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

by Kaila Yu

A deeply personal memoir-in-essays, reckoning with being an object of Asian fetish and how media, pop culture, and colonialism contributed to the oversexualization of Asian women—from Kaila Yu, former pinup model and lead singer of Nylon Pink.

No one fetishized Kaila Yu more than she fetishized herself. As a young girl, she dreamt of beauty. But none of the beautiful women on television looked like her. Growing up as a teenager in the late '90s and early 2000s, Asian representation was scarce, and where it existed, the women were often reduced to overtly sexual and submissive caricatures—the geishas of the book-turned-film Memoirs of a Geisha; the lewd twins, Fook Mi and Fook Yu, in Austin Powers films; Papillon Soo Soo’s sex worker character in the cult Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket; and pin-up goddess Sung-Hi Lee. Meanwhile, the "girls next door" were always white. Within that narrow framework, Kaila internalized a painful conclusion: The only way someone who looked like her could have value or be considered beautiful and desirable was to sexualize herself.

Blending vulnerable stories from Yu’s life with incisive cultural critique and history, Fetishized is a memoir-in-essays exploring feminism, beauty, yellow fever, and the roles pop culture and colonialism played in shaping pervasive and destructive stereotypes about Asian women and their bodies. Yu revisits the formative moments that shaped her identity. She reflects on the women in media who influenced her, the legacy of U.S. occupation in shaping Western perceptions of Asian women, her own experiences in the pinup and import modeling industry, auditioning for TV and film roles that perpetuated dehumanizing stereotypes, and touring the world with her band in revealing outfits. She recounts altering her body to conform to Western beauty standards, allowing men to treat her like a sex object, and the emotional toll and trauma of losing her sense of self in the pursuit of the image she thought the world wanted.

Raw and intimate, Fetishized is a personal journey of self-love and healing. It’s both a searing indictment of the violence of objectification and a tender exploration of the broken relationship so many of us have with beauty, desire, and our own bodies.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Feminism, Audiobook, Essays, Biography, Asian Literature

256 pages, Hardcover

First published August 19, 2025

About the author

Kaila is an author based in Los Angeles. Her debut memoir, ‘Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty,’ will be published on August 19th, 2025, with Penguin Random House's Crown Publishing.

Reviews

[Jackie Liu · Rating 1 out of 5]

i have a lot of respect for yu’s vulnerability and honesty in sharing her trauma and reckoning with her own culpability in enabling the oppression of herself and others. she discusses stereotypes of (east) asian women as docile sex objects, perpetuated by dehumanizing media portrayals, and how internalized racism drove her to go to extremes to cater to the white male gaze. i appreciated her explorations of how specific renowned cultural artifacts reified these tropes (ex. Memoirs of a Geisha, Madame Butterfly, The Joy Luck Club). valid points were made.

but the delivery was just so…cringe. it was extremely repetitive and didactic, and her analysis felt painfully superficial. like ✨yellow fever 101✨ for clueless white people. i wish she had simply told her life story (which is undoubtedly very interesting!) without constant interjections to shove her message down the reader’s throat (i.e. ~i got plastic surgery because of internalized racism because i thought i needed to embody eurocentric beauty standards so that white men would find me sexy because i thought sex appeal was my only form of power and the only thing that made me lovable~ over and over and over again). stylistically, the writing felt clunky and juvenile — it was lowkey giving high school persuasive essay.

the premise of her argument often felt very self-absorbed and myopic. she uses “asian women” — homogenizing an entire group — when she’s really referring to east (and sometimes southeast) asian women, thus perpetuating the already-existing hegemonic dominance of east asians in cultural conceptions of “asian people.” at one point, she even remarks that almost all asian women have the same physical features of silky dark hair, pale skin, almond-shaped eyes, and slender frames. first off, many east / southeast asian women have textured hair and/or darker skin and/or larger bodies. and uhhh what about south asian women? middle eastern women? (who have also experienced centuries of orientalism and continue to suffer at the hands of western imperialism?) by collapsing the diversity of the asian community, she elides the nuance of how factors like colorism and class affect women differently (ex. southeast asians tend to be of lower socioeconomic status than east asians, which might exacerbate pressure to pursue sex work).

ultimately, she posits no positive, substantive conception of asian womanhood, implicitly defining it only opposition to white men. which, in the end, only continues to center white men.

while this might seem a minor critique in comparison, yu makes some offhand remarks that rubbed me the wrong way, and i think are indicative of her narrow purview. describing a date she went on, she complained that the man suggested they go on a walk, which might have made sense “during the pandemic,” but now it was “over,” so people could meet up “like normal.” this was early 2021?? when hundreds of thousands of people were still getting sick and dying?? like girl it’s embarrassing enough to have even thought the pandemic was over, but then to deliberately announce it in your memoir?? 😭 idk maybe she’s never met a disabled or immunocompromised person or a frontline worker or an old person…

she also cites the rise in anti-asian violence during the pandemic, without mentioning how many within the asian community weaponized this to justify vile anti-blackness — which is nothing new. she invokes the “model minority” myth so many times, and i wish she had taken the opportunity to discuss how asian americans have also profited from it by differentiating themselves from other racialized groups in order to attain greater proximity to white privilege.

