Like any other minority group in the United States, Asian Americans are victims of hate. They were subjected to over a 70% increase in hate crimes from 2019 to 2020, which some may attribute to the COVID-19 pandemic that originated in China. 

In addition to the increase in hate crimes, there are common stereotypes Asian people are grouped into such as having small eyes, eating dogs or being geniuses.

While these are more glaring examples of unfair treatment to those who are Asian, there are intersections between race and gender that are more covert. 

One specific hate crime in 2021 in which eight women were killed, six of whom were Asian, was supposedly done because the perpetrator had a “sex addiction” and wanted to eliminate his “temptations.” While some people tried to write it off as a coincidence, it is apparent that Asian women were a target of this crime.

While this may appear to be a stand-alone occurrence, American culture fetishizes Asian women and paints them as “exotic,” which is a harmful description with underlying tones of racism.

Asian women have been portrayed in a sexual light for decades. It was seen in old-timey movies where they were often portrayed as sex workers, and this myth of sensuality or docility in Asian women is prevalent in Japanese animation, otherwise known as anime. 

Anime can be a symbol of diversity in American pop culture, but with that comes the harmful side of the cartoons that both infantilize and sexualize the young characters.

The issues with this do not just stop at finding Asian culture attractive or sexy. There has become a whole culture of pedophilia — sometimes thinly veiled under the guide of a character being hundreds of years old, and sometimes blatant — as well as depicting Asian women to be child-like and docile that was born from these seemingly harmless shows. 

The sexual stereotypes about Asian women that circulate around American media ultimately make these women more likely to be victims of stereotypes and crimes.

If cartoons portray women in a certain way, it becomes normalized for viewers to take a nonexistent character and apply it to the people they know in real life. Women in general are victims to being objectified by men in the media, but Asian women are especially targeted. 

Unfortunately, these stereotypes are not easy to correct. They have been present in the media for such a long time, that people do not even realize the extent to which women are sexualized — admittedly, even I did not realize anime was harmful until I thought more about it. 

And it does not end with anime either. At this point, the harm stemming from the portrayal of Asian women in anime has been done — and that harm has been done for over a century, way before anime was popularized in the U.S.

The harm done by unfair depictions of women can be mitigated by sensibility and media literacy. Americans need to examine the way current and past pop culture has created these stereotypes and recognize this phenomenon for what it is — a form of prejudice against entire ethnicities. 

Megan is a freshman in Media.

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