“Amy, he has yellow fever!” said my friend, with her hands up in the air.

“Yellow fever? He looks fine to me.” I said.

“No, I mean the Asian fetish kind!” she said.

Before coming to the U.S., I had never heard of yellow fever. It was one of the most unexpected things I learned in my first few months in college.

The expression “yellow fever,” or Asian fetish, is used to describe people, usually white males, who have a predilection for East Asian women due to the stereotypes of the hypersexualized East Asian female. Those with yellow fever believe that all East Asian women are shy, submissive, exotic and sexually open-minded. Where did this inaccurate notion come from?

In the 19^th century, the first East Asian women to immigrate to the U.S. were Chinese prostitutes. The Chinese men who came before them provided cheap labour for the American railroad companies on the West Coast, and were not allowed to bring their wives. Anti-Chinese sentiment was high:  Americans did not want Chinese men to start families and permanently settle in the U.S. During the period that Anti-East Asian immigration laws were in place, only kidnapped or bribed Chinese women were allowed into the country to work as prostitutes for white American men. As time went on, the stereotype permeated beyond the West Coast as the media continued to disseminate images of Chinese women as prostitutes.

During and after World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, increasing numbers of East Asian women were brought to the West Coast as war brides for American soldiers. This further perpetuated stereotypes of East Asian women as sex objects or women whose only objective in life is to serve men.

Like many of my East Asian friends, I have at times wondered whether it’s because of my ethnicity and the assumption that I am sexually subservient that I am attractive to a white guy, especially one who serially dates East Asian women.

A white male friend, to whom I was explaining yellow fever, asked whether it was the same as finding East Asian women attractive. I was appalled at his ignorance and inability to see from my perspective. This is why yellow fever persists; people, mostly white men, do not understand the difference. Finding someone attractive because of their physical appearance is dissimilar to finding that same someone attractive because of the ethnic stereotypes they are associated with.

It’s also our media that allows for the persistence of the hypersexualized portrayal of East Asian women. Hollywood films reveal us as sexy China dolls or Geishas who seduce white men. These women are depicted as cunning, sexually voracious, and eager to feed the men’s fantasies. There are dating websites are created specifically for white males to find an East Asian girlfriend or wife. The advertisements for these dating sites often show East Asian women with large breasts, little or no clothing and posed seductively. Little surprise then that the stereotype that East Asian women in general are hypersexual beings.

I had never heard of yellow fever before coming to the US. But didn’t the influence of American culture bring the hypersexualized image of East Asian women to Canada? Well, the first East Asians who came to Canada were not prostitutes but were either wealthy business people or middle-class individuals who brought their families over for a better life. And the war brides who came to marry Canadian soldiers during the war were all white Europeans.

I grew up in Vancouver, one of the most multicultural cities in the world with a large population of East Asians. Perhaps in cities with a significant number of East Asians, such stereotypes are broken down or never developed because of the daily opportunities to interact with East Asians. Cynthia Berryman-Fink, a Professor of Communications at the University of Cincinnati, found that increasing interpersonal contact between races in three mid-western colleges led to a decline in both general and specific prejudice. She also found that the more students from different backgrounds interacted, the more they cultivated a positive attitude toward one another. Thus, intercultural education and travelling can lead to greater understanding of different cultures and ethnicities.

As our world becomes more globalized and an increasing number of people become aware of the dangers of stereotyping, perhaps we will reach a time when we no longer associate any ethnicity with stereotypes and eradicate yellow fever.