and then at one point in the book, she quips to her friend that asian women are “the best” because no other race of women is fetishized. idk if she was joking, but if so, she never clarifies. like huh??? literally every single minoritized group has its fetishists???

at the end of the book, the “solution” she presents is more visibility in media, optimistically citing how the rise of more diverse asian roles in hollywood and in music present more positive role models for asian youth. yes, representation is great and all, but Crazy Rich Asians and BLACKPINK will not dismantle structural patriarchy or white supremacy or capitalist exploitation 😺 i think she arrives at this limited conclusion because of her failure to conceptualize any solidarity with other oppressed groups, which might have allowed her to broaden her understanding of what justice could look like.

i do not enjoy being a hater i’m sorryyy 😭 i think i just might be extra critical because as an east asian woman myself, the letdown was extra oof 🥲


—


[additional edit because i can’t stop thinking about this]

i also feel like she SEVERELY downplayed the atrocity of her repeated intentional coercion of her 17-year-old (minor!!!) bandmate into presenting herself in a sexualized way, with full awareness that perverted old white men would eat that shit up. in fact, she became JEALOUS of the unwanted attention her (minor!!!) bandmate received from said perverted old white men — that yu herself orchestrated — and took it out on her bandmate. she never really takes adequate accountability for this heinous behavior. just admitting what happened is not taking accountability. she’s kinda just like “oh i guess might’ve traumatized her because she told me years later that i traumatized her lol oops.”forcing a CHILD to suffer the same racist misogyny that ostensibly traumatized you, in order to increase your band’s clout??? kinda evil tbh…

overall, yu’s retrospective reflection as the narrator of her memoir demonstrates very little growth / maturity imo. the egregious lack of self-awareness remains consistent throughout. this is made even more ironic by her claim in the book’s introduction that her experiences endowed her with “a version of enlightenment” 🤨

[Mai H.]

ANHPI Month 2026 #

Daddy

I spent the next decades of my life chasing beauty.

Asian fathers aren't a monolith. No one is. And yet, in each of these Asian American stories, I find similarities to my own.

Dating is hard. I'm sure it's hard for everyone. But I spent my youth trying to earn my father's love. And he's not one of those dads that never says he's proud of me. Sometimes he does. And he bought me so many things. But the sound of the garage door opening still scares a small part of me, in the fear that I'm in trouble. I'm in my thirties. I haven't lived at home in quite some time.

But this is a book about yellow fever. And this is just the first essay. How many of you have ever felt fetishized? Looked upon the white gaze in a manner that wasn't pleasing? I'm guilty of catering to it. If you had met me ten years ago, I was a completely different person. And I do wonder about people that get married early, because 1) you either have to change with your partner, 2) suffer in silence, or 3) get divorced. I'm sure there are other options.

Growing up in Houston, I'm not sure I felt racially different. I knew I was Asian, but I always had friends of different colors. The first time I felt truly fetishized was 2016, when a group of white men yelled "konnichiwa" at me and my family while we were out at dinner. We're Vietnamese. As I was about to yell back, my dad stopped me, and he's not a shy man. I still wonder why.

Geisha

It wasn't my nature to be flirty with any of these men, but they still offered me opportunities because, to them, I appeared to be a dumb, compliant doll like one of Golden's geisha.

I unfortunately loved MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, both the book and the movie, when they came out. I wasn't bothered by Chinese and Chinese Malaysian actresses portraying Japanese women. Or a Japanese story written by a white man. I was thrilled with the representation.

Looking back, I'm horrified. Chiyo is a child when she meets The Chairman. Much later, she becomes his mistress. He's middle aged when they meet. The way I thought this was romantic the first time I read it.

I'm not even sure Japanese people are offended by this. I think the only people that were are fellow Asian Americans. And yet, should the actresses have turned down the role? Only for, god forbid, white women to portray Japanese women in yellowface?

Butterfly

A follower once wrote to me, "Chatting with you and meeting you is why I have an Asian wife"—something I've heard countless times before.

MADAME BUTTERFLY and MISS SAIGON are both harmful stereotypes about Asian women. I'll leave it there.

ABGs

Who was this supposed twin? Was she better-looking than me?

ABGs tend to have a negative connotation. Known to most as Asian Baby Girls, Asian Baby Gangstas was new to me, but I guess it fits the look. I like to think of them as sexually empowered, the opposite of the meek Asians that everyone sees us as.

Damn, this one hurt. I desperately wanted bigger boobs back in the day. And now I'm super happy going braless and backless at every opportunity. I suppose like getting married early, you don't really know yourself.

Like MEMOIRS, maybe I should look back at my love for MEAN GIRLS, because they portray the ABG stereotype in a harmful manner. Don't get me started on TOKYO DRIFT.

