Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty

Author Kaila Yu discusses her deeply personal and culturally incisive memoir-in-essays, Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty. Growing up in an era where Asian women were relegated to submissive, highly sexualized pop-culture caricatures while white women defined the “girl next door,” Yu internalized a painful lesson: to be deemed beautiful or valuable, she had to sexualize herself. Blending vulnerable stories from her career in the pinup modeling, acting, and music industries with sharp cultural critique, Yu examines how Western media, U.S. military occupation, and colonialism shaped destructive stereotypes about Asian bodies. She reflects on the emotional trauma of altering her body to fit Western standards and allowing herself to be objectified, ultimately offering a searing indictment of the violence of objectification. Candid, intimate, and timely, Fetishized is a powerful journey of healing, self-love, and a tender exploration of the complicated relationship so many of us share with beauty, desire, and our own bodies.