"You Can Never Be Too Rich or Too Thin": Popular

and Consumer Culture and the Americanization of

Asian American Girls and Young Women
Lee, Stacey J

; Vaught, Sabina

. The Journal of Negro Education

72.4

(Fall 2003): 457-466

Abstract
TranslateAbstract
First- and second-generation youth of color are vulnerable to racialized images of gender and
sexuality as reflected in and perpetuated by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures.
These popular images inform the process of Americanization, including racialized sexualization, for
first- and second-generation Americans. This paper examines the way first- and second-generation
Asian American girls and young women interpret and reinterpret popular representations of their
positions in the United States. Data from two qualitative studies on Asian American young women
will be presented. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Full Text
Headnote
First- and second-generation youth of color are vulnerable to racialized images of gender and
sexuality as reflected in and perpetuated by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures.
These popular images inform the process of Americanization, including racialized sexualization, for
first- and second-generation Americans. This paper examines the way first- and second-generation
Asian American girls and young women interpret and reinterpret popular representations of their
positions in the United States. Data from two qualitative studies on Asian American young women
will be presented.
Scholars from various fields have written about the powerful impact of popular and consumer
cultures on youth identities and cultures (Appadurai, 1990; Giroux, 1992, 1994; Pyke, 2000;
Silverstone, 1994). For youth from immigrant families, popular and consumer cultures are significant
sources of information about "America" and being "American" (Olsen, 1997; Pyke, 2000). First- and
second-generation youth of color, in general, are affected by the dominant messages of Whiteness,
which pervade popular and consumer culture (Olsen, 1997; Pyke, 2000). Young women, in
particular, are vulnerable to racialized images of gender and sexuality as reflected in and promoted
by dominant forms of popular and consumer cultures. Gender, race, and class inform the process of

Americanization, including racialized sexualization, for first- and second-generation Asian American
young women. This paper examines the way first- and second-generation Asian American women
interpret and reinterpret popular representations of their positions in the United States. It includes a
review of the literature, a brief description of two qualitative studies, data from a sample of Asian
American high school girls and a sample of college students, and discussion of the implications of
the findings.
POPULAR AND CONSUMER CULTURE AND THE GENDERED RACIALIZATION OF ASIAN
AMERICANS
Research on immigrant students of color (Lee, 2001b; Lei, 2001; Olsen, 1997) reveals that students
undergo a process of racialization as they are incorporated into the existing racial hierarchy of the
United States-one that places White people at the top and defines them as the only true Americans.
While the formal curriculum and organization of schooling are implicated in this process, popular and
consumer cultures, operating both within and outside of schools, leverage considerable power in the
creation and re-creation of this racialized notion of American identity (Hall, 1995). As cultural studies
theorists like Thomas Nakayama (1994) have observed, "It is as if there is a natural-as opposed to
cultural, social, historical-relation between whiteness and Americanness" (pp. 168-69). Whiteness, in
consumer culture, is both pervasive and invisible as the unmarked norm. Significantly, unmarked
Whiteness is a classed racial category, determined by an equally unmarked middle class status,
such that the norm for Americanness is both middle class and White (Kenny, 2000; Ong, 2000).
Of equal significance is the multiple ways in which Blackness is constructed in popular cultures and
by students as the readers or consumers of those cultures. While Whiteness is constructed in
dominant popular culture as all that is quintessentially good and right with Americanness, Blackness
is constructed as the Other which defines that goodness-it functions to maintain the dichotomy of
good and bad in American culture and society (hooks, 1989, 1992). As julia Koza (1994) points out,
Black rap music is discursively characterized in mainstream media as rejecting what is right and
legitimate about dominant American (read: White) values. It is portrayed as violent, resistant, sexist,
and dangerous. Simultaneously, White families are portrayed as the normal American family; while
Black families, with few notable exceptions, are portrayed as either absent or dysfunctional and
deficient. This elaborates Nakayama's point that the collapsing of Whiteness and Americanness is
achieved through the construction of a Black-White binary. At the crux of this binary is the class
construction of Blackness as characterized by unearned hypermaterialism and parasitic poverty
(Koza, 1994).