China Dolls

My friends and I joked that Korean men were "wife beaters" because they had a reputation for domestic abuse.

As said before, not all representation is good representation. THE JOY LUCK CLUB perpetuates stereotypes of the docile Asian wife.

Is it better than nothing? The next Asian American movie didn't come out until twenty-five years later, CRAZY RICH ASIANS.

Bad Asian

RTC

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Crown

[Christine Yen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whew. A lot of mixed feelings here.

On one hand, there were some parts of this memoir that felt familiar: that moment when you realize Memoirs of a Geisha is a pretty weird book (a book where a white American dude writes a novel in first person, from the perspective of a young Japanese woman, focused on a wildly inappropriate age-gap relationship and selling the narrator's virginity) to be held up as any sort of cultural study of Japanese culture. That feeling of erasure, or existence only in niches, of Asian Americans in pop culture in the 90s and 2000s. That simultaneous feeling of discomfort and fascination with "yellow fever" as a concept / antipattern / very real observed phenomenon in the people around you.

... And yet. I cringed through so much of this book, as the author basically recounts her life playing into the exact sort of Asian stereotypes that she eventually (as recently as 2021, apparently!) realizes have been harming her all along.

It’s painful to hear her describe—again and again—how much of her self-worth depended on the availability (or lack) of the male gaze as she pursued a modeling, acting, and singing career; how she often viewed other attractive Asian women as rivals rather than peers or collaborators; and how easily she pressured her bandmates into the very docile, hypersexualized stereotypes she later claims to resent—because it seemed like the only path to get her and her band the attention she craved.

I'm tempted to chalk it up to Gen X Asian American culture vs millennials, or SoCal vs NorCal Asians, but I... think that I should probably hold off on trying to attribute it to any one thing. Just, oof. I'm glad the author ended up in a good place.

[Steph | bookedinsaigon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am wary of books that talk about the fetishization of Asian women in white/Western/American society. I want to read them, but often find them cringe, incomplete, and/or lacking in nuance. And while FETISHIZED isn’t perfect, I can still recommend it. It is an emotional, easy-to-read memoir in essays that discusses lots of interesting cultural touchpoints that those of us familiar with and/or interested in Asian American female identity/status can relate to.

First, check trigger warnings for racism, sexism, and in particular se*ual a**ault and r*pe. What Yu experiences is heartbreaking, and heartbreakingly relatable for many of us. I appreciate and respect Yu for being so open and vulnerable with her experiences, both the positive and the negative ones. Yu doesn’t attempt to portray herself as the perfect hero figure. She has had to deal with her own internalized racism her whole life, and the ways in which she’s been her own worst enemy, as well as others’. It is clear that she owns her mistakes, and is still undergoing the process of unlearning harmful internalized messages and the ways in which she herself has perpetuated racism and fetishization upon herself and the women in her care.

I found a great many of the essays in FETISHIZED well-written and thought-provoking. I especially appreciated the essays on the role that books like Memoirs of a Geisha and The Joy Luck Club played growing up. I, too, remembered the anticipation I had before picking up Memoirs of a Geisha (oh my god, a book about and featuring Asian women!), the feeling of being let down by it while reading, and the realization, many years later, of why that book (still) sucks: a white male author writes from the perspective of a Japanese woman, and its basically harmful stereotypes and messages about Asian women’s desirability and worth only in the eyes of white/foreign men.

For me, the book’s main weakness is that Yu is still (un)learning what she doesn’t (yet) know, and at times isn’t aware of her blind spots. This showed up for me in two main ways. The first is that she is still centering East Asian-ness in her narratives and analyses. She states that the Vietnam War was the last time that American/Western powers meddled in Asian countries’ political affairs, which erases the fact that the US has, since then, repeatedly and continually invaded (non-East) Asian countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. The second is that some of the statements she makes cast judgment that is only based on her own opinion, which she then extrapolates as fact. For instance, she describes Nicholas Cage’s habit of dating Asian women and states that based on her observations she believes he has yellow fever; however, she doesn’t back up her claim with whether or not other writers/researchers have observed the same about Cage and drawn the same conclusions.

Despite the above, I still found FETISHIZED to be an emotionally engaging read that is a great addition to the overall conversation about Asian American identity and fetishization.

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a memoir-in-essays about the author’s experience of being fetishized as an Asian-American woman. An especially interesting element is her previous career as a pinup model, where photoshoots often had her leaning into stereotypical portrayals of Asian femininity, exoticism, and hypersexuality. In my favourite essay of the collection, she reflects on the ways this part of her past may have adversely affected other women. She’s unafraid to critique her own actions while also acknowledging the larger cultural forces at play, and the ways in which she was used by those with more power in the industry. She also sharply examines the way pieces of pop culture stereotype Asian women, especially the ones she was exposed to while coming of age in the 1990s.

This is an important read that shows how BIPOC women are harmed by the patriarchy, even (and sometimes especially) when it approves of their appearance.

