Being fetishised broke me. Now I'm taking back my power

Do you love me, or the idea of me? As an Asian woman, this question haunts me every time I enter a romantic relationship.

Who could blame me? I've been burnt too many times. And it's all thanks to this thing called "yellow fever".

Yellow fever is a slang term for when people have a strong sexual attraction to those of East or South-East Asian descent. 

In plain terms, from my experience: white guys with a fetish for Asian women.

As a self-professed recovered hopeless romantic, I would fall hard and fast, only to be left with a gnawing feeling that something was very wrong. 

Things like a predilection for Asian pornography pointed to something deeper and darker than a preference.

For a long time, it is something I ignored.

I thought I was ugly

I was born and raised in New Zealand to a Malaysian Chinese mother and New Zealand-European father. It was a time before K-pop and Wasian royalty — a time when bringing anything but a Vegemite sandwich to school was considered absurd.

I'm not white passing in the slightest. I was bullied. I didn't have a lot of friends. And the ones I did have weren't white.

A consummate over-achiever, people assumed I must have had a tiger mother, but quite the opposite was true. My parents gave me an overabundance of love and never pushed me in the slightest.

I pushed myself. If I couldn't be pretty or popular, at least I would be smart and talented.

It created a strange dissonance when I would visit family in Malaysia and Singapore with my mum.

Every day I would have strangers tell me I was beautiful and my mum would respond, "it's because she's mixed". 

My beauty was contingent on my proximity to whiteness. And back in New Zealand, I didn't have that.

I've since been able to educate my mum on how harmful her mindset was and I'm lucky she is so willing to learn and grow.

Together I'm proud of how we're untangling the knots of colonialism. But it hasn't always been easy. 

For much of my life I thought I was ugly because I didn't fit Eurocentric beauty standards.

And I wondered, who would want me?

An object of desire

When men started showing interest I was flattered by the attention, yet an unease followed me. A pattern emerged.

They always seemed to have Asian ex-girlfriends, an interest in Asian culture, and a mindset that Asian women proved superior girlfriends, wives and mothers.

In isolation these could all mean nothing, but together they pointed to that term, yellow fever. 

How strange that the very thing I once thought deemed me undesirable, now turned me into an object of desire.

Older men would ask me how much I was when I wore a cheongsam, a traditional Chinese dress.

Younger men would joke about me being "slanted" down below. I would be catcalled on the street that I looked like a geisha or told I looked like a little China doll.

One boyfriend declared he liked me because I was "exotic but not too exotic". Others said they "just had a preference" for Asian girls.

Why did I stay? Part of me desperately wanted to believe that this attraction could turn to real love.

I remember the night that changed.

A man I was in a relationship with asked me to put on an accent. I laughed it off, part horror, part shock. But it broke me.

I realised that to these men I would never be more than a prop.

It's about power, not love

I've been working as a performer for several years now, across opera, musicals, plays, and most recently cabaret.

Throughout my career, I have often been lumped into playing one of two tropes — the "lotus blossom", delicate and submissive, or the "dragon lady", manipulative and sexualised.

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I feel this oriental fantasy has been fed to men over and over. 

Perhaps it's a comforting illusion to think there are women out there that will worship them just because they're white. 

And when men explicitly seek me out because I'm Asian, I don't think they are looking for love. I think they are looking for power.

In some ways I pity them. They want something that isn't real.

Date any Asian woman and you'll soon realise we are not a monolith. We are layered, unique, and ultimately human.

I deserve better

Last year I wrote a show about my experiences. When I first workshopped it, people were shocked. They'd say: "Did those things really happen?"

What was horrifying to the outside world had become my normal.

I realised how much shame I carried and writing my show was an incredible way to bring clarity and closure to years of buried feelings about my race, love, and art.

One reviewer wrote I was "seeking revenge in the most tasteful way". I had to laugh. That was never my intention.

I wrote the show that I needed to see when I was teenager — to tell her she deserves better.

Kelly Lim Harris is an award-winning performer and multi-hyphenate creative based in Naarm/Melbourne.