Within this hierarchical classed racial binary is the complicated construction of Asian Americanness.
As Nakayama (1994) writes, "Asian and Asian American identities and social spaces are often
conflated in ways that are not parallel to Africans and African Americans or Europeans and
European Americans" (p. 162). Here he points to the phenomenon identified by Mia Tuan (1998) as
being "forever foreigner," in which Asian Americans of any generation are constructed and perceived
by White Americans as Asians-foreigners, non-Americans, Others. This relegation to perpetually
foreign status is pervasive in mainstream popular and consumer cultures, which means that firstand second-generation immigrant students must respond to all of these conflicting and multiple
messages about Americanness in constructing their identities.
Intersecting with these race and class identity dynamics is the function of gender. An examination of
gender issues in popular and consumer cultures reveals that both White women and women of color
are represented as reflecting a White ideal or aesthetic (Gillespie, 1998). These women conform to a
body ideal that reflects White middle class ideals: exceedingly thin, long, flowing hair, and voluptuous
(Gillespie, 1998; Kilborne, 1995). Not insignificantly, blond hair and blue eyes are valorized. These
images are created to encourage women to alter their bodies through consumerism (Berger 1977;
Macdonald, 1995) for the purpose of pleasing and attracting an "ideal" man. Thus, identity and selfconstruction are consumed, not made. In addition to advertising the need for self-transformation to
meet a White body ideal, popular culture also promotes a behavior ideal. As Jean Kilbourne (1995)
writes, "Advertising creates a mythical, WASP-oriented world in which no one is ever ugly, overweight, poor, struggling" (p. 122). Girls, she explains, are taught through popular and consumer
culture to behave as the objects of male desire: "Women are shown almost exclusively as
housewives or sex objects" (p. 122).
Central to this White behavior ideal is the culture of romance (Holland & Eisenhart, 1991). For
example, Olsen (1997) discovered that first- and second-generation immigrant girls learned from
popular culture the mainstream expectations for gender and femininity that emphasized dating and
romance, free from parental involvement. Significantly, this culture of romance centers around girls'
aspirations for attaining the ideal man: economically independent, strong, tall, and White.
There are few images of Asian American women represented in popular and consumer culture.
When Asians and Asian Americans are represented they are hyper-feminized. Specifically, they are
represented as exotic, demure, submissive, and docile (Espiritu, 2000). While Asian American
women are hyper-feminized, "American popular culture denies 'manhood' to Asian men" (Espiritu,
2000).
QUALITATIVE STUDIES OF ASIAN AMERICAN ADOLESCENT GIRLS AND YOUNG WOMEN

Data reported in this article was collected from two studies with Asian American adolescent girls and
women. The first study focuses on Hmong American high school students. The Hmong came to the
United States as refugees from Laos in the late 1970's as a consequence of the Vietnam War. The
data on the Hmong was collected by Lee (2001a, 200Ib) as part of a larger ethnographic study on
ethnic identity formation among first- and second-generation Hmong American high school students
in Wisconsin between January 1999 and june 2000. This article includes data collected on the
twelve Hmong girls who participated in the larger study. The primary means of data collection were
participant observation of Hmong students in the high school and interviews with Hmong students
and school staff. Additional data was collected through participant observation at local Hmong
community events. The students were from working class and working poor families in which Hmong
was the primary language.
The second study, conducted by Vaught during the 2001-02 academic year, examined the influence
of consumer and popular cultures on six first- and second-generation working and middle-class
Asian American college women attending a private Southern liberal arts college. The women in the
study represent various Asian ethnic groups. Through a series of in-depth interviews, Vaught
explored the intersections of race, class, and gender formation in reaction to dominant popular and
consumer cultures especially as influenced by Southern regional contexts.
Study 1: Voices of Young Hmong American Women
The Hmong American high school girls explicitly and consistently expressed their belief that not
being White prevented them from being accepted as authentic Americans (Lee, 200Ib). In
negotiating their position, the second- generation youth focused on Americanization, defined and
made available through popular and consumer cultures. This process of Americanization included
buying and wearing name-brand clothes and listening to particular popular music. Strikingly, these
second-generation students perceived the process of Americanization as requiring and achieving
distance from first-generation youth. As one second-generation Hmong student explained, "FOBs
don't care about clothes. They are stingy about clothes. They dress in out-of-date, 1980's style
clothes. American-born Hmong are into clothes and cars." Inherent in this student's disparaging
description of recent immigrants, whom she identifies as "Fresh Off the Boat," is a condemnation of
anything foreign, but also a rejection of the "forever foreigner" (Tuan, 1998) status imposed on her
and other Asian Americans. However, by rejecting the image of Asian Americans as "forever
foreigners," she is simultaneously partially internalizing a racist discourse about Asians and Asian
Americans.

