Racial fetishism

Rey Chow argues that the fetishism of white women in Chinese media does not have to do with sex. Chow describes it as a type of commodity fetishism. White women are seen as a representation of what China does not have: an image of a woman as something more than the heterosexual opposite to man.[5]

Perry Johansson argues that following the globalization of China, the perception of Westerners changed drastically. With the Opening of China to the outside world, representations of Westerners shifted from enemies of China to individuals of great power, money, and pleasure.[6]

In a study of Chinese advertisements from 1990 to 1995, marketed solely to the Chinese people, Johansson concluded that, in China, the racial fetish of white women does have something to do with sex. Chinese advertisements depict white women as symbols of strength and sexuality. The body language, expressed by Chinese models, demonstrates subordination, defined by the covering of faces, the tilting of heads, and looking away from the camera. The body language, expressed by white women, demonstrates power and inhibition. White women do not cover their mouths while laughing, hold their heads high, and stare straight into the camera. White women represent a shift in the power dynamics between women and men, which has to do with sex. As a result, white women are a source of fear.[6]

An Asian fetish focusing on East Asian, Southeast Asian and to some extent South Asian women has been documented in Australasia, North America, and Scandinavia.[7][8][9][10][11]

According to an article from the Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice, the "Asian fetish" syndrome is born out of the male desire for dominance and the stereotype of Asian women as individuals open to domination.[12] For example, following the 1970s and a peak in the American feminist movement, many white men turned to mail-order bride companies in search of a loyal, understanding, and subservient partner. They saw women of their own race as too career-oriented and strong-willed. Asian women were the antithesis to their perception of white women.[12] While white women resisted powerlessness and subjugation to the white man, Asian women were seen as open to the subjugation, even depicted as enjoying it.[12]

The song "Yellow Fever" by The Bloodhound Gang includes lyrics such as, "She's an oriental rug cause I lay her where I please," and "Then I blindfold her with dental floss and get down on her knees."[13] Both of these instances exemplify the stereotype of Asians as submissive.[14] Margaret Cho has labeled Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girls as a "minstrel show" because they represent fetishized East Asian stereotypes.[15] The girls follow Stefani around on tour and are contractually obligated not to speak English in public.[16] The performer had "renamed" them corresponding to her album title and clothing brand, L.A.M.B.: Love, Angel, Music, and Baby.[16]

Furthermore, there have been many cases of Asian fetishism leading to criminal activity. In one case in 2000, two men, David Dailey and Edmund Ball, abducted and blindfolded two Japanese girls in Washington, one who was eighteen and the other who was nineteen.[17] Ball specifically targeted these Asian students because he thought that they were submissive and were less likely to report sexual abuse.[18] In another case, in 2005, Michael Lohman, a doctoral student at Princeton University, was charged by the state of New Jersey for reckless endangerment, theft, harassment as well as tampering with a food product. Michael had cut locks of hair off at least nine Asian women. He also poured his semen and urine into the drinks of Asian Princeton students more than fifty times. In his apartment, Michael also had mittens filled with hairs of Asian women.[19]

According to multiple articles, the West’s fetishization of fully covered Arab women has led to the stereotype that Middle Eastern women are oppressed and therefore submissive.[20][21][22] When French armies invaded Algeria, they had anticipated Algerian women to be sexually available and hookah smokers. To their surprise, Algerian women actually appeared to have been more modestly dressed and covered from their head to toes. Many French photographers paid Algerian women to remove their religious attire and pose for provocative photos to make French postcards.[23] In his book Desiring Arabs, Joseph Massad talks about how the West’s interpretation of Arab culture has painted the stereotype of Arab women being exotic and desirable. Massad’s book was largely influenced by Edward Said’s book Orientalism.[24][25]

