I'm not particularly fond of most of the stuff Complex usually publishes, but the last feature of theirs I mentioned here, The 50 Most Racist Movies (You Didn't Think Were Racist), was surprisingly thorough and on point -- not to mention one of the more popular posts I've recently done.
So I have to mention this provocative (but also quite comprehensive) feature, which has to be one of the weirdest lists Complex has ever compiled: Yellow Fever! The Definitive History of Asian Men Dating Outside Their Race.
Yes, they've actually come up with a giant list of Asian male/non-Asian female couples, both fictional and real -- the good, the bad and the Gosselin:
It's no secret that everybody lusts after Asian women - just visit the streets of any major city, or Nic Cage's crib, or this very web site (here, here, or here, for starters). So yellow fever is nothing new, but the miscegenasian has historically been one-sided: non-Asian men looking to fulfill their fetishes of submissive, exotic geisha-types. Get in where you fit in, fetishizers - but whither the Asian man? Unfortunately, the only sexual stereotype of our yellow brethren is decidedly negative (word to Ken Jeong's nude scene in The Hangover), and there are only a handful (pause) of famous Asian men in America that might turn slant-eyeds from zeroes to heroes.Again, it ain't the New Yorker -- this is Complex, so the whole thing is loaded with boob and sex jokes. But it does get props for doing the research and devoting 46 slides to crudely illustrate a sad fact the rest of us already knew -- Hollywood has been in the habit of emasculating the Asian man for a very long time.
But things, they might be a-changin'. When Pepa chose Tom Lo to be her man in her VH1 series, it was one small, chocolatey step for Lo, but possibly a giant step for Asian mankind. Here, then, is our gallery of Asian men who've gotten love outside of their race in real life as well as movies and TV. You know, they're all pink inside, folks...
