*Special*: Writeup on WMAF and To all the Boys I've Loved Before

From Vancouver, Diane Huang is studying in the arts at the University of British Columbia. She has shared an assignment/paper she wrote for one of her classes about sociological concepts of interracial dating between White men and Asian women (WMAF) that can be seen in the movie "To All the Boys I've Loved Before." Although this blog is mainly for Asian men, this paper was exceptionally interesting. Thank you for your submission, Diane!

Whiteness and Gender in Interracial dating of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

By: Diane Huang

Whiteness and Gender in Interracial dating of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

"Asian Americans are caught between the perception that we are inevitably foreign and the temptation that we can be allied with white people in a country built on white supremacy."

-Viet Thanh Nguyen, in Time Magazine

Watching To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (TATBILB), a teenage romantic comedy, reminded me of many sociological concepts concerning the WMAF (white man and Asian woman) relationship. I will begin my discussion by summarizing the film’s plot. I will then examine the model minority myth as an example of Max Weber’s Iron Cage to explain the prevalence of such a myth and the preference for dating white. To prevent my dissection from veering into solely rehashing the arguments offered by Asian men, who were not represented in the film and are biased because of it, I will also discuss arguments presented by scholars on interracial dating and the internalized double consciousness that widely affect minorities in white-dominated spaces.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a 2018 film lauded for representation of Asian Americans based on a novel of the same name by Jenny Han, a Korean American author. The film surrounds Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor), a half-white half-Asian high school student, as she fumbles into an arranged relationship with her long-standing crush due to her letters to all the boys she loved before being sent out by her sister, Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centino), to help him regain his relationship with his ex-girlfriend Gen (Emilija Brananc) who also is Lara Jean’s ex-best friend. All of this is the result of her younger sister Kitty (Anna Cathcart) sending out Lara Jean’s lovesick letters to all the boys she loved before. All the boys happen to be white, except for Lucas who is gay and only serves to comfort Lara Jean.

Figure 1. Lara Jean’s crushes by @toalltheboysdiaries, 2018, https://www.instagram.com/p/Bmrf3ZmAZZK/

While the film was praised for progressive Asian-American representation, it reproduces hegemonic masculinity, and femininity, and continues the model minority myth. Asian men have criticized the film for its lack of Asian male representation and using the overused white man with Asian woman couple in a so-called diversity film.

To understand this specific pattern of WMAF, the model minority myth should be examined. Lee et el (2009) note that the model minority was a concept devised by sociologist William Peterson to describe the success of Japanese Americans to present America as post-racial (Tran and Birman 2010). Obviously, America is not a meritocracy and the model minority categorization is a generalization of a variety of racial, social, and economic positioning.

However, despite the “myth” label, Tran and Birman (2010) find patterns of Asians conforming to it in white-dominated areas much like the self-fulfilling prophecy that Merton (1948) describes of outgroup-- in this example white--pressure that manifests into ingroup-- here, Asian-- features.

Double pressure from both outside and inside the ingroup can trap young Asian adults into a system that is wholly bent on enforcing standards to achieve maximum capitalist benefit. This system can be theorized as Max Weber’s iron cage as the model minority ideal expects Asian children and youth to conform to a set of similar standards for efficiency into prestige and money through Ivy League education. While a generalization, this is highly popular as both a trope used by both non-Asians and Asians.

Tran and Birman (2010) while researching the model minority myth found that Asian parents may have rationalized their obsession with education, extracurriculars, and success to overcome racism. In the process, they inadvertently reproduced the model minority myth.

So, we can think of the model minority myth as the iron cage, producing a system whose goal is to make Asian children into model citizens to eventually do the impossible: overcome white supremacist society by coming out on top.

This occurs in the film with the representation of Asian culture and “Asianness.” TATBILB presents Asian culture as negative, stifling, and undesirable, which can be considered a figurative iron cage for Lara Jean to escape from. Without her oldest sister, Lara Jean finds her life lonely in the wake of always yearning to be either like her cool best friend or her hot ex-friend.

Before Lara Jean becomes Peter’s girlfriend, she is portrayed as shy, timid, and demure among her sisters which represent her Asian community. With Peter, and later on, Lara Jean’s hairstyle and fashion changes to a more ‘romantic’ style of appearance which mirrors that of her ex-best friend and Peter’s ex Gen, who is white. Lara Jean’s personality also switches from quiet bookworm to being comfortable expressing herself, even kissing Peter in a hot tup on a ski trip. Clearly, viewers will find her transformation after dating Peter much more likable than Lara Jean prior to the relationship.