Although second-generation youth do achieve a distance from students they call FOBs, they do so
by purchasing and wearing clothing styles and brands that many of their teachers and peers
associated with Black urban youth and culture. Tellingly, teachers explicitly described these secondgeneration Hmong American students as embracing a "bad" model of Americanization. Implicitly,
"good" models of Americanization were associated with Whiteness and "bad" models of
Americanization were associated with African Americans.
By and large, the second generation emulated and appropriated dress associated with Black youth
and popular culture not only because they perceive the racial exclusivity of Whiteness at school and
in society, but also because as members of the working poor they are excluded from the mainstream
of school and society. These students respond to this exclusion by adopting, identifying with, and
transforming the existing Black youth popular culture, which they perceive as having oppositional
power. Several students described themselves as "dressing ghetto." This reveals the ways in which
these second-generation youth have taken on problematic racialized notions of Blackness as being
synonymous with poverty, which reflects their identification with a particular raced and classed
position that stands in opposition to White middle-class Americanness. The term "ghetto" reflects
their adoption of the binary and their situation of themselves on the Black side of that binary.
However, one complication of this identification emerged amongst a few Hmong girls who, while they
dressed in what was perceived as Black youth dress, aspired to and internalized a standard of
extreme thinness associated with a White, middle-class gender aesthetic. These young women
reported dieting, exercising, and in-group surveillance all aimed at achieving this White aesthetic.
Significantly, this marks a trumping of White middle-class femininity over Hmong and African
American standards of beauty, which points to a gender difference in resistance and the process of
Americanization.
White middle-class standards of femininity are not restricted to beauty ideals, but extend into notions
of gender and domesticity (Wolf, 1991). Dominant popular culture is the purveyor of an idealized
domesticity in which there is ostensibly greater opportunity for women than the young first- and
second-generation Hmong American women perceive in their own families and communities.
Further, this idealized domesticity is White, such that Whiteness represents the healthy, progressive,
safe domestic space. Several of the adolescents complained about the gender inequality in their
families, specifically the fact that as daughters they had to perform all the household chores,
including cooking for and serving their brothers. They asserted that when they have children they
plan to teach their sons and daughters to share domestic chores. As captured in the conversation
between one of the participants and the researcher, many of the Hmong American girls felt they

learned practical lessons about how to create greater gender equity in their future homes from TV
shows:
Hmong American Girl: I would have, like, I would have set chores for my kids.
Researcher: For boys and girls?
Hmong American Girl: Yeah, like, I would, like, make a chart and have them, like, do their thing, and
when they're done, you can, like, check it off or whatever.
Researcher: Where did you get that idea?
Hmong American Girl: I've seen it in movies. And like some families-Hmong families-do that now and
it works well.
While it may appear that popular culture can then provide examples of alternative and progressive
constructions of domestic gender relations, these examples contain inherently biased and potentially
harmful messages as well. Namely, they represent an idealized domesticity that veils the real
complexity and difficulty in gender relations in middle-class White families. Thus, popular images of
the "normal" family and the "good" parent perpetrate not only the primacy of the White American
family, but the deficiency of all other families (Fyke, 2000).
Girls, in particular, appear to internalize the image of the White American family as "good" and
"normal." This, in combination with their gender experiences at home, leads them to question
whether or not Hmong American men would make desirable future husbands. Consequently, these
Hmong American girls face a complex and contradictory dynamic: (a) in order to resist racial
domination, they must reject Whiteness; and (b) in order to resist gender domination, they must buy
into Whiteness. Buying into the White family ideal represented in popular culture leads to the
perceived deficiency of their own families. As one young woman said,
Well, I guess they always have those TV shows with the perfect family, and.. .And you know, you do
kind of envy that. I mean, you don't have it. . .1 don't know, but like, I like wish I had a good
family. . .For me, I think that's why a lot of White people are successful, you know?
This devaluation of non-White families contributes to an exacerbation of intergenerational conflict.
Dissatisfied with the real lives of their families, these women turn to the popular culture genres of TV
and film where they can easily find falsely ideal images. The destructive danger here is that popular
culture offers only a binary, in which there are good (read: White) families and bad (read: non-White)

