere (maybe Frisky) that only 6% of cheating men end up leaving their wife to go with their mistress. So I guess we’re part of this 6% since I was the *shudder* “other woman”. This statistic kinda worries me and I always wonder if he’s going to cheat again. Especially now that the economy has destroyed the job market and sent him to a job in the East Coast. Sigh.

Oh one last thing - I have a male coworker who openly admits that he has yellow fever. Something about how Asian girls are skinnier and more attractive than others. But doesn’t necessarily mean he loves his gf any less? If I was attractive to only smart, successful, nice guy, does that mean I have a non-douchebag fetish?

Iammina
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 07:45 pm: [report]

I think when an attractive young, woman marries a much older man she earns every penny she gets. Ugh, everything has a price.

cadyms
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 08:32 pm: [report]

If you look at Seattle’s craigslist, you’ll see an amazing number of white men looking specifically for Asian women. My ex-husband was also very interested in Asian women (which, with great respect to Asian women, didn’t leave me feeling too desirable as I’m not in that group).  It definitely appears that a lot of white guys have a “thing” for Asian women. 

Any such guys want to weigh in?  Is it the stereotypical body type?  Does that body type also carry some greater meaning, perhaps something related to youth and the ability of the male to dominate the situation? 

Labels are used by all of us to quickly categorize a situation, although by labeling we run the risk of over generalizing all of a label’s characteristics to someone who might share only one or two.  But I’d like to understand the phenomenon of what seem to be a large number of white men having an extreme preference for Asian women.

_jsw_
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 08:51 pm: [report]

Ah, interesting topic.

Yes, there are a lot of rich men who essentially buy themselves beautiful women. Yes, there are a lot of guys who fetishize Asian women purely because they’re Asian. However, that doesn’t mean that most men who are with younger Asian wives are with them simply because they wanted a little f**k toy to have fun with. In many cases, as with cali_candy, two people met, enjoyed each other’s company, and decided to be together.

As another example of that, although not yet as far along, I’m currently in a relationship with someone who is significantly younger than I and who is of Chinese ancestry. It’s a long distance relationship, it’s currently a bit vaguely defined, and we’re working to figure out just where we want to end up. literally and figuratively. However, it’s entirely possible that she might one day be my wife. Although people who’d see us out would quite likely assume that I must be rich due to the age difference and the fact she’s quite attractive, the fact of the matter is that we got to know each other over the course of a year and a half on another forum, and for a significant part of that time, neither of us really knew much about the age or ethnicity of the other. The attraction grew over phone conversations before we ever met.  We’re genuinely interested in each other as people, and it has nothing to do with stereotypes. She’s the first Asian woman I’ve ever dated (and the first more than a year or two younger than myself). I’m the first older white guy she’s dated.

In addition, she’s had a rough time with men and has been abused and assaulted before. While there is a physical chemistry between us, I’m sensitive to her past, and I’m not with her because she’s someone I can brag to my friends about scoring with. I’m with her because there’s no one else with whom I’d want to have a conversation or a walk or a cross-country drive. I wish our age difference was less, and I wish we were of the same ethnic background, simply because both things would make many aspects of the relationship easier. If we don’t work out, either because we enter into a local and “real” relationship that doesn’t end up happy or because we decide to move to a friendship instead,  I don’t intend to intentionally find someone much younger or of a different ethnic background. It might happen, it might not, and there are plenty of older white women to whom I’m attracted to prevent me from thinking I’ve got Yellow Fever or need to be with someone younger. Good God, I’d kill (or at least maim) to be with Helen Mirren.

I don’t think I’m unique in forming a relationship with someone I like and to whom I am attracted. While I realize that there are a lot of relationships where the man’s after sex and the woman’s after money, that’s not always the case, even when the man has money and the woman is beautiful.

_jsw_
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 09:27 pm: [report]

@cadyms: I think, in general, the (often false) assumption is that Asian women are more likely to be deferential and are more likely to have mainly experienced Asian penises, so the white guys (often falsely) assume they’ll be seen as dominating sex gods. It’s true that Asian women often are thinner and smaller, especially those born overseas or first-gen American, so this might be part of it. Frankly, I find the woman I’m with the be attractive, but, odd as it seems, except when she discusses the fact she’s Asian, I tend to forget about it, just as I forgot in the past about the ethnic differences of a couple of previous girlfriends. So I don’t really know. I tend to like women as women and don’t much care about specifics. But with other guys, I think it might be the dominance thing, the “thin” thing (and the frequently associated small-breast thing), or the perception that they’ll be seen as having larger penises. But… I dunno.

