Boba, piercings, tattoos, false lashes and acrylic nails. These are but a few aesthetic staples of the Asian Baby Girl. ABGs can be most commonly found, Juul in hand, at raves across the West Coast of North America (Vancouver and San Francisco in particular have been dubbed ABG hotspots). Achieving this aesthetic is not an easy process, oftentimes requiring double eyelid tape to eliminate natural monolids and frequent hair bleaching sessions.
In predominantly Asian grade schools on the West Coast, there are no shortage of girls adopting this look to signal their desirability. This was how the student body aesthetically aligned themselves. Kids would attend parties under the radar of strict Asian households, then pull all-nighters for tests over the weekend. Why do we never see this portrayal of the Asian diaspora on screen?
This past decade, we’ve gotten sanitized depictions of young Asian people in film and TV. In streaming hits To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Summer I Turned Pretty, we see Asian people in close proximity to whiteness. The main character is often the odd-Asian-person-out, figuring out how to fit into middle-class white America.
I often wondered why the portrayals of Asian people never lined up with my lived experiences, and wondered when they finally would. Conversely, I’ve always felt more accurately represented by Asian content creators on the internet, long before the recent wave of Asian representation in traditional media. However, Asian internet creators— and accurate self-representation— never seemed to bridge that gap to “traditional” media.
I spoke to content creator Eunice Yeung on her thoughts on why this may be, and her experience making content online as an Asian person.
Do you feel represented by Asian characters in film & TV?
I feel like every time there’s an Asian on film, they’re always pigeonholed into a stereotype. In every Asian film, there’s always a whitewashed element about the character and the background. For “Crazy Rich Asians,” the main character is still half white, you know? He references them both as Asian, but they’re not both Asian. Like, it doesn’t make sense. I feel it’s not accurate to how Asians actually are.
Do you feel like Asian-North American people are represented more accurately online?
It is written by an Asian person. There’s no outside influence, so I do feel like it resonates more. It is just kind of sad that they have to push more to do it that way. Let’s just say if they take the story to an actual producer, it might get declined.
What issues do you face representing yourself as an Asian-Canadian content creator?
As an Asian creator, I feel like you’re boxed into one audience. I feel like it’s still tough to be mainstream, ‘cause as soon as you’re an Asian creator, you’re kind of seen as an Asian creator.
It feels kind of fetishizing, you know? It doesn’t feel genuine. It feels more like a trend. Like Asian culture is more of a trend than an actual continuous passion.
If you’re an Asian content creator, what usually does well is if you do Asian content that actually appeals really well to the audience. But then at the same time it kind of feels like it’s boxing you into doing more Asian content. But then if you expand your content, it might not do as well, but it doesn’t constrict you as much.
Have you been called an ABG online? Has the term ABG been used to pigeonhole female Asian content creators?
I think it’s a bit better actually than it was in the beginning. ABG means someone that has that look: I would say like blonde hair, lashes and everything. I feel like it does constrict creators to an extent, but I feel like some creators call themselves ABG, so it kind of contradicts it a little bit more.
What do you think of female Asian content creators being called ABGs?
To be honest, I don’t really like being called an ABG. I feel there’s a negative connotation to it, but sometimes I would use that word for my content as a joke. I feel like it’s okay to use ABG if it’s for your content and making a joke out of it. For example, like “on a date with an ABG”, those kinds of things. I think that’s fine. And if you’re another Asian creator, that’s fine. But if you’re like, “Oh yeah, like, she’s like an ABG,” or like, “She’s just like an ABG creator,” I feel like if you mean it, it’s pretty bad. If you say it in a sarcastic way or as a joke, it’s fine. But if you actually think that every girl with blonde hair and lashes who likes boba is an ABG, then I feel like that’s not a good thing. I feel like it’s kind of a negative way to use that term. I feel like people have more than Boba, dyed hair and lashes. I feel like “ABG” narrows you into these stereotypes. Let’s just say for example, if you use “basic white girl,” it’s like dismissing someone to those stereotypes that they’re all the same.