[Robert Alexander Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

⭐⭐ A Strong Idea Undermined by a Lack of Focus

I picked up Fetishized by Kaila Yu as part of a Goodreads challenge for Women’s History Month, expecting a more structured and academic exploration of how Asian women are fetishized in media and society. The central idea is undeniably important, and there is clear value in examining such a topic. At its best, the book highlights a serious issue and offers moments of personal reflection that show vulnerability. Those moments, where the author shares aspects of her own experiences, deserve recognition and respect, as it takes courage to present such personal material to a wide audience.

However, the book struggles significantly with focus and structure. It attempts to function both as a memoir and as a broader cultural analysis, but never successfully commits to either. As a result, the narrative feels fragmented and disorganized. The timeline shifts frequently and without clear transitions, moving from one stage of the author’s life to another in a way that disrupts the flow and makes it difficult to follow. Ideas are revisited without meaningful development, and the overall structure lacks cohesion. What could have been a strong memoir or a focused examination of the topic instead becomes a scattered blend of both, weakening the impact of each.

There is also a sense that the book does not fully explore the complexity of the issue it raises. While the author presents her own experiences and perspectives, the discussion does not expand enough beyond them to provide a deeper or more balanced analysis. This limits the overall depth of the work and leaves important questions underdeveloped. In the end, the book contains a compelling idea at its core, but the execution falls short. It may still resonate with some readers, particularly those interested in personal narratives, but for me, it felt like a missed opportunity to deliver something more focused and impactful.

[Jessica (Odd and Bookish) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book for free from the author for promotional purposes.

Wow! What a powerful memoir!

As an Asian American female, I was super intrigued by the premise of this memoir. It did not disappoint!

The memoir is told through a series of essays, which worked so well. Each essay was well crafted and blended personal experience with research. It dove deep into how Asian women have been fetishized throughout history and the media, and how the author internalized it leading her down a dark path. The memoir discusses a wide range of topics from geishas to ABGs to import models.

What made this memoir so successful was that the author was incredibly self aware. She was able to take accountability for her actions and saw how it negatively impacted not only her life, but other people’s lives (like her bandmates). It was evident she has grown a lot through her life and is striving to do and be better.

The author’s writing style is also commendable. The book was so well written and very descriptive. The author is an extremely talented essay writer. The essays were so effortless to read. Each one had a point and it was never a struggle to get to it. Instead, she guides you through her reasonings and experiences.

Overall, this was a short yet compelling memoir! I highly recommend it if you like memoirs that also draw upon research.

[Stacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kaila Yu writes an engaging memoir about her experiences navigating Hollywood, the beauty industry, and being a woman. She exudes fortitude when striving toward her goals. Written in a format that highlights a different challenge she faces in chapters. My eyes were opened to the blatant and covertly disguised racism that many Asian women encounter in an endless cycle.

The emotion is honest and searingly raw at the disgusting way older white men objectify and demean Asian women. She specifically pointed out older white men in her experience, but I'm sure it's not limited to that demographic. I loved her tenacity and drive to forge ahead in a number of areas.

Overcoming addiction, stereotypes and finding her footing is an accomplishment we can all admire and writing a book to educate on this type of fetishism. I look forward to her next endeavor.

Thanks to NetGalley and Crown for an early copy.

[Alexandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

[audiobook] This book immediately caught my eye in NPR's Books We Love list for 2025 and wow, I have a lot of feelings about this.

Let's start with the good. On one hand, Kaila Yu's experience as an Asian American pinup model turned actress and, eventually, rocker offered a fresh perspective that I hadn't considered much previously, so her behind-the-scenes account added to my overall understanding of the fetishization of Asian women. (I am *that* much more disgusted by the men who engage in and proliferate this, ugh). Yu recalled blips of Asian representation in early 2000s pop culture from the depths of my psyche—Fook Mi/Fook You in Austin Powers; Lucy Liu's role in Charlie's Angels—and gave me the opportunity to remind my younger self that this representation was highly problematic. She helped me understand the silent, boiling rage I felt when I watched Madame Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera in 2024—only made worse when the company I was with described it as "a heartbreaking story."

While I do not want to discount Yu's experiences, this book unfortunately did not work well for me. The historical and cultural insights that overlayed her own experiences added depth to her narrative, yet felt performative. It read like an apology letter, rote therapy exercise, and half-baked college essay. I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by Yu herself, and her wooden delivery made her words feel all the more superficial and obligatory—she sounded the most animated when she was rehashing her glory days and the bursts of relevance she had in the early aughts. I couldn't shake the sense that, if Yu had achieved the level of success of other (also largely sexualized) Asian American women in the industry, she would not have been driven to the "reckoning" she describes in this book. But alas, that did not happen, and with the more recent trend of calling out "Asiaphiles" and generally challenging the pervasive degradation, infantilization, and subjugation of Asian women, it felt like Yu was just hopping on the latest trend to bolster her own popularity.