families. This binary precludes the positive familial transformation that might be undertaken by these
young women, and unilaterally alienates them from their families and cultures so that they cannot
easily see the worth and value of their own families. Although the young women complained about
their families and idealized White families, they continued to be proud of their Hmong identities.
These women plan to use their educations to help their families and the larger Hmong community
(Lee, 200Ia).
These young women looked for images of Hmong and other Asian Americans in popular culture
evidenced by the example of the Hmong Student Association renting and viewing Walt Disney's
Mulan (1998) for the purpose of viewing a film with Asian characters and stories. After viewing this
film, one young woman expressed concern about the film saying she had heard the "bad guys were
Hmong." She went on to say that she was troubled that the media always portrayed the Hmong in a
negative way, a portrayal she compared to negative characterizations of Muslims in American
popular media. Although the "bad guys" in Mulan are not Hmong, this student's concern about
popular representations of Hmong expresses a critical read of dominant images that emerges from
her pride in her ethnic identity. Of further significance is that while these young women are not critical
of representations of Whiteness in popular culture, they are critical of the way White popular culture
constructs images of non-White people, here Muslims and the Hmong. This ostensibly contradictory
dynamic of being both very critical of and very manipulated by dominant popular culture is explained
by the way that their racialization creates a hierarchy of critical insight. They are able to recognize the
way they are marginalized by the dominant culture, but the forces of that dominant culture prevent
them from criticizing White middle-class gender norms. There is a complex conflict between shame
and pride created by the power of dominant popular cultural forms.
Study 2: Asian American College Women in the South
The complex and nuanced interplay of race, class, and gender emerged in the style, body images,
and behavior of the women in Vaught's study. These first- and second-generation working- and
middle-class Asian American women, who grew up in predominantly White and African American
communities and attended schools in the American South, achieved a measure of mainstream
"success," as evidenced by their attendance at an elite private liberal arts college, whose students
are primarily White and upper middle or upper class. Unlike the adolescents in the first study who
gravitated towards styles associated with Black urban youth, these female college students emulated
more mainstream (read: White, middle class) styles of self-presentation. At this overwhelmingly
White college, all of the Asian American women knew of each other and expressed consistently
similar styles of dress and desires for a particular body image and female attractiveness. This

contrast between the Hmong American adolescents in the first study and these college students is
marked in large part by class stratification and accessible class aspirations.
As avid consumers of mainstream popular culture, the college students read Cosmopolitan, Vogue,
and a variety of teen magazines and consumer catalogues such as Victoria's secret. Significantly,
these types of popular culture media reflect a rigid and fervent adherence to a White beauty
aesthetic (Gillespie, 1998). One participant captured elements of this beauty standard when she
described the messages conveyed to readers by the models in female magazines:
There was always, especially in like Teen magazine, you're supposed to be thin, and beautiful, and
look just like everybody else. They were all thin and they had blond hair and blue eyes and white
skin. I never really thought I could look like them.
Another young woman echoed this perception, saying, "I have learned after years of pop-culture
messages about the ideal beauty, which is White, blond, big breasted." The other young women
expressed a similar recognition that this dominant beauty aesthetic is racialized and not neutral, and
so beyond their reach as Asian American women. Despite this recognition, the young women all
attempted to adhere to the White beauty ideal promoted by dominant forms of popular culture. They
spoke of dieting and working out at gyms to achieve thinness, wearing push-up bras and tight
clothing, dying or bleaching their hair, and wearing green or blue colored contact lenses.
The impact of popular culture on a young woman's self-concept and her body is described by
Kilbourne (1995) when she writes, "Objectified constantly by others, she learns to objectify herself"
(pp. 122-124). For example, one participant talks about religiously watching the TV program Ally
McBeal (1999), which chronicles the life of a fictitious female attorney. This participant expresses a
desire to emulate Ally McBeal's physical appearance and lifestyle. Although she admires Ally
McBeal, she describes her as "anorexic," but then immediately goes on to say, "I just know I would
look ten times better.. .if I lost about 50 pounds." This participant is of average weight, height and
proportion and would herself be "anorexic" were she to lose even half this weight. Of note is that the
practice of self-objectification that Kilbourne (1995) identifies as being promoted and triggered by
popular and consumer culture images of White beauty, is the very practice that interrupts the
emerging criticism expressed in the above interviews. all of these young women understand the
impossibility of attaining the White beauty aesthetic, yet through the constant exercise of attempting
to obtain it, their insight is dramatically muted and aborted (Best, 2000).
Like the working class boys in Willis' study (1977), these young women experience moments of
insight that are ultimately blunted by an achievement ideology. However, in this case, the "culture of

