Heightened craving for “desi babes”
JC
An article in the Telegraph talks about how South Asian women are the new hot thing — yet another group of ethnic and exotic women for men to fetishize. :| Watch out my South Asian sisters! ;)
In general, American men perceive Indian women as being feminine, demure, sensual and family oriented. A typical Indian woman’s physical characteristics — straight hair, sharp features, petite form and lighter skin tone — are valued among other minority groups.
So it is no surprise that as south Asians step out into the American mainstream, it is the Indian woman who is leading the way, perpetuating an image of a desi woman that is at once feminine and empowered.
As part of the “model minority” in the US, the context of inter-racial relationships for south Asian women are markedly different from all other racial groups. According to Susan Koshy, Asian American studies professor at the University of Illinois and author of Sexual Naturalization: Asian Americans and Miscegenation, Indian women have become the possessors of significant “sexual capital” in the US. “Asian American women, in general, have greater sexual capital than the women of other racial groups [such as] African American, Latinas and native American women,” she says.
Koshy notes, however, that south Asian women do not have this history of sexual relationships developed in the context of military and political dominance with the US, as women from east and southeast Asia have as a result of US military involvement in the region. “Instead the exoticism of south Asian women in the US took place in a more amorphous and less freighted way through popular culture — Hollywood movies, and more recently through Bollywood, fashion, and pop music.”
Mixed Media Watch - tracking media representations of mixed people on 30 May 2006 at 8:07 am
[…] MIXED MEDIA WATCH NEWS UPDATE Carmen discusses three recent news items from Mixed Media Watch. First, an article posits that South Asian women are the new trophy wives/girlfriends for American men. Second, Halle Berry calls out a BBC radio DJ for his racist impersonation of a “big, fat black guy.” Finally, we discuss a Slate article on the racial politics of America’s Next Top Model. […]