What do you hope to change for Asian representation on screen and online?
I hope to see more Asian people in the digital scene going into more films and TV.
I hope that people can give Asian writers a chance. I feel like the big thing isn’t the Asian cast itself. I think the big thing is having more Asian writers who are writing Asian characters. There should be more people behind the scenes as well as on screen.
While non-Asian executives still determine what makes it onto the big screen, the discrepancy between what gets made versus what we experience shows that North America continues to platform the “model minority” narrative.
The original term, Asian Baby Gangster, described Asian-American women associated with gang culture in the 1980s. Asian gangs that formed on the West Coast were made up of refugees from the Vietnam War and encompassed Laotian, Cambodian, Filipino and earlier Chinese gangs on the West Coast, where there was a concentrated Asian population. Many Southeast Asian and East Asian refugees and immigrants in the US “left their homes, due to the postcolonial and political violence and instability in their homelands.” Faced with isolation at school and strict home environments where “their parents were survivors of genocide, wars, and had PTSD, traumas,” many young adults were drawn to gang culture, where a semblance of chosen family could emerge.
Some criticize the ABG aesthetic for appropriating black aesthetics, however the aesthetics of Southeast Asian women in gangs were formed by being in community with “Chicana and Black sister gangs.” Furthermore, “many of these immigrants came from peasant backgrounds, and were immediately tracked into urban poverty in the US where they had to remain on welfare for generations.” The gang origins of the term ABG show the socio-economic struggles these Asian communities faced. Films portraying Asian women now mostly centre East Asian families who immigrated to North America on “work and investment visas, or as students. . . [whilst] Southeast Asians have [relocated] across continents as refugees and overall earn less than East Asians. This income gap is largely overlooked due to the generalizing nature of the [model minority myth].” The model minority Asian is the one we see on screen, the one striving to fit into whiteness.
Asian women who adopt the ABG term or aesthetic now are far removed from their gang predecessors, though the term is still associated with promiscuity and lower intelligence. In a way, it rebels against the model minority stereotype. Many young Asian women adopt these aesthetics to become desirable, in particular to Asian men. Desirability can be a powerful currency for teenagers. However, Asian women aligning themselves with desirability also seem to fall into the constraints of a fetishizing aesthetic. Our bodies have always been fetishized, whether by the West’s orientalism—for example, the Lotus Blossom stereotype in media, portraying Asian women as delicate and loyal to white men— or by other Asian people, as in the emergence of the ABG stereotype (Asian women who are depicting themselves online via this trend may also rely on self-fetishization).
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
In traditional media, we have seen Asian women as the “Orientalist fantasies of White men,” as in the infamous “Madame Butterfly.” Asian women have also been portrayed as “unattractive side characters [in] Sixteen Candles, Gilmore Girls, and The Goonies.” Furthermore, they have been depicted as placeholder girlfriends in “Harry Potter,” “Fargo” (TV show) and “Scott Pilgrim.” We also see the “ABG” depicted by white storytellers in “Mean Girls” (2004) as the Vietnamese- American women labelled the “cool Asian nerds” who sleep with the high school coach.
Asian women are still the targets of violence, as in the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, which caused the deaths of 8 people, mostly Asian women. Asian-Americans have been increasingly targeted in ICE arrests in the US. Traditional media focusing on Asians who fit the model minority bill squashes the reality of the Asian diaspora in North America.
Traditional media fails to reflect what it was like to grow up in communities on the West Coast like mine. We need fewer model minorities and more Asians being messy. We need to see Asian people outside of their relation to whiteness. Who is the ABG underneath the false lashes? How is she finding herself amidst trying to fit in, even amongst other Asian people? How does she want to be seen? I hope to see more Asian women navigating real issues we all go through and the ones we’re still trying to figure out.