romance" (Holland & Eisenhart, 1991) defines the parameters of achievement: women achieve
individual success through White, middle-class male approbation. At this particular school, the
women describe a culture of romance promoted and monitored by sororities, female peer groups,
and the incorporation of popular cultural forms. Therefore, much of what they do to alter their bodies
is in an effort to attract men, and so to act on their aspirations to class mobility. One participant
explained:
I want bigger boobs, because I think men like that. all the guys have Brittney Spears posters on their
walls, so as confident as you are about your body, you're going to be like, "Oh." I am very affected by
my outside. . .1 wear a pushup. . .1 workout to try and be skinnier.
Another woman reported that she began wearing green contacts in the 11th grade:
. . .because [a White boy at school] said he liked girls with green eyes. So, I was like "Ooh." T just
continue to wear them, because I continue to get comments from males. They say, "Ooh your eyes
are so pretty." It's kind of like wearing the right shade of lipstick.
Of importance is that this participant equates adornment-wearing lipstick-with a racialized alterationwearing colored contacts-that involves masking, transforming, and hiding evidence of her Asianness
(Gillespie, 1998; Kilbourne, 1995). The other young women reported similar alterations to their
bodies and remarkably similar positive responses from White men.
These efforts at self-alteration, however, are not directed at all men, but specifically to White men-a
sentiment echoed by all participants. As one woman succinctly put it, "I'm attracted to White men.
Not attracted to Asian men at all." The participants reported several reasons they would not date
Asian or Asian American men, all of which were asserted in contrast to their beliefs about White
men: physically unattractive, financially weak, emotionally remote, and boring. Similarly, many of the
Hmong American girls in the first study complained that Hmong boys were "too short" and "not cute."
This rejection of Asian and Asian American men reflects popular culture constructions of these men
as weak, passive, and otherwise lacking in hegemonic masculinity (Kumashiro, 1998; Lee, 1999; Lei,
2001). As Espiritu (2000) argues, "due to the persistent desexualization of the Asian male, many
Asian females do not perceive their ethnic counterparts as desirable marriage partners" (p. 97).
Where the two groups diverged was that some of the Hmong American girls in the first study found
exceptions, such as actor and martial arts performer Jet Li; whereas none of the women in the
second study cited exception to their rejection of Asian or Asian American men. Again, this complete
rejection speaks to the class aspirations of the young women in the second study and their
accompanying belief that those aspirations can be achieved through marriage to White men.

These young women are attracted to White men, who express and symbolize the hegemonic
masculinity (Connell, 1995; Kimmell, 2000; Kumashiro, 1998) that is perpetrated by popular culture.
Hegemonic masculinity is a rigidly circumscribed construct against which all other masculinities are
measured. It represents the "right" manhood, both racially and economically, by reifying notions of
dominance, rationality, and protection. These women aspire to relationships with hegemonic males,
because they believe such liaisons will bring them emotional and economic stability. all but one of
the participants watched the TV series Friends (2001) for the express purpose of studying the male
members of the cast. The women assume that by understanding how these characters think and
what these characters look for in women that they will be able to attract and please hegemonic
males. In the following quotation, one young woman explains that she began watching MTV in order
to learn how to please her White boyfriend and other White men:
Watching MTV affected the way I acted very much. I think I wanted to be more Americanized. I
changed my hair color. I got colored contact lenses. I started buying clothes at the Gap. . .1 became
aware that I didn't have the same hair as other people.
What this woman and others learn is that in order to attract White men they must not only alter their
bodies, but they must also adapt and transform their behavior (Coward, 1985; Wolf, 1991). They
referred to this constellation of changes as both a process of Americanization and exoticization. Their
perception and experience confirms that by playing into the exotic role they can attract White
American men. Another participant further explains:
Somehow, I thought that if I changed my hair color and changed my appearance to be more
Americanized and more Westernized that would be good. Because at the time I was trying to get a
job and I couldn't get a job anywhere. As soon as I changed my appearance-started wearing tight
jeans and tank tops-then I changed my hair color and wore make up on a daily basis. I started
smoking also. And I got a job. I started dating then. Older White men. I think I became not so foreign
to them. I might look exotic, but not foreign. They're like, oh, you're American. . . I'm much more
comfortable with being Asian and being exotic than I was before.
As the above quote demonstrates, Americanization and exoticization are overlapping concepts and
processes, by which these young women attempt to achieve a White middle class standing
(Americanization) by simultaneously taking on a dominant (White) notion of foreignness (the exotic).
In order to gain the approval of White men these women must play into the exotic stereotype of Asian
and Asian American women as ultrafeminine, hyper-sexual, and submissive. Their willingness to
embrace and embody the exotic stereotype of Asian and Asian American women may reflect their
understanding that they cannot achieve the White beauty aesthetic. In other words, they may

