Nordic fetishists prefer blondes

Ew! Ew ew ew ewwwwwww!

The creep in question is a seriously disturbed SOB, and I sincerely hope that the boys at the big house give him a taste of his own medicine, as it were. Still, I have to question the amount of stink thus raised about asian fetishism precipitated by the heinous and pathetic actions of the one individual. More specifically, I am concerned about the conventional wisdom that most men who prefer Asian women over women of other races must do so because Asian women are supposed to be demure and submissive. I simply don't think it's true (about the men, that is). Now, I'm not saying that there aren't any individuals with that pathological mindset, but I suspect that they are relatively few and far between. Far more common, I think, are men who simply prefer Asian women as sexual partners because they are more attracted to Asian women than women of other races. Sounds too simple and tautological? Well, bear with me here...

This is Boris Becker's first wife, Barbara Becker.

He cheated on her when she was 7 months pregnant with their second child with an African-Russian model, Angela Ermakova.

And these are two other girlfriends he had since his divorce.



Now Rod Stewart is known as a ladies' man. Here are just a few of the bevy of belles he has either married or otherwise, um, associated with.





Notice anything? Apart from Penny Lancaster's cleavage? And no, I'm not simply trying to boost my traffic through underhanded means. I'm simply pointing out that these two men, rich celebrities who could get any kind of women they want, chose partners who were eerily similar in appearance again and again. What this suggest to me is that there is some reptilian part of the human brain that locks onto one idea of what the perfect mate is like in a fashion that is resistant to change. We implicitly acknowledge this when we say something like, "he's cute, but he's not my type."

One might have firmly set preferences for dating tall men, or redheads or philosophy majors with perky buttocks without risking censure. Yet when the preference crosses racial lines, it is apt to be labeled as a fetish. A white (or black) guy who have a clear preference for Asian females are likely to be looked upon with suspicion, especially if he has a history of only dating Asian women. Ditto for a white woman who dates black men. Meanwhile, Asian men who lust after blondes have their own hangups. It's almost as if it's considered somehow unnatural for a person to prefer partners of a race that is not their own, therefore it has got to be explained away. The individual who consistantly dates across racial lines is considered aberrant and possibly racist ("he must only like Asian women because he thinks they're all submissive") by everybody else. Yet if we truly live in a post-racial world without anxiety about miscegenation, why the hell should it signify anything if a person prefers to date partners of a particular race?

As a Asian woman who is involved with a white guy, I find myself more oppressed by the "yellow fever" stereotype than I ever was by guys hitting on me because they find Asian women attractive. Sometimes I find myself working the fact that my boyfriend's previous girlfriends were white into conversations because I didn't want people (including many Asians) making assumptions about my relationship with him. Am I being oversensitive? Maybe, maybe not. A friend of mine who was trying to explain why she was addicted to "A Wedding Story" on TLC told me about one particularly entertaining episode where a white man and an Asian woman described their meeting as love at first sight. "And it was sooo obvious," she said, "that he had the biggest Asian fetish." At the time, I laughed heartily. Yet afterwards, I paused, thought, and was sad that we dismissed the possiblity that a white man and an Asian woman can fall in love at first sight without dragging in the tawdry baggage of Asian fetishism.