Figure 2. Lara Jean prior to a relationship with Peter and after (left to right). Images from Netflix republished in Allure, and The Cut respectively.

The changes that Lara Jean shows after dating Peter have been explored by Karen Pyke in research on Asian women, internalized racism, and Asian femininity. Her research questions WMAF coupling, and the hegemonies that Asian men and women face in society.

Pyke (2003) finds that Asian women will act passively with their Asian peers but switch to their true selves with white peers and society. She notes that Asian women are inclined towards whiteness as an escape to a supposed oppressive Asian culture dominated by hypermasculine Asian men. For Lara Jean, dating Peter offers her growth when her support system made up of her older sister is unreliable, as denoted by outfit and appearance changes.

Internalized racism, when a minority group internalizes the subordination rhetoric of the dominant group, could also play into choosing white partners or whiteness as an escape. Sociologically, this is the double consciousness theorized by W.E.B Du Bois. If one’s own ethnicity is constantly constructed as negative and undesirable, it is natural to want to get rid of features that can be weaponized by dominant groups. Perhaps to the Asian women who marry white partners, Asian=bad and white=good. Then, to increase mobility in social privilege, a goal of the model minority ideal as discussed earlier, whiteness is the key.

In the film, all of Lara Jean’s suitors are white and all her woman peers, sans her sisters, are also white. POC characters are not given substantial arcs as the film upholds hegemonic masculinity and femininity.

Peter is an example of hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity, termed by R.W. Connell, is the idea that there is alpha masculinity, white and cisgender, that subordinates deviant forms like Asian masculinity (Nagle Hegemonic Masculinity).

While not being toxic, simply being a white cisgender man puts Peter at the top, a position that POC characters do not fight for since they are not written for starring roles. It is his white masculinity that Asian men on internet fringe groups despise, as their subordinate Asian masculinity has historically been considered threatening. The lack of non-white love interests, for Asian men, upholds hegemonic masculinity as the only plot course presented in the film is to date white.

The other side is hegemonic femininity. Pyke (2003) notes that Connell originally disparaged the term as it does not make sense when femininity is subpar in relation to masculinity. Yet, without hegemonic femininity, internalized racism, stereotyping of women of color, and dating tropes cannot be explained as these all are related to the power that white women wield.

Gen is an example of hegemonic femininity in TATBILB. She is white, pretty and the most popular, due to dating Peter, who is the most desirable. At the beginning of the film, she mocks Lara Jean’s fashion sense and fits the role of the main antagonist.

Lara Jean’s dress and mannerisms are contrasted with Gen’s confident stylish appearance creating an example of hegemonic femininity. Lara Jean’s femininity is not enough to compete until her contractual relationship with Peter becomes real. Afterward, her dress and hairstyle mirror Gens, and can enter Peter’s sphere of popularity and whiteness.

Many have argued that the film is nothing, but a romantic comedy, and these aspects are not to be taken seriously. Yet, when 6 Asian women have been killed by a self-described “sex-addict,” which is uncomfortably like historical sexualization and fetishization of Asian women by white society, these observations still stand.

Because TATBILB upholds these ideas about whiteness, that it offers to escape from “backward” Asian culture and an “honorary whiteness” that can temporarily shield against racism, it perpetuates the oppression of Asian women by feeding younger Asian women narratives that whiteness can be used to gain success. When young Asian women internalize these beliefs, they often reject their own cultures to gain white approval. This is akin to the way the model-minority myth has been used against Black and Brown communities and the way anti-blackness permeates Asian communities because of internalizing the model-minority myth.

I have shown how the model minority myth becomes an iron cage through oppressive stereotypes and internalized racism or the double consciousness. This iron cage coupled with hegemonic femininity and patriarchal dominance in Asian communities, which is perpetuated by hegemonic masculinity, can create hostile conditions for Asian women. Asian women, because of being both women and of color, through subordination by popular media and beliefs held by white society are expected to act the stereotypes even within their own communities. They in turn, internalize whiteness as a solution to escape from their cultures, but that only leads them closer to white supremacy. Lara Jean’s story is a fantasy that disregards the violent histories of women of color and the villainization of men of color.

The conclusion should be a warning, but in a world moving towards racial and gender equity, asking for the avoidance of white partners is arguably racist. But as white supremacists enact harm and pain towards communities of color, this warning still stands.

There is no honorary whiteness.