Asian women and Latinas are often portrayed
in the media as the exotic, sexualized
“other as well. According to Tajima (1989),
“Asian women in film are either passive
figures who exist to serve men as love interests
for White men (lotus blossom) or as a
partner in crime of men of their own kind
(dragon ladies)” (p. 309). Pursuing this lotus
blossom/dragon lady dichotomy, Hagedorn
(1997) argues that most Hollywood movies
either trivialize or exoticize Asian women:
“If we are ‘good,’ we are childlike, submissive,
silent and eager for sex. And if we are
not silent, suffering doormats, we are demonized
. . . cunning, deceitful, sexual provocateurs”
(pp. 33–34).
Much academic writing surrounding
Asian female representation in the media
is steeped in postcolonial theory and
Orientalist discourse, both of which are
concerned with otherness. The global other,
in media terms, is always paired with the
West as its binary companion (Furguson,
1998). Shome (1996) explains that when
whiteness is comfortable in its hegemony, it
constructs the other as strange or different
and itself as the norm. Drawing from Said’s
study of Orientalism, Heung (1995) says,
“The power of the colonizer is fundamentally
constituted by the power to speak for
and to represent” (p. 83). Furthering the
discussion of an East/West binary, the West
is portrayed in the media as active and masculine
while the East is passive and feminine
(Wilkinson, 1990).
Though the number of female Asian
characters represented in the media, especially
television, is miniscule, the way they
are portrayed in the media is crucial
because stereotypes of underrepresented
people produce socialization in audiences
that unconsciously take this misinformation
as truth (Heung, 1995; Holtzman,
2000). Thus, the portrayal of Ling Woo,
Lucy Liu’s character in the television series
Ally McBeal, garnered much scholarly
attention. Although Woo breaks the submissive
china doll stereotype, she is the epitome
of the stereotypical dragon lady when
she growls like an animal or enters a scene
to music associated with the Wicked Witch
of the West in The Wizard of Oz (Sun,
2003). She is knowledgeable in the art of
sexual pleasure, which is unknown to her
Westernized law firm colleagues, with
the exception of Richard Fish, her white
boyfriend who experiences it first hand.
Patton (2001) explains that the Woo character
is particularly detrimental to Asian
and Asian American women not because
the oversexed seductress reifies existing
stereotypes, but because “she is the only
representative of Asian women on television
(besides news anchors and reporters),
leaving no one else to counteract this prominent
mediated stereotype” (p. 252).
While it is difficult to propose more
work on Asian female representation when
the number of females in the media are
sparse, an obvious place to begin would be
to look into production studies to find out
what producers are looking for in casting
an Asian female. Can she not play a detective
or attorney on one of the three Law
and Order series? Can she be a strong and
funny mom on an Asian American sitcom?
And is she just as discontented with her
suburban life as white women such that
she could be considered for Desperate
Housewives? That popular program has a
Latina and has added an African American
character for the fall 2006 season, but it
features no Asian women as of this writing.
Although most of the academic literature
regarding black and Asian media representation
focuses on historically situated
stereotypes, this does not hold true for
Latinas. While there has been some reference
to Latinas being portrayed as exotic
seductresses (Holtzman, 2000), as tacky
and overly emotional (Valdivia, 1995), and
as the hypersexualized spitfire (Molina
Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004), the majority
of literature on Latino/a representation has
focused on men. Jennifer Lopez has made
her mark in Hollywood, but her films have
both reified stereotypes of Latinas as
domestic workers (Maid in America, 2003)
and broken them when she has played
roles that are not ethnically marked (The
Wedding Planner, 2001; Gigli, 2003;
Monster in Law, 2005). In these roles, however,
Lopez is always paired with a white
male love interest and, because she rarely
plays characters true to her ethnicity
(except of course when she played a maid,
a role that emphasized it), she becomes an
assimilated character who does nothing to
negate Latina stereotypes. Molina Guzmán
and Valdivia assert that Lopez is most often
allowed to perform whiteness, which renders
her seemingly raceless and cultureless.
García Canclini (1995) contends that
“the contemporary experience of Latinas,
which also holds true of other populations
shaped by colonialism, globalization, and
transnationalism, is informed by the complex
dynamics of hybridity as a cultural
practice and expression” (as cited in
Molina Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004, p. 214).
Hill Collins (2004) calls this color-blind
racism and explains that the significance
attached to skin color, especially for
women, is changing. She argues that “in
response to the growing visibility of biracial,
multiracial, Latino, Asian, and racially
ambiguous Americans, skin color no longer
serves as a definitive mark of racial categorization”
(p. 194). This notion of hybridity
or Latinidad, defined as the state and
process of being, becoming, or appearing
Latino/a (Martinez, 2004; Molina Guzmán
& Valdivia, 2004; Rojas, 2004), is gaining
scholarly attention. However, as a social
construct it lends itself to an essentialist
group identity, instead of acknowledging
difference between Dominicans, Mexicans,
Cubans, and Puerto Ricans, all of whom
epitomize Latinidad (Estill, 2000).
Latinas are also finding a place within
the music world and, as with black women,
their sex appeal is played up heavily in
their music videos. Shakira and Jennifer
Lopez are some of the most visible who
have enjoyed music/acting crossover fame.
One of the most common tropes surrounding
these and other mediated Latina hypersexualized
bodies within popular culture is
tropicalism (Aparicio & Chavez-Silverman,
1997; Martinez, 2004). According to Molina
Guzmán & Valdivia (2004), bright colors,
rhythmic music, and olive skin fall under
the trope of tropicalism, and sexuality plays
a central role. Dominant representations of
Latinas in music videos place emphasis on
the breasts, hips, and buttocks (Gilman,
1985; Molina Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004;
Negrón-Muntaner, 1991). Desmond (1997)
calls the Latina body “an urbane corporeal
site with sexualized overdetermination” (as
cited in Molina Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004,
p. 211).
While not enough academic research is
conducted on Native American media representation,
we would be remiss if we did
not mention two studies that examine how
Native American women are portrayed.
Portman and Herring (2001) discuss the
“Pocahontas paradox,” a historical movement
that persists in romanticizing and
vilifying Native American women. They
argue that Native American women are
viewed in the media as either strong and
powerful or beautiful, exotic, and lustful
and that both images have merged together
into one representation through the stereotype
of Pocahontas. While Ono and
Buescher’s (2001) study on Pocahontas
examines the commodification of products
and cultural discourses surrounding the
popular Disney film, they also assert that
new meanings have been ascribed to the animated
figure, thus recasting the Native
American woman in a Western, capitalist
frame (p. 25). Ultimately, Pocahantas is no
more than a sexualized Native American
Barbie. Both Portman and Herring (2001)
and Ono and Buescher (2001) agree that the
Pocahontas mythos is particularly harmful
to Native women because of the way this
historical figure has been exoticized by
media discourses that emphasize her relationship
with her white lover, John Smith.
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