Who Is the Asian Princess?

She keeps her figure slim and clothed in designer labels. Her well-manicured fingernails tap gingerly on her crossed arms as you try in vain to impress her with your wit. You do everything you can to make her feel pampered and special, but she’s seen all this before, a dozen times over. Unless her aloof grace and ice queenish demeanor is her way of expressing interest, you’ve lost the game. All hail the Asian Princess, the bane of an Asian man’s existence.

That, at least, has always been my imagination of the Asian Princess. Yet I’ve heard the term applied in so many dissimilar contexts that I really don’t have a handle on what, exactly, defines an Asian Princess. And that is what this post will document: my search for a comprehensive definition of the Asian Princess.

To confirm whether my preconceived notions comply with mainstream stereotypes, I consulted one of the most reliable references on the web today, Urban Dictionary:

“An [sic] spoiled Asian girl whos [sic] parents supply her with loads of money. She has multiple designer purses and nice clothes. She may have a purse dog to carry around as well. She thinks everyone is inferior to her and is superficial.”

It’s safe to bet the author of that definition is an Asian male (an Asian male who doesn’t have what it takes to get with a girl described above). Only Asian men use the term “Asian Princess” pejoratively. Replace “multiple designer purses” with “library of first edition books,” “nice clothes” with “nice instruments,” and “purse dog” with “cat” and I fit the description too, at least according to my (Asian) exes. That would make sense, since the Asian guys I date inevitably storm off with their hands up in the air, bellowing “You’re such an Asian Princess, it’s unbearable! Where did you get such an obstinate sense of entitlement?”

See, now that’s the heart of the Asian male’s definition of an “Asian Princess”: entitlement issues. Basically any woman of Asian descent who they believe have entitlement issues fits their definition. The term denotes a type of woman all the Asian men want but don’t have the manhood to handle.

Non-Asian men, on the other hand, in particular the ones with Asian fetishes, hold an entirely separate paradigm for the “Asian Princess.” These men believe they sing the highest praises to an Asian woman when they call her this. Note some of the dating ads posted by non-Asian men:

1.  This guy (evidently non-Asian) on craigslist is looking for “an Asian princess,” or a small-framed Asian girl, between the ages 18 and 35 who has “GOOD personal hygiene.”

2.  Here’s a Caucasian fellow on Chinesefriendfinder who is “seeking [his] Asian princess” (see his tagline).

3.  Click here and scroll down to ken, a 45-year-old male from Wheaton, Illinois. He, too, is “seeking [his] Asian princess,” this time at SingaporeLoveLinks.

4.  This Skinhead-Lookalike, Ph.D. at IndonesianCupid seeks his “empress,” letting us know that the “throne is easy to fill.” Yah, no duh. There’s a lot of Asian women out there in the world. You could get off on any one of them.

The same term used by a man of a different race suddenly takes on an entirely different meaning. While “Asian Princess” to an Asian male is a self-assured woman who knows what she wants (and everything she wants happens to be high end), “Asian Princess” to a non-Asian male is a f*ckable Oriental doormat.

Perhaps the better approach here would be to find out how Asian women define the “Asian Princess.” I tried to get a sense of it by viewing the websites of Asian American women who proudly declare on the world wide web that they are “Asian Princesses.” What a diverse range of women-types. See:

1.  Gennifer M. Hirano, Asian Princess. I understand she’s gained a cult following online. She characterizes herself as “the art of subversive empowerment.” Ms. Hirano portrays an alternative representation of Asian female sexuality for consumption by white men. She acknowledges that most of her carnal engagements have been with white men, which puts her under the non-Asian man’s definition of Asian Princess more fittingly than it does under the Asian man’s definition. Still, she hardly represents an Oriental doormat, thus diverging from both aforementioned definitions.

2.  Here is a very young “Asian Princess,” who testifies: “I’m from Asia. I study in high school. I enjoy watching cartoons, sports, comedy shows, etc. I like music and can sing too. And I like watching movies of all sorts (except horror