Lioozhe
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 09:28 pm: [report]

No need to worry about the fetishizers, one experience with the reality should set them straight.

_jsw_
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 09:30 pm: [report]

BTW, I didn’t mean that Asian men have small penises. I meant that a lot of dumb white men assume that they do. I haven’t personally done a survey.

@Lioozhe: Indeed.

cadyms
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 09:43 pm: [report]

@jsw - Thanks for a soundly reasoned reply. While we all gravitate toward certain people we find attractive, it’s seems unfortunate for Asian women that some men might target them for reasons related to dominance.

I know a wonderful couple where the man is white, the woman is from Japan.  At a dinner party at their home I met another Japanese woman who works with international students at a local college.  She had a number of stories of white men abusing young Asian women; the women frequently were in very dire straits before they approached her for help.

cadyms
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 09:45 pm: [report]

And I should clarify, between my last two posts, that I understand that there are interracial couples who are together for the reasons any couple are together.  Any concern would be for Asian women who are potentially at risk if the male in the relationship pursued that relationship out of a desire for dominance, and the woman perceives herself as sufficiently vulnerable to repercussions (e.g. due to immigration laws) and thus doesn’t feel she can seek help.

_jsw_
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 09:52 pm: [report]

@cadyms: Indeed, I think a lot of women in general, and Asian women in general, have had that unfortunate experience. My girlfriend dated a guy who thought of her essentially as a sexual possession. She went to visit him for a few months (he bought a one-way ticket, she had no money, and he said he’d get her a ticket home when she wanted) after a long friendship and then a decently OK brief visit, but then was essentially subject to his whims as to when and where they did anything, and she was repeatedly raped. She was too ashamed to ask her family (or friends) for help to get out. He was very predatory, and I doubt it would have happened had she been a taller, stronger, local white woman. I’d still very much like to gather up a posse and drive the 500 miles to beat his ass.

_jsw_
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 09:53 pm: [report]

Er, “Asian women in particular”....

LunaLena
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 10:07 pm: [report]

It’s funny how, even in today’s “advanced” society, there’s still such a discussion to be had about crossing racial lines.

I sometimes wonder if the trend for dating Asian women has to do with A) Asian culture becoming more prevalent ever since Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha (the book, not the movie), and Japanese anime becoming more widely accepted in the US, and B) views on race changing amongst younger Asians, particularly those who were raised in the US.  In the case of reason A, I think the sudden influx of Asian culture in Western culture makes it look glamorous, romantic, and exciting (not to mention the women in all three of the examples I cited are gorgeous).  Plus, being an anime fan, I’ve also seen a lot of guys who, after watching anime, form some pretty odd ideas about Asian women and proclaim that, from here on out, they will only date Asian girls. 

As for reason B, I suspect younger Asians, particularly second gen Asian Americans, are more open-minded about dating non-Asians, whereas more traditional types tend to believe in sticking to one’s ethnicity and culture.  A few Asian guys I met in college who came to the US to study were very adamant about sticking to girls from their own ethnic group.  In my experience, Asians who grew up in the US don’t have as many hang-ups about it, so the result is you see more mixed couples.

I’m saying this mainly as a second gen Asian American myself, who is currently dating a white guy (he’s not older than me, though), by the way.  My being Asian wasn’t the reason we started dating, though… we got to know each other through common interests and eventually hooked up. 

As for the trophy wife subject… people have been taking trophy wives (and husbands) since the dawn of time.  Just because some of them are Asian now doesn’t make the topic any different, in my opinion.  Maybe tomorrow the trend will be African pygmy trophy wives.

_jsw_
wrote on August 7 2009 @ 10:20 pm: [report]

@LunaLena: “Maybe tomorrow the trend will be African pygmy trophy wives.” That’d be excellent, because their tiny size would enable one to literally make them into trophies. I see a fashion trend of African pygmy wives, painted in gold, wearing very large blocky platform shoes, and carrying gold-lated tennis rackets, bowling balls, soccer balls, laurel wreaths, and the like.

The trend after that will be for centenarians, which will become known as “Atrophy Wives”.

canadiancutie
wrote on August 9 2009 @ 01:48 pm: [report]

Asian women are beautiful much of the time. So I guess now if a white guy notices the obvious he’s meant to be criminalized. Whatever.

