For Making and Breaking Narratives, I decided to focus on the fetishization of Asian women in society. As a girl from a fully Chinese family, born and raised in Beijing but was exposed to the western society from the age of 8 to now. I am perhaps one of the people most equipped with the right and wrong experiences to explore this topic.
My mother was key in the research part of this project as she moved from China to England briefly in 2001 as a woman in her mid 20s. I interviewed her about her experiences during that period of her life where I was presented with some vile details.
For example, she talked about how men would pursue her purely due to her heritage, the certain times that it was just assumed she was a sex worker even though she was a successful accountant as well as the men that would straight up assume personality traits about her. Her friends that weren’t Asian didn’t understand when she expressed discomfort towards these attention as why would you complain about being “adored”.
Not to quote Taylor Swift in a university project, but she couldn’t have said it better than the line “You don’t feel pretty, you just feel used”.
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