Weddingbee Blog

I came across a peculiar article in the September issue of Marie Claire. Its title? The New Trophy Wives: Asian Women.

The author, Ying Chu, asks Asian women who are in relationships with white men, ”Why be a target for headline comparisons to concubines?” She continues, “It’s as though these Western men are hungry for a piece of that mystical Eastern formula … This is a common experience among Asian-American women. They’re dating a white guy, and they may not know if it’s a fetish thing.” Sigh. There’s more.

She cites the marriages of prominent Caucasian men to Asian women, stating, ”But after two or three failed attempts at domestic bliss with women of like background and age, these heavy hitters sought out something different. Something they had likely fetishized.”

I don’t know. Is it okay to assume something like this?

Maybe he fell for her because she was witty and purely delightful to be around. Maybe she fell for him because he was romantic and got along great with her parents. Who is to say that all my peers can be reduced to “overachieving Asian good girls” searching for “stand-ins for emotionally repressed Asian dads”? Old stereotypes like these should never make a comeback.

The article struck me for two reasons: First, I had a special interest in Asian and Asian-American women’s literature in college, and the voices for respect and individual regard have stuck with me. Second, I realize that from the outside, Mr. Parfait and I are a white man and Asian woman.

But we’re so much more than that. We’re goofballs and picnic buddies and Pixar shorts fans (For the Birds is our fav!). We grew up in America, a country vastly different from where our parents and grandparents grew up. We’re Serbian and Korean, and we share fragments of the language, food, and culture of our “Motherlands”. We’re more than different-colored people holding hands. We have backgrounds, personalities, and real day-to-day lives. And so do the mixed-race couples, famous or not, named in the article.

I guess the purpose of this little post is to say: Hey, isn’t it weird and unbeneficial that anyone would write/publish this article? And to ask: Is it okay to reduce anyone’s marriage to a label—to call it a trend, call it globalization, call him a fetishist, call her a trophy wife? Because it’s always more than that. And it might just be love! <3

Anybody else get tired of people making assumptions about your relationship because of your ethnicity, age difference, long distance status, or whatever else people deem fit to judge? How do you deal with the negativity?