Coral
wrote on August 9 2009 @ 06:50 pm: [report]

I think this happens a lot with various races and ethnicities. I’m half black and half white, although nearly every person I meet just thinks I’m caucasian. And I had an ex boyfriend who is black who was kinda turned off when he found out that I was mixed, and not white.

Frederica Bimble
wrote on August 10 2009 @ 06:57 am: [report]

cali_candy:  You were wondering if others judge you and your husband.  The answer is: “yes.”  Now, decide whether you care or not.

bethylane
wrote on August 10 2009 @ 03:53 pm: [report]

This guy that I dated for a few months said something completely appalling WHILE we were dating.

We were talking about our futures and where we want to be in 5 years, and he said that he just wanted to bone an Asian girl.

WOW.

That was the end of that!

BIMAFAN
wrote on August 14 2009 @ 05:38 pm: [report]

first of all, she’s got it backwards—-WHITE GUYS are TROPHY HUSBANDS!!

as a white 28 yr old who’s lived in both wisconsin (hick town) and san francisco (chinatown of the west), here is my take.

i grew up in wisconsin with all white folks, and didnt get much love from the dumb blonde hos in my town, but once i went to berkeley for college i was in pussy heaven. all the #&@$% girls who joined white soririties were fawning for me. i dont think it was necessarily b/c they liked me cuz they were like that to all my pledge bros… to asian girls, all white guys are the same (and vice versa), but by hooking up with a white guy, they feel like they are “well adjusted” and have assimilated better than their immigrant parents.

anyways, nowadays im banging this bangin philipino gal who is a lot better in bed than any chinese gal i’ve been with. but even when we go out to eat at chinese restaurants, i get all kinds of dirty looks from jealous asian guys. i love it!

_jsw_
wrote on August 14 2009 @ 05:41 pm: [report]

Wow, BIMAFAN. I can see why they all want you. A gentleman and a scholar you are.

Shiyuan Deng
wrote on August 14 2009 @ 11:40 pm: [report]

As explained here (http://torrentmagazine.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/open-letter-to-ying-chu-of-the-new-trophy-wives-asian-women/), rich, old, white guy marrying young, super successful Asian woman is not a clear-cut case of exploitation.

I mean, this is the United States. It’s not like these Asian women - and I say “these” because I don’t know the circumstances of other Asian women - were forced to marry their husbands against the will. It’s not like the Asian women mentioned in the article depend upon their husbands for money, security, immigration status, or any other factor that would make a hard for a woman to leave their spouse.

High-powered Asian mamas hooking up with high-powered white guys? If its a case of exploitation, and I’m not convinced that it is, who is to say whom is exploiting whom?

BeholdAUnicorn
wrote on August 15 2009 @ 01:39 am: [report]

Thanks for your thoughtful comments on the MC piece. I was really disgusted by it, both as an Asian American woman who has been the target of gross guys with obvious Asian fetishes, and as a woman who is now happily married to a man who happens to be white.
I think something that a lot of people forget is that it’s not just white guys with creepy fetishes who think of Asian women as being submissive. Take my middle-aged uncle, for instance. He is Taiwanese-Canadian, in his late forties and dates exclusively women in their teens or early 20s who are recent immigrants from Asian countries. He’s said before that he dates these women because “they listen to me and they don’t argue.” Ugh.
When I was single, I was wary of non-Asian guys with Asian fetishes AND Asian guys who also thought Asian women were submissive. As you can imagine, this made my dating life a bit difficult, because as soon as ANYONE, of any race, displayed any interest in me, I assumed they had an Asian fetish. It took a while for me to learn how to look out for weirdos (and I certainly bumped into quite a few) without also compromising my chances at happiness. I feel really lucky to be in a solid, mature and equal relationship with my best friend, and I would have married him regardless of his race.

moon123
wrote on August 15 2009 @ 03:55 am: [report]

BIMAFAN…Maybe the girls you have been getting with are easy (hello, sorority girls, maybe that is also a generalization I’m making). To come to the conclusion that all Asian women are easy because of the few experiences you had with Asian women, is both racist and sexist. I hope that your hot Filipina (not Philipino you idiot) girlfriend realizes the type of person you are and leaves you. From the tone of your obnoxious piece of writing, you are only exposing your own sense of delusions of grandeur. Other than that, you are just expressing the same racist, misogynistic crap that racist white men say about all women of color, that “Asian/Black/Latina women are wild in bed” and “Asian/Black/Latina women are easy and are promiscuous” bs. It mirrors the same kind of racist, sexist things men of color say about white women, that “white women are easy.” I’m sure you wouldn’t want people to make generalizations about the women in your family, so don’t make generalizations Asian women or any women of color either.

