Asian American women, members of the Students Organized Against Racism (SOAR), presented a panel on the fetishization of Asian American Women on Nov. 14  in the New Commons. It was  sponsored by Alexandra Davood. The people included on the panel were Bianca Joaquin , Kelly Quach, Anh Anguwin, Kirsten Ng, Hania Abbasi, and Tulsi Shah. 

The fetishization of Asian women, being known as “submissive and exotic”, can be traced back centuries. Yet, this is a topic that’s not discussed enough. A major point brought up during the panel was the model minority myth and how it affects people’s opinion towards Asians, specifically East Asians.

“Model minority myths are the idea that people of Asian descent are smart and obedient and don’t really cause problems,” panel host Bianca Joaquin said. “It portrays Asians as the good people of color while black are rude and violent. These stereotypes are rooted in white supremacy.”

“One of the main points I agreed with was how oversexualized Asian women are on social media and how we’re expected to conform to European beauty standards because people with lighter skin tend to be seen as more beautiful, so in order to gain attention to us we have to adapt to those standards,” junior Kelly Nguyen said. 

This panel brought awareness to the issue and discussed ways we, as a community, can help. Holding more panels about this issue would increase the attention towards this  at Niles North. Another point made was to create more solidarity between the Pan Asian community. This would create unity which would be very helpful in solving this issue. SOAR is a group that provides a platform to build solidarity and unity. They meet Mondays between 3:30 to 4:30 and everyone is welcome to join.