What Is The Asian Himbo?

I clearly remember the first time I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's thinking that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Asian character. Years later, I learned it was played by Mickey Rooney and that he was definitely not Asian. It’s been probably twenty years since I watched that movie with some of my friends some lazy Sunday afternoon and I believe we still don't seem to get male Asian characters right in movies (or TV!).

Asian men have not precisely been portrayed in a flattering way in American media, let alone in movies or TV. And don't get me started with Asian men being portrayed as sexually desirable. Well, apparently in the last years that has kind of changed and we've got the Asian Himbo: an athletic, muscle-bound stud that is not usually the sharpest tool in the shed. Progress, right?

Wrong. Asian men have gone from undesirable and nerdy to desirable and dumb. And how did they make that jump? Well, the stereotype goes back to when Americans went around screaming Yellow Peril. Yeah, it seems that being fearful of other peoples and making them look as a threat is nothing new in American society. Americans went as far as prohibit Asian men from marrying white women. Does that sound familiar?

So it should not come as a surprise that Asian men were never represented as attractive or desirable, but first as dangerous and supercilious and then as nerdy and socially awkward (remember Sixteen Candles?) and even when things start changing with Harold and Kumar (Kal Penn? Yes, please!) the pendulum really does not swing to a more stable position. Enter the Asian Himbo. 

And why would things change, would you ask? Well, money. With movies like Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi raking in the millions, Hollywood paid attention (even though TV had been catching up on the Asian Himbo investments, due to backlash for lack or representation) and more Asian men have been included in many more movies and TV series and will hopefully not cause another meltdown among fragile white men. LMAOOO Who am I kidding? You know there's many wyte dudebros screaming in the void that is the internet that they'll be 'replaced' by some Asian hunk as I type these lines. 

That meltdown has already happened among gay white men, though. It's been a minute since I've been in the apps, but I do remember that Grindr started monitoring the No Fats, No Asians, No Fems trend because it got really out of hand.

So I have the perfect antidote for you: Fire Island. Yeah, it's out already and it's funny and it's smart and it's exactly what I needed to start my summer: an intelligent gay rom-com that does not shy away from asking questions (to its characters and to us) and that has a lot of eye candy. At the center of Fire Island are Noah and Howie: two besties who even though do nod to Jane Austen's  characters, have bonded due to their experiences of feeling invisible due to the fact that they are Asian. It is an interesting study between Noah's bravado at molding his body to use it as a passport to his 'self-improvement' and Howie's all but defeated outlook at dating. It's a movie that at the end, takes a good look at queer desire, nicely wrapped in a rom-com format while grappling with ideas of beauty and power. 

Highly recommend.

XOXO

P.S. And talking about eye candy, Noah and Will need to have their own spin-off movie.

@conradricamora

@joelkim