Also, I don’t believe your stories about being with Asian women, because you obvious lie about your age, who knows what else you’d lie about.  You comment that your age is 28 on this post, but on the Marie Claire comment post, you say that you are a 25 year old man, but your profile says that you were born in 1951.

Shiyuan Deng
wrote on August 15 2009 @ 09:42 pm: [report]

Hi, Shiyuan Deng here.

Just to be clear: Torrent Magazine is 100% behind columnist Zoe Yang.

We at Torrent Magazine believe that a woman can be both pro-sex, and pro-women. That Zoe has sex, enjoys sex, and feels comfortable enough with her sexuality to write about it on the internet, I do not think makes her less credible as a cultural commentator, a feminist, or an intellectual.

It is a particularly conservative form of feminism that punishes women for having sex & talking about it. Your marshaling of “evidence,”  mainly pictures and quotes taken out of context, to discredit & humiliate my columnist makes me think that you’re not really interested in feminism, or rigorous debate, or the Ying Chu article.

I posted your pending comment on Torrent Magazine because we’re not ashamed of Zoe Yang’s online footprints, but seriously. In the future. Get your sleaze off my blog.

CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on August 15 2009 @ 10:08 pm: [report]

Please call it something other than ‘torrent’ I am a tech fiend and am getting confused, well especially if Shiyuan Deng is being the red curtain. (FYI A much better article would be about the oppression of women’s rights in China).

Lewol
wrote on August 19 2009 @ 11:00 am: [report]

$.02
100 couples, 100 reasons.
so, i’ve got 18.7 years of marriage on the line here, and 15 years of fatherhood. Me white/wasp, she Taiwan-born Han.  Same age (well, she’s one month the elder, and proud of it).  Married in our late 20’s, end of graduate school.  3 kids; 2G/1B.

Do guys objectify women?  Is this somehow a revelation?  OF course.  This was a HUGE topic back in the 60’s/70’s.  Somehow it seems to have dissolved in the commercialism of the 80’s and 90’s.  In many cases, it seems women are complicit, but maybe i’m wrong, maybe they enjoy flashing during spring break in FLA, or doing GGW vids with Snoop Dogg for sale on late night tv.

Do guys ALSO really-honestly-in-their-heart-of-hearts love a woman?  I mean, cherish you, admire you, respect you, don’t want to disappoint you if i can ever help it, love?  Also true.  All men, the best among us and the worst among us, we’re constantly bounding back and forth between our two heads, the one that cares, the one that doesn’t want to.

To most men, lots of women are hot.  It’s not highly restricted to particular skin color, cheekbones, butt-line, or epicanthic folds.  A smile is the most alluring feature on the planet.  Men often have personal biases, however.  Smaller or taller.  Darker or lighter.  Similar or dissimilar to your mom or sister.  As a neurobiologist, i would be extremely surprised if there aren’t irresistible biological (genetic) driver’s behind every little detail of mate selection, including the Diversity of preferences.  While i found difference irresistible, my sibs are total white-breads in choice, and happily so.  High diversity of preference within one little gene pool.

So, is there a white guy/asian girl thing?  For some of us, no doubt.  So what.  Is there a white girl/black guy thing?  For some of us, no doubt.  So what.  It’s only a problem when one or the other (historically, almost always the woman) is disadvantaged in the relationship, vulnerable to abuse.  That is a SERIOUS problem.  I’m not sure i’d go so far as to condemn all mail-order marriages; trading marriage for economic advantage is has prevailed through most of human history.  Cuddles, roses, and economic equality are a wonderful novelty (and one i cherish for my own wife, and my daughters, and my son).

I guess what i find particularly galling in Chung’s original piece is the suggestion that the Asian women highlighted are somehow pawns in their marriages. To the contrary, most are highly successful women. They’ve earned the right to make their own damn choices in personal affairs, without objectifying them for making a choice other people have made by necessity.

Finally, the underlying thought that Asian women, married or not, are passive, meek, and happy-just-to-be-arm-candy, is royally ignorant, gloriously Stupid.  Marry one at your own peril.  You may be glad, but you won’t be in charge.