After years of grappling with being sexually assaulted, exploiting her body for the benefit of the male gaze, and being complicit in perpetuating East Asian tropes and the fetishization of Asian women, I'm glad that Yu seems to have achieved a healthy level of inner peace, acceptance, and understanding. But this book, like her TikToks and Reels on this very subject, seemed like another self-serving opportunity for her to exploit in order to obtain the external validation she so desperately seeks.

[Nicole Cochran · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you take this book as something written from her, personal POV, and not education material, then it’s a solid book. However, if you’re reading to learn more about Asian fetishization from a purely scholarly, removed POV, not quite.
She takes pains at the beginning to explain the difference between preference and fetish, but then accuses many people of a fetish. She also accuses most sexualized Asian females of leaning into the fetish, instead of being able to embrace their own sexuality separate from that. She has a sentence on this at the end, but the entire book is countering that one point.
She does own up to her mistakes at times, but we maybe could’ve spent a bit more time on some of the real harms that occurred to individual people.
Lastly, she has a chapter on her father, but while her mother is mentioned throughout, basically avoids talking directly about her relationship with her mother the entire book. Seems like there’s more to unpack there that we completely left out.

I feel absolutely awful about the trauma this woman had to endure, and how that affected everything afterward in her life. And, those things do tinge everything in the book, which is understandable for a memoir. However, I went in thinking it would be more education, less memoir, so it wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so raw, intimate and honest. I feel for young Kaila and all her insecurities and misguided goals to try and build her confidence. This is such an eye opener on how the western gaze sexualizes and dehumanizes Asian women. And, it's even grosser then you think.

I wish there was more depth as to how and why the author realized how she was a victim of Asian fetish and what made her get treatment for her many addictions. Regardless, I hope she continues therapy and finds peace within herself.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suspect this memoir won't be as affecting for someone who didn't grow up in a similar time period/social environment as Kaila Yu as an Asian femme, but it was vindicating for someone to gather, untangle, and voice the threads and knots of racism and sexism, and the way that they manifest as fetishism that can truly cause harm. In a country that can't even grapple with Black-white binary racism, which also has intentional amnesia/ignorance about its colonial operations globally, many of which took place in Asia, many of us probably struggled to synthesize and verbalize thoughts and feelings about race-based hypersexualization and harassment that were shockingly commonplace. We have all probably experienced erasure and gaslighting, because the fetishization of Asian women is so commonplace that people think it's normal, like the many people who get offended if I get offended when they try to use the word "exotic" as a compliment.

I found it interesting to hear Yu's essays about her experiences with the scant Asian American representation there was during her childhood and early career. So many of the conflicted feelings were familiar, of feeling some sort of positive emotion, but usually mixed with disappontment and an ick factor due to the reduction of Asian female characters to tropes, often hypersexualized ones, worsened by a greater society that lauds the depictions (eg Memoirs of a Geisha), takes them for granted as normal/accurate (Marco Polo), or appropriates them for white profit (Fast and the Furious, Gwen Stefani).

[Lucy Hardman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a complicated one for me. I appreciate how brave it is to write about experiences of mental health, sexual exploitation and abuses however my opinion oscillated. Sometimes I found myself thinking her views are reductive/lacked nuance, to finding her voice kind of irritating and feeling like she’s crass for shock value. At other times, I appreciated her candor for calling a spade a spade about the dark sides of fetishization, one dimensions representations of asian women in the media we grew up on —> internalized racism, and can relate to her stories about the racialized and sexualized attention Asian women receive from (mainly white) men. I also liked her explorations of the roots of the Asian fetish in pop culture from the world wars. It’s complicated. I’m not sure if I’d recommend it but it’s still sitting with me.

[sydney 𓇼 · Rating 5 out of 5]

➳ 5 ★

I could not put this memoir down. I was locked in and honestly wish I could read more. As a female who identifies with my Asian side, this was such a refreshing and heartbreaking look into the reality of what Kaila and many other Asian females face (past and present) in order to make themselves seen. The discussion of yellow fever and the fetish with Asian women was raw and too real. Her call outs to musicians and other artists/producers in the industry guilty of fetishizing Asian women is eye-opening and wildly disturbing.

I really enjoyed the history that was discussed throughout her memoir in relation to her own experiences; it made me sit, digest, and discuss the implications of it all and how my family, and myself, have been treated similarly simply due to our appearance/ethnicity.

I will definitely be buying this memoir for my bookshelf and suggesting this read for friends & family!


Thank you so much to Kaila Yu & NetGalley for this ARC!

[Ellen · Rating 1 out of 5]

It feels difficult to criticize a memoir without criticizing the author, whom I have nothing against. Kaila is incredibly candid about the grimiest parts of both the various subcultures she participated in and the deeply self-internalized misogyny and racism that drove the life she had for several decades. I found analyses around the observations less valuable for being a bit trite, but no more so than most pop culture books about race and gender that aren’t written by academics.

