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Meghan Markle’s podcast tackles harmful Asian stereotypes

Meghan Markle’s podcast Archetypes has returned after a brief pause during the mourning period for Queen Elizabeth II. The latest episode, released on October 4, addresses harmful tropes about Asian women in the entertainment industry.

According to Harper’s Bazaar, Markle admitted that she did not know much about racist Asian stereotypes in Hollywood until recently. She discussed the harmful stereotypes she has since observed.

“Movies like Austin Powers and Kill Bill—they presented these caricatures of women of Asian descent as oversexualized or aggressive,” she said. “This toxic stereotyping of women of Asian descent … it doesn’t just end once the credits roll.”

During the episode, Markle spoke with sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, Emmy-nominated actor Margaret Cho, and journalist Lisa Ling to learn more about the stereotyping of Asian women.

“East and Southeast Asian women are either stereotyped as ‘lotus flowers,’ who are quite submissive and quiet, or ‘dragon ladies,’ who are overbearing and unlikeable,” Yuen said during the podcast, according to NBC News.

Ling recalls being stereotyped as the “hot reporter” when she first began working on-screen. Cho specifically expanded on the “dragon lady” stereotype.

“It’s similar to the femme fatale … a woman who is beautiful and deadly. Because we can’t just be beautiful. We have to have, like, it has to come at a cost, and it’s kind of, like, evil queen adjacent. But it’s also so pinned to this idea that Asianness is an inherent threat. That our foreignness is somehow ‘gonna getcha,'” Cho said, according to Harper’s Bazaar. “The mystery and the exoticism of it is part of it. And unfortunately, that trope has really stuck to film, but also to Asian American women or Asian women.”

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1 COMMENT

  1. Not just film. Those stereotypes or this inherent fear Asians are a threat exists in the workplace, universities, in the public. Why else are we being attacked? We are seen not just as non-American i.e. foreigner, but as dangerous even while typecast as sweet and passive. Hard to win, eh?

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