recognize that while they cannot achieve Whiteness they can attract White men by submitting
themselves to the fantasies of White men.
Although the women learn to play on stereotypes of the exotic, hyper-sexualized Asian woman by
heightening their racialized bodies, they simultaneously learn that they must downplay any cultural
differences. One woman explained:
I used it to get man's attention-being exotic-but I tried to also hide it and be as American as I could
be, because I didn't want them [White men] to be afraid of me. . .1 want to please people and make
them accept me.
Later she said of growing up:
I think I had this mixed message, "Oh, Asian women are beautiful, but don't try to be Asian, because
you'll scare them [boys] off." Don't act Asian. You can look Asian. You're not Asian really and people
are going to like you better because you aren't Asian really. I get that a lot now.
Thus, while these women are seen as exotic, they convey a safe exoticism because their Asian
cultural behaviors have been successfully disciplined. The women spoke of disguising their ethnic
and cultural identities by omitting certain information-countries of origin, first languages, and
childhood experiences-in conversations with White men in order to insure that the men would not be
"scared off." Although they are seen as sexually alluring, they exist ultimately for the purpose of
pleasing and being subservient to the White male (Lee, 1999).
IMPLICATIONS
Ultimately, both groups of young girls and women in the two studies looked to television, fashion
magazines, and other forms of popular culture for instruction on racialized and gendered
Americanization. Participants in both of our studies internalized these notions of Americanness,
evidenced strongly in their reserving the term "American" to refer to White people, while using
ethnically or racially specific language to identify themselves or other people of color. Of notable
difference, however, was the expression of Americanization based on both real, material class
differences as well as perceived potential for class mobility. The young Hmong American girls in the
first study experienced a multifaceted process of gendered Americanization that involved combining
both urban African American and middle-class White standards of appearance. On the other hand,
the young college students in the second study participated in a monolithic process of achieving
gendered Americanization, informed by their aspiration for and belief in the possibility of acceptance
and incorporation into White middle class society. Schooled by popular culture to objectify

themselves, their bodies, and their cultures, the young women in both studies experience a
pernicious internalization of dominant ideas of Americanization. They experienced moments of
critical awareness of the contradictory messages about race, gender, and national identity. However,
the damaging force of popular cultural images often eclipsed these insights.
Educators must recognize the powerful effect of popular and consumer cultures on first- and secondgeneration Asian American women, as well as other immigrants of color. Schools and teachers
should work with students to develop their latent critical insights into popular cultures. In order to
facilitate the development of such insight, educators must be attentive to the complex ways in which
these girls and young women construct identities in relation to powerful racialized and gendered
consumer images.
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AuthorAffiliation
AUTHORS
STACEY J. LEE is a Professor of Educational Policy Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison;
sjlee3@facstaff.wisc.edu. Her research interests include immigrant students, and racial and ethnic
identity and Asian American students.
SABINA VAUGHT is a doctoral student in the departments of Educational Policy Studies and
Curriculum and Instruction at University of Wisconsin-Madison; sevaught@students.wisc.edu. Her
research interests include critical race theory and narrative methods.
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