That said, I came out of this book feeling a really sad and a bit… disturbed? Not just by all of Kaila’s terrible experiences with disgusting men, which was expected, but also by just how deeply ingrained her belief system still was even by what sounded like years of therapy and distancing herself from appearance-oriented careers. She reflects a lot how poor her self-worth was that she was reliant on male validation even when it was debasing, how the industry pitted her against other women who in retrospect were suffering just as much as she, and how reinforced the same systems by pushed younger women to sexualize themselves. All these reflections were great, and yet even while she distances herself from these beliefs and talks about how she knows better now, it is still so inextricably intertwined with the narrative. Even when looking back and talking about how she recognizes these thought patterns were wrong, almost every woman in introduced first with their looks and what fetish niche they satisfy, she’s constantly comparing herself to other women while speaking about herself terribly (“I strived to emulate her, but I was a was a thrift store caricature” “…reminded me of Sung-HI’s vast superiority [to me]” etc.), or talking about how she regrets pressuring her underage bandmate to wear more revealing clothing, while describing said-underaged-bandmate’s body just made me feel sad.

I don’t think you need to be fully self-actualized (is anyone ever?) to write a good memoir and I don’t regret reading this book and I learned some things about the entertainment industry. I’m sure Kaila is continuing to unpack all of these things and I would be interested in reading more from her in another 10 years. However, I also can’t help but think that, if you were someone that related more directly to Kaila’s experiences, this book would be more triggering that anything else.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book because I remembered Kaila from the 2000s-she was one of the few visible Asian figures in media at the time, and I was curious to hear her story. Some parts were nostalgic and relatable, especially her reflections on growing up, wanting to fit in, and trying to be seen as cool. I especially appreciated her honestly about painful experiences, like the fake casting in San Diego, and how that impacted her.

That said, the book felt surface-level in many places. While she detailed past experiences, I was hoping for more insight into how she was processing or evolving from them. Some stories also felt irrelevant or underdeveloped. For example, there was a story where she went on a first date with a guy who let her walk home alone in a dangerous area. It wasn’t clear what that added to the narrative. In the book, she repeatedly used the term “asiaphile," but it felt overgeneralized. She labeled fans, colleagues, and others as "asiaphiles" without fully explaining what they did for her to categorize them that way, and felt overly pessimistic.

I also would’ve liked more insight about her family-how they responded to her career, whether there was reconciliation, and what their relationship looks like today. That emotional arc felt unfinished. Overall, while I appreciated her vulnerability and perspective, the memoir lacked depth in key areas and left me wanting more.

[Stacy40pages · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fetishized by Kaila Yu. Thanks to @crownbooks for the gifted copy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Kaila Yu did what she had to do to fit in with Asian representative in American culture in the late 90’s/early aughts. She internalized what she saw around her and made a career of it. Now she’s looking back and telling her story.

This was an amazing memoir that was entertaining but also really truly made me think. I learned a lot from it. A lot of Kaila’s experience takes place during the early aughts, and we know it was a difficult and misogynistic time for women. This shed light on the extreme stereotypes not just for women, but Asian women, especially in celebrity culture and the media. Kaila is one smart cookie and I’m glad she got to write this story and put it out there.

“We’re not celebrated for our strength, humanity, and intelligence. We’re reduced to a fantasy fitting a male-dominance narrative.

Fetishized comes out 8/19.

[Bookteafull (Danny) · Rating 2 out of 5]

ok, i respected how open Yu was about her trauma and how she unpacked her own role in all of it—like that level of honesty is not easy, and she made some genuinely solid points about how media like Memoirs of a Geisha, Madama Butterfly, and The Joy Luck Club have pushed these stereotypes of East Asian women. but omg the delivery… it was giving repetitive, overly explain-y, like ✨intro to internalized racism✨ for people who have never thought critically a day in their life. i kept wishing she would just tell her story and trust that it would hit, instead of looping the same point over and over and over again.

and i also couldn’t shake the feeling (like some other readers) that if she had reached the same level of success as other sexualized asian american women in the industry, this whole “reckoning” might not have happened in the same way. the conclusion felt kind of…limited? like the big takeaway being “we just need more representation” and pointing to things like Crazy Rich Asians and BLACKPINK as signs of progress—okay, sure, but that alone is not dismantling patriarchy, white supremacy, or capitalism. it read like she never fully expanded her lens beyond her own experience, especially since there wasn’t much real engagement with solidarity across other marginalized groups. and honestly, the way she handled the situation with her 17-year-old bandmate was…not great. like, knowingly pushing a minor into being sexualized for an audience of grown men, then feeling jealous of the attention she herself set up? and the accountability just wasn’t there—naming it isn’t the same as actually taking responsibility, and it felt brushed off in a way that didn’t sit right with me at all.

also the way she kept saying “asian women” as if that’s one singular experience??? there’s so much diversity that just got flattened, and it erased how things like colorism and class actually shape people’s experiences differently. and by the end, it kinda felt like everything was still orbiting around white male validation, just from a different angle, instead of actually building something fuller or more self-defined.

that said, there are things the book does well—her willingness to be messy and self-critical is compelling, and the conversations around internalized racism, desirability politics, and media influence are important and accessible for people who are newer to this kind of critique. it’s definitely a readable, conversation-starting kind of book…i just wish it went deeper and held itself to the same level of accountability it was trying to unpack.

