“Wasian'” is shorthand for mixed Asian and Caucasian individuals. Mixed Asian and Causian people have been following the recent “Wasian Check” trend on TikTok.
These users make videos to portray the mixed appearances and lifestyles their ethnically diverse parents passed down.
I love my Wasian ethnicity. I’ve written about my complex relationship with my ethnicity in a previous Chinosity post.
After posting a “Wasian Check” TikTok of my family, the comments I received shocked me.
One’s ethnicity should not automatically subject them to a white audience’s creepy thoughts. Yet, that is what I have found in the comments of many videos from the “Wasian Check” trend on TikTok.
I want to ask these commenters: Why do you love Wasians? Does this infatuation stem from unconscious fetishization of an entire continent?
Tik Tok created by me.
When I filed it, my family and I laughed uncontrollably at the silly video we made. Seconds after I posted the Tik Tok, I began to rack up likes immediately.
We loved the attention and silly comments. That is, until we were hit with questions like “Why is the dad always the white one and the mom is always the Asian one?”
The seemingly innocent question garnered over 2500 likes. Its replies were atrocious.
Trolls expressed their racist sentiment by replying, “Bought her that’s why.”
“In america a lot of asian women go after white men and get married so they can get citizenship really easily."
“Yellow fever + internalized racism = match made in hell.”
The tactless and ignorant commentary disgusted me. Suddenly, the video I made became a subject of contention.
I love my parents wholeheartedly. Not once have I perceived my mom to have married my dad for superficial gain. Not once have I perceived my dad to have married my mom based on her “exotic” appearance.
But after the initial shock of reading about my mom marrying my dad for American citizenship, I laughed.
My mother was born and raised right outside Detroit, Michigan. She attended college and medical school before even meeting my dad.
Trolls on the internet know nothing about my family. Yet, their ignorance and merciless tendency to be right cause them to make incorrect assumptions.
The stereotype that Asian women are submissive to their white male counterparts infuriates me.
My mother is independent and smart. She does not need my father to live in America, but she happened to fall in love with a white man. She was not, to quote another ignorant tik tok user, one of the “Mail order brides.”
In addition to racist questions about my parents’ interacial marriage, my Tik Tok and several other “Wasian Check'' Tik Toks were bombarded with comments such as, “Wasians are the prettiest.”
Do people not understand that an ethnicity or mixture of ethnicities do not dictate a person’s attractiveness? Moreover, beauty is subjective.
I feel uncomfortable knowing my ethnic combination is being held to an unrealistic beauty standard. This fascination seems eerily similar to the toxic Eurocentric beauty standards.
One last terrific comment I found said, “You people are annoying.” Who were they referencing? The users recreating the “Wasian Check” trend, or the Wasian community at large?
The ambiguous comment held spiteful undertones. Rather than take offense, I realized that these racist trolls are the annoying ones.
I understand that I posted my video for the world to see, but no one deserves to feel ridiculed for their identity. No one deserves to be fetishishized for their identity either. I finally feel empowered in my ethnicity and no internet troll can make me feel otherwise.
…but you do know the stereotype of Asians simping for white people, yes? You know how annoyingly common that shit is?