Racial Stereotyping
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Asian women since long time ago had been stereotyped as submissive, demure and vulnerable. In the past women in the traditional Chinese family were inferior and were regarded as disposable merchandise – they can be purchased, pawned, bought and sold as daughters, slaves, servants, prostitutes and even brides. Women themselves too, think that in a traditional family life, they are meant to be treated in such manner – submission to men as fathers or husbands or sons, suppression of feelings, especially of anger, and lack of warmth. Lillian Comas-Diaz and Beverly Greene, the authors of the book “Women Of Colour”, points out how are Asian women stereotyped as and the few popular image of Asian women are “sexual labor” for the male soldiers during the war period and also for tourist, “androgynous beings” because Asian women workers are “asexual, unattractive, impersonal yet efficient worker” and this image “fuels the use of a divisive rhetoric that elevates democracy and individualism by disparaging other social systems and equating them with the absence of identity and beauty”, and lastly, the “domestic servants”. Comas-Diaz and Greene also points out that Asian cultures themselves impose devaluing sanctions against their women, which reinforce the majority view of Asian women as inferior and submissive. Asian cultures built on the philosophies of Confucius are particularly oppressive toward women. In these Asian societies, women in particular are subjected to the collective control exerted by family, community, and the patriarchs. She is likely to have been indoctrinated to embody deference, acceptance of suffering, and personal sacrifice, all of which are consistent with the prevailing stereotypes. Being classify as inferior and subservient, Asian women therefore tends to appear lesser in fashion shoot and was portrayed more in lifestyle shoot instead.