In her book Sex Tourism in Bahia Ambiguous Entanglements, Erica Lorraine Williams published the first full-length ethnography of sex tourism in Brazil, including interviews with tourists who come solely to participate in sexual tourism, which may be considered a form of racialized fetishism. One of the tourists interviewed described his experience, “I’ve had a thing for Latin, brown-skinned women since my early twenties. I’m from [a place] where there are a lot of blond, white girls. Whatever you have, you like the opposite --they’re exotic, intriguing.” [26]

The fetishization of black women expanded during the Colonial Era, as some white male slave owners raped their black, female slaves. They justified their actions by labeling the women as hyper-sexual property. These labels solidified into what is commonly referred to as the "Jezebel" stereotype.[27] The opposite of this "Jezebel" identity or persona is the "Mammy" figure who loses all of her sexual agency and autonomy, and becomes an asexual figure. L.H Stallings notes that the creation and identities for the Jezebel or Mammy figures are "dependent upon patriarchy and heterosexuality." [28] An example of racial fetishism within the colonial era is that of Sarah Baartman. Sarah's body was utilized as a means to develop an anatomically accurate representation of a black woman's body juxtaposed to that of a white European woman's body during the age of biological racism. The scientist studying her anatomy went as far as making a mold of Sarah Baartman's genitalia postmortem because she refused him access to examine her vaginal region while she was alive. The data collected on Baartman is the origin of the black female body stereotype, i.e. large buttocks and labia.[29]

Charmaine Nelson discusses the way black females are presented in paintings, with an emphasis on nude paintings. Nelson argues that every nude painting feeds into the voyeuristic male gaze, but the way black women are painted has even more undertones." The black female body defies the white male subject's desire for a single subject of 'pure' origin in two ways: firstly, through a sexual 'otherness' as woman, and secondly through a racial and color 'otherness' as black. It is the combined power of these two markers of social location which has enabled western artists to represent black women at the margins of societal boundaries of propriety." The black woman is considered a fetish in these paintings and she is only viewed in a sexual lens.[3]

One of the more recent popular discourses around the fetishization of black women surrounds the release of Nicki Minaj's popular song, "Anaconda" in 2014. The entire song and music video revolves around the largeness of black women's bottoms. While some praise Minaj's work for its embrace of female sexuality, many believe that this song continues to reduce black women to be the focus of the male gaze.[30]

There is also a practice in BDSM which involves fetishizing race called "raceplay".[31] Susanne Schotanus defined raceplay as "a sexual practice where the either imagined or real racial background of one or more of the participants is used to create this power-imbalance in a BDSM-scene, through the use of slurs, narratives and objects laden with racial history."[32]

Most commonly, black men are expected to be hyper-masculine and hyper-sexual, and their fetishization is seen predominately throughout porn and the ‘BBC’ (Big Black Cock) category, which reinforces the idea that they should have a large penis. Furthermore, within porn videos, the black male is expected to be rough, acting in almost a primitive manner. Black actors in porn have been calling out issues with filming on social media, bringing attention to the common but outdated practice whereby a white performer charges a higher rate for ‘interracial scenes’, to which Isiah Maxwell states “IR is a smokescreen for what you’re really trying to say…it doesn’t mean Asian or Latino. It means, ‘Are you willing to have sex with a black guy?” [33]

The aspect of the black male being a performer under the ‘white gaze’ (Frantz Fanon) can be manifested through the sporting body and their representation within the sphere of athleticism. Ben Carrington further elaborates on this in his article Race, representation and the sporting body whereby “Blackness itself was pathologised as a deviant identity, and the black male was stereotyped (and subsequently mythologised) as a hyper-sexed, almost animal-like, entity.”[34] (Carrington, 2002). This idea that the black man has to possess animalistic behaviour is explained in more detail by Carrington, explaining that "Black athletes – female and male ─ are invariably described as being strong, powerful and quick but with unpredictable and ‘wild’ moments when they supposedly lack the cognitive capabilities – unlike their white peers – to have ‘composure’ at critical moments".[34] Just as Fanon talks about the white gaze, Carrington presents the view that representation in the media (both in sports and pornography) leaves the black male body vulnerable and exposed to inspection.