On S Hypers

While the exact origins of Asian female fetishization in America remain highly contested, Celine Parreñas Shimizu argues that postwar film and artwork played a significant role in popularizing the trope of the hypersexual yet docile Asian woman. From musicals to popular movies to pornographic material, American cultural production paradoxically constructs the Asian/American female as either the “dragon lady” or “lotus blossom.”

Seductive and cold, the dragon lady portrays East/South/Southeast Asian women as domineering and sexually alluring. Meanwhile, the lotus blossom stereotype depicts East Asian women as feminine, exotic, and submissive. Within popular media, the docile lotus blossom interweaves with the provocative dragon lady to constitute Asian/American women as a sexual model minority—“ideal in their union of sex appeal with familycentered values and a strong work ethic” (Zheng 405). Faced with the dichotomy between the dragon lady and lotus blossom, Asian/American women often struggle to make sense of their identity and belonging.