[Books Amongst Friends · Rating 4 out of 5]

Library Book/Book Overall: 3.75/5
Audiobook/Narration: 3.5/5
Overall Enjoyment: 4/5

I told myself that going into the new year, I wanted to share more nonfiction reviews. I read a lot of nonfiction, but I don’t always talk about it. So this feels like the perfect place to start.

Fetishized is definitely a book that may rub some readers the wrong way, but I believe it’s absolutely worth reading. Much of the discomfort comes not from shock value, but from how deeply honest and vulnerable the author is about her experiences, trauma, and ongoing process of unlearning.

Unlike many memoirs that follow a familiar arc—early trauma, gradual growth, and a neatly resolved ending—this book doesn’t offer that kind of closure. We’re not given a polished summary of the author’s life. Instead, we’re invited into the messy, unresolved, and very real middle of her journey. The book ends in a way that mirrors how it begins, and for me, that made it feel even more authentic. This book was a powerful reminder that growth isn’t linear. It’s not always upward or inspiring. Sometimes growth looks like falling back, repeating patterns, or sitting in discomfort longer than you’d like. Yu captures that reality beautifully.

A major focus of the book is how she has both been impacted by—and at times participated in—upholding the fetishization of Asian women. She explores how she learned to sexualize herself before others could, and how media, pop culture, and history have played a deliberate role in shaping not only how Asian women are perceived, but how they learn to see themselves.

The book does an excellent job weaving historical context and pop culture analysis into each essay without ever feeling too academic. It remains conversational, approachable, and deeply personal. Some readers may want something more polished or detached, but I appreciated the messiness and vulnerability Yu brings to the page. What stood out most to me was how clearly the book shows that the author is still in the early stages of dismantling these internalized beliefs. She reflects on how stereotypes followed her through different career paths, where she was often expected, or pressured, to conform to Western ideals of beauty and sexuality in order to succeed.

While I understand this book won’t be for everyone, I deeply appreciated it. It made me reflect on the media I consumed growing up and how people who look like me were portrayed. As a Black woman, it pushed me to think about the toxic archetypes that have been ingrained in Black culture, and whether I’ve challenged or unconsciously upheld them.
There were moments where I felt uncomfortable or even cringed—not just because of what the author experienced, including sexual assault and substance abuse, but also because she doesn’t shy away from acknowledging how her own actions affected others. That level of accountability made the book even more impactful.

Ultimately, Fetishized serves as a reminder that we all have deeper work to do. The messages we absorb as children—from TV, movies, music, and social media—shape how we see ourselves and others long before we realize it. Part of growing up is revisiting those influences, questioning them, and understanding how they continue to affect us today.

This book encouraged me to do exactly that, and for that reason alone, I’m grateful I read it.

[whereissara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fetishized is a raw, intimate, and honest memoir. I had never heard of Kaila Yu prior to reading this, but I am old enough to remember import models being a "thing" with how popular the Fast and the Furious franchise was in the early 00s. Kaila is a great writer- she reflects on her life as an Asian American woman through brutal introspection. As a millennial who grew up in the 90s/00s, I can remember how awful media was to women, and I think we are still trying to unlearn how we should view our bodies and each other. Remember the infamous quote "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels?"

What makes her memoir especially compelling is that she doesn’t position herself as a passive victim of fetishization. She admits how deeply she internalized these external narratives, and at times perpetuated them. She even goes so far to call herself a "hollowed piñata" from the plastic surgery she had done to meet these narratives. Kaila supports her lived experience with footnotes and cited sources, grounding her story in wider systemic realities without losing the personal connection.

I think this would be great for a book club or college course :)

[girlypisspop · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yu's seems very knowledgeable and passionate about the struggles that Asian American women face under the white gaze. However, I found it difficult to follow and sympathize with her perspective as an Asian American woman myself. Her self-scrutiny, at times, is admirable, and at others, seems counterproductive.

For a book attempting to break free from generalizations and stereotypes, its form only further reiterates them. She sometimes speaks in "we" and makes statements such as "almost every Asian woman growing up in the early aughts has been called Lucy Liu." Who is this statement for? Only the white people reading? Those with an Asian fetish objectify and divorce Asian women from their individuality. Yet she scrutinizes herself and other Asian women in her life for simply existing. As a reader, I know nothing about her "tiger mom" beyond the reiteration of the term. Is she not also a person deserving of more than that descriptor?

