Kaila Yu spent years as an Asian American pinup model, singer and actress, leaning into a hypersexualized image of Asian femininity and burying her doubts about it. But after the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, she started reckoning with how fetishization can lead to violence — and interrogating her own role in perpetuating harmful stereotypes.
Kaila talks with host Anita Rao about her new memoir “Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism and Beauty.”
Plus, sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen breaks down how history and Hollywood built the stereotypes in the first place and what we can do to break free.
Nancy is a professor in the ethnic studies department at Crafton Hill College and the author of “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism.”
