Kaila Yu’s ‘Fetishized’ Examines Yellow Fever, Feminism And Beauty’

Kaila Yu worked as a model, actress and performed with the edgy all-girl band Nylon Pink before turning to writing.

Ryan Chua

Kaila Yu has lived a few lives. She’s worked as a model and an actress. She performed with the edgy all-Asian, all-girl pop-rock band Nylon Pink. She’s also the author of a collection of cultural essays titled Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty. It’s a book about the harm cultural stereotypes have done to Asian American women and, to illustrate this damage, she has chosen to share her own scars.

The provocative title of her book is designed to promote conversation about the nature of fetishization. In the context of race or gender, fetishization refers to the sexualization or exoticization of a person or group. Reducing a person or group of people to a stereotype can make it easier to demean them or consider them interchangeable. Growing up in Southern California, Yu found it hard to escape harmful media stereotypes associated with Asian women. The girl next door was always white, while Asian women—in media from Memoirs of a Geisha to the female characters in Childish Gambino videos—were often portrayed as sexually available and/or overly submissive.

“I loved Memoirs of a Geisha when it first came out,” said Yu. “There was so little Asian media at the time. I think the only book about Asians that was in English was Joy Luck Club. Memoirs of a Geisha came out and it was so exciting. That book was beautifully written. It was a great story, but it was written by a white guy who was imagining what it was like to be a geisha.”

The writer, Arthur Golden, focused on the story of a young geisha selling her virginity, which geishas told Yu was not common practice.

“It’s possible that individuals were secretly doing this on the side, but it was definitely not an acceptable practice,” said Yu. “The book’s also about child trafficking. The parents sold her off at a very young age. The other damaging thing is she falls in love with this man that she meets when she’s 12 or something, and he’s 45. The whole movie is just about her pining after this man. He’s her dream guy, and at the end, she gets to be his mistress. That’s the fairytale ending.”

So, where does the idea of Asian women being sexualized and submissive originate? Not a good place, said Yu. She traces it back to colonial history, to World War II after Japan fell, to the Korean War and the Vietnam War,.

“During those wars, the American military would obviously be there, colonizing, and then after the soldiers fought, they would be sent off for rest and recreation,” said Yu. “Those are Southeast Asian countries where there were often prostitutes set up to welcome the soldiers. So there came this perception of Asian women just being easily available and disposable and interchangeable, but really those were set up specifically for these soldiers kind of as a reward.”

The memoir shares her research into fetishization but also explores the way it shaped her self image. Yu describes herself as “nerdy” in high school.

“No boys paid attention to me, and I was very much a boy-crazy teen,” said Yu. “I had a lot of crushes, and none of them reciprocated, so I felt just totally invisible to the opposite sex. Later when I discovered that there were these men who had a fetish for Asian women, it was like, oh, well, that works in my favor. There were no men paying attention to me at all. Now this is at least something, at least a consolation prize. In my early youth I thought it was empowering and I really leaned into it. “

It was also a time, she notes, when sexuality was seen as empowering women.

“You could have as much sex as you want,” said Yu. “You could be as sexy as you want. That’s feminism. So then I really leaned into my sexuality because as a 21-year-old, you then get a lot of attention from inappropriate men. It feels like power for a minute. It’s very temporary, you learn quickly, but it feels empowering at a time when you have no power.”

Her band Nylon Pink was formed in 2007 and performed some interesting k-pop covers, including G-dragon’s “Crooked,” Big Bang’s “Blue,” 2NE1’s “Lonely” and Girls Generation’s “Gee.”

“Originally, we had two white guys in the band, so it was me, the bass and two white guys,” she said. “Eventually they left and got replaced by Asian girls. When we had two white guys in the band, people didn’t know where to place us. So we played a lot of LA dive clubs. Once we became an all Asian female group and started covering k-pop songs, it was a very clear niche.”

Pop culture has changed a lot since 2007 and k-pop was part of that.

“I think of what it might have meant to my young self if k-pop had been mainstream in the states then,” said Yu. “If I could turn on the radio and there’s Korean words being sung on the radio, and people who don’t even understand Korean are learning Korean to just relate to this culture. And the fact that Squid Games is the number one show on Netflix. When I was growing up there were barely any Asians on TV, like a character here and there, but there were no real movie stars until Lucy Liu.”

Instead she chose pinup goddess Sung-hi Lee to emulate. For a while Yu worked as an import model and auditioned for acting roles.

“She was the only example I saw of a beautiful Asian woman,” said Yu. “If I had k-pop idols or had seen Ali Wong starring in Beef on Netflix, I would have had so much more representation. I could choose to be a comedian or maybe a pop star. But I didn’t have those options back then.”

Yu loves k-pop, but the way some girl groups are infantilized can seem problematic. Female k-pop artists are encouraged to be “cute” or have “aegyo.”

“South Korea is a very patriarchal country and they start those idols so young,” said Yu. “They are promoting a form of femininity that is still kind of submissive. It’s tough to be a woman in South Korea. They’re expected to be very beautiful. The plastic surgery rate is the highest in the world.”

Yu spent many years feeling insecure about the way she looked and in an attempt to adhere to Western beauty standards had more than one plastic surgery. These days she’s more comfortable with herself.

“It was such a long journey, of a lot of therapy and, honestly, writing this book has been so healing,” she said. “I literally went through my life and figured out what caused what, by analyzing it. That was healing. I’m also in my 40s now and I love myself and feel more beautiful than I ever did in my twenties. I was so miserable and insecure, and felt like I was in competition with everybody around me. I would never want to go back to my 20s. Women are most comfortable with themselves as they get older.”

Yu is now a freelance writer, mostly writing about travel, food, and Asian culture.

“When there’s Asian American issues that happen, I speak out about them.”

She began writing the book during the pandemic,

“I was going viral on TikTok talking about the 2000’s media, like Memoirs of a Geisha and Asian American culture,” said Yu. “Then the spa shootings happened where the sex-addicted shooter went and shot eight people. Six of them were Asian women. I started to reflect back on how I might have contributed to this unconsciously.”

So, who needs to read her book? Obviously, women, but not just women.

“I really want men to read it,”she said. “But they probably won’t read it because we live in a culture that objectifies women all the time. I don’t think men ever get to hear from the perspective of someone who’s felt objectified and what could be damaging from the effects of that. “

‘Fetishized: A Reckoning With Yellow Fever, Feminism, And Beauty’ will be published by Crown, a division of Penguin Random House, on Aug. 19.