About Face

ALL KINDS OF WOMEN have been sexualized: white women, black women, skinny women, fat women, older, younger, big-breasted, small-breasted, submissive, dominant.

So when someone argues that a woman like Lucy Liu, who plays a sexy lawyer named Ling Woo on FOX TV's Ally McBeal, reinforces stereotypes of Asian women as exotic sexual beings, the complaint seems to ignore the larger reality that women—especially women in film and television—are constantly portrayed as erotic subjects.

Liu is poised to be the most visible Asian-American actress ever. Aside from her roles in Ally McBeal and this summer's Jackie Chan blockbuster Shanghai Noon, she will star later this year alongside Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore in the highly anticipated film version of Charlie's Angels. For Asian Americans like myself who've grown up hungering for images of other Asians in mainstream media, Liu is a potent figure, the Farrah Fawcett of Asian-American pop culture. Yet it is also Asian Americans who voice the most damning criticisms of her.

In a Village Voice article titled "The Ling Thing," New York writer Chisun Lee argues that "Ling frequently brings to mind the dragon lady, the geisha, and the inscrutable Oriental, often in whiplash-inducing rotation." She questions if Hollywood, as well as the general public, "is capable of viewing the nation's leading Asian-American actress as more than the fetishized sex symbol she plays on TV." Her views are supported by Darrell Y. Hamamoto, associate professor of Asian-American Studies at University of California, Davis, who says that Ling is "a neo-Orientalist masturbatory fantasy figure concocted by a white man whose job it is to satisfy the blocked needs of other white men. . . ."

Such reductive assessments seem unfair, considering that all of the characters in Ally McBeal are hypersexual. The fictional law firm, as created by writer-producer David E. Kelley, includes three couples who get embroiled in more discussions about spanking and sex in cars than about litigation. One might wonder if it is not Ling's cheesecake appeal that rankles some Asians, but that she is yet another Asian woman coupled with a white man. There isn't an attractive Asian male character on the show for Ling to date. Instead, she dates a chauvinistic white lawyer named Richard Fish (Greg Germann). Though she may be a farcical caricature, Ling is a stinging reflection of what is going on in the real world: Approximately half of Asian-American women date and marry outside the race. And they're often accused of selling out.

In the cover story of the June/July issue of a Magazine (an Asian-American publication), Liu denies that her character's relationship with a white man perpetuates stereotypes of Asian women as sensual or exotic: "It's been a battle of gender and has never had anything to do with racism or where somebody originates from. It hasn't been like I've pinned him to the wall with chopsticks or anything like that. It's really more about a mental battle than anything."

Asian woman, white man: a short dating history

The combination is common, but not always welcome. In 1987, when I was a college freshman in upstate New York, I dated Richard, a white, long-haired architecture major. The following year, after Richard and I had broken up, I became acquainted with Han, a Korean-American pre-med student whose social circle was comprised mostly of other Asian Americans. At one point, he told me that when he used to see me with "the white hippie," he wanted "to slap some sense into me." He said that his Asian friends considered me a snob who preferred to date white boys. While their assumption was false, it signaled a serious gender gap within the Asian-American community. If interracial dating and marriage is a sign of cultural assimilation, then Asian-American women were being accepted into white middle-class society at a far higher rate than the men. It also meant that many Asian-American men were feeling rejected by those who should be their closest allies.

In 1995, while working for the Seattle Asian American Film Festival, I had dinner with a group of indie filmmakers visiting from all over the country. There were six men and two women, all of whom were in their 20s or early 30s. The conversation revolved around Asian women dating white men. Many of the filmmakers expressed distaste for mixed-race couples. But their bias was very gender-specific: They were tired of seeing Asian women with white men, and suspected that many of the women— especially those who were recent immigrants—were being taken advantage of. While there may be some truth to their suspicions, I was surprised; I would have thought that these filmmakers, who had defied so many Asian stereotypes and expectations, would be more hip to interracial dating. I did not reveal that I was dating Larry, a white guy.

Now I am dating Albert, a Chinese-American. I introduce him freely to Asian acquaintances. Having him at my side gives me the semblance of a politically correct Asian-American female. My last two brief relationships were also with Asian men—a Filipino- and a Korean-American. I am clearly down with my race.