Are Wasians Truly Asian Representation?
By Rachel Gao
Wasian is a term used to refer to someone who is part white and part Asian. With the rise of Asian representation in the entertainment industry, a common issue faced is the over-casting of Wasians. It seems as though in order for a character to uphold Asian representation they must also be half white.
Although this is not the case all the time, there have been issues with white people fetishizing Asian women as seen throughout history. The question that comes up is why can’t fully Asian actors be casted? It does not feel like authentic Asian representation if it is being portrayed by a Wasian actor, because those two identities possess vastly different experiences.
Jenny Han has gained a lot of popularity from a couple of her book series’ being turned into movies/television shows, To All the Boys I Loved Before and The Summer I Turned Pretty.
Both the female leads in the movie/show adaptation are Wasians. However, the female actresses for both books were not even accurate. In the book, To All the Boys I Loved Before, Laura Jean is half white and half Korean, but the actress for the movie series is white and Vietnamese. In The Summer I Turned Pretty, Isabela Conklin is fully white, but the actor that plays her character is half white and Asian. It would make more sense to cast actors that match the identity of the character. It does not make sense to make a character Wasian when the original character was fully white just to add representation. People on TikTok have come up with this phrase called the Jenny Han effect, which refers to the rising popularity of Wasians and casting them as so-called Asian representation.
Asian men in the entertainment industry have constantly been seen as non desirable, nerdy, and not masculine.
However, for some reason Wasian male actors like Ross Butler and Charles Melton play cool jock characters in some of the shows they are in. Is it because they are half white? Besides having Wasians as leads in the movie/television show scene, there is also a problem with male leads always being white. Why can’t the male lead also be Asian? This goes back to Asian men not being desirable.
Partner Track was drama series released earlier this year on Netflix, featuring Arden Cho.
Arden is fully Korean. The two male leads in the drama series are white. There is a male character that Arden interacts with who is Asian, but he is not a lead. A lot of viewers were also hoping that Arden’s characters got with Z (the Asian male character), but that was not the case. Obviously this decision is not Arden’s fault. Yes, there can be healthy relationships between white males and Asian women,but the white male and Asian woman dynamic possesses many underlying issues. It is tiring to see that kind of relationship within the media, especially with its dark history.
American soldiers use to hold camp towns where they would use East Asian women as sex toys. “As wars ended, many American troops came home with their wartime perceptions of Asian women as submissive and sexually available.” (Lang & Cachero). There is even a term to describe someone who has a fetish for East Asian women: yellow fever.
Is it disappointing to see that the Asian representation that we are getting are from Wasian Actors. There should be more accurate Asian representation like in movies such as Everyone Everywhere All at Once, and Nope. Wasians do not count as accurate Asian representation, it continues to push the narrative that you need to be white in order to be considered desirable or accepted in society.
SOURCES:
https://time.com/5952819/history-anti-asian-racism-misogyny/