The trouble lies in connecting her experiences and her detrimental past self to the Asian American experience at large. I found the book disorganized and compulsive. It takes away from the focus and doesn't compel the issue of white supremacy.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Crown Publishing for my arc in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

As a fellow Asian American girly that thought the way to be taken seriously was to play into fetishizing myself, this collection of personal essays really struck a chord in me. Kaila Yu does a wonderfully poignant job of hitting at the exact things that I feel are universal for the Asian American girlhood experience. I appreciated how brutal Yu was in her introspection and observations of growing up and living in America as an AA woman. I can see others finding this a difficult read and even maybe finding issue with some of the depictions in this, but I found it incredibly relatable and again, it felt universal to what I had experienced.

I loved this and would recommend it to others.

[meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

her story was interesting but this quite literally read like an argumentative essay i would have written in college. wish she focused more on just sharing her experience instead of using scholarly articles to support her story - like girl this is just your lived experience no need to cite a bunch of other authors or rely on them to tell your story!

[Vikas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book via Goodreads, so yay. Also, this was something new to learn, stereotypes, fetishization are all wrong, as these reduce people to just some points and dehumanize people, mostly women. This was a nicely written book, but I always have a little issue when people tell us their stories. A little corner of my mind whispers that these guys abused the system, took full advantage of the situation, and now, when they are older, they accept what they did was wrong, but then the wrongs still exist, you still profited from the things they accept were wrong, or something they didn't like now. However, we wouldn't know these things if they weren't telling us themselves.

It was a nice read, and I enjoyed it. I am always happy to explore new books, so I was happy to learn something new here, and it's a historical problem, and it's strange to see the effects of the things done 80 years ago, but in India, just look at our borders and our neighbors. England has been the historical cause of the current miseries all around the world; similarly, the US, during World War II and further wars, has been the reason that many issues persist to this day. Also, the USA is kinda racist as well, so many of the historical talking points were on point. Ah, well, no tangent, so I will leave here.

People who don't read generally ask me why I read. Simply put, I love reading, so I have made it my motto to Forever Keep on Reading. I love reading everything except for self-help books, even occasionally. I read almost all the genres, but YA, Fantasy, and Biographies are the most read. My favorite series is Harry Potter, but then there are many more books I adore. I have bookcases filled with books that are waiting to be read, so I can't stay and spend more time on this review. Remember, I loved reading this and love reading more. You should also read what you love, and then just Keep on Reading.

[Elise Janssen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kon beter, kon erger.
Probleem was met name dat de eerste helft van het boek niet echt op chronologische volgorde gaat, waardoor je niet een goede tijdlijn krijgt van deze memoire. Soms beschreef ze gebeurtenissen alsof die maanden of jaren in beslag namen, en dan bleek het over een maand te gaan ofzo. Ik vond er ook best wat herhaling in zitten, maar heb zeker veel geleerd over dit fetisjisme, gruwelijk…

[Chrissy Santillan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was not familiar with the authors modeling or Nylon Pink before I read this but the content really interested me as a Chinese American woman. It was a little haunting to realize how universal experiences of racism and fetishization are and to re-examine some of my own experiences as a child and young adult with a new perspective. I find it hard to rate or review what is someone else’s life and their personal story but I really enjoyed this and thought it was written beautifully.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important topic with good points, but then started to get repetitive.

[Allie ( ˘ ³˘) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to really get through this one-
Very didactic, rather boring read. As someone who is East Asian, but is adopted, it’s an interesting point of view on my end. All my life, I’ve been raised in diverse communities. So, I have had the privilege of not facing outward fetishization of my heritage. I feel for her, but this really felt like one of those High School essays girl’s write in the Honor Literature class…

[dianas_books_cars_coffee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to be honest when I was growing up I believed boys thought I was ugly because I was Asian. That all changed when I went to college and lived in NYC. NYC is actually where I first heard about the Asian festish. I have to admit I found it extremely weird and definitely creepy. Trust me when I say I NEVER dated a guy who had one😂

Kaila Yu, former model, actress, singer, and now a travel journalist, goes into depth about her own experiences with "yellow fever" in this memoir through essays. She opens up about growing up Asian, her trials and tribulations breaking into the modeling world, and how she could be "seen." She talks about how Asian women were perceived and sexualized in the entertainment industry. It's raw, intimate, thought-provoking, and extremely eye-opening.

I actually learned quite a bit reading this memoir. I have always lived in my own little bubble, so a lot of the topics the author covered were new to me. And yes, I am a "cargirl" and always have been, but was never in the tuner scene. My first time seeing Import Tuner was when I googled the author.

I really appreciated the author's honesty and I loved the writing. This was definitely an engaging, informative memoir that I really enjoyed reading and would HIGHLY recommend🩷

And if I had a penny for every time someone told me I looked like Lucy Lui I'd be a billionaire!😂 Not only Lucy but I also got Tia Carrera!

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book because it tells an informative story that I believe gets overlooked especially in our world today. We need to look at history and what we are currently experiencing through colonial lenses so we become more aware to know better, do better and be better in our communities, the people we interact with and people in our lives. I learned a lot through this book. I am reflective on my part and am also working through a journey of self love and healing like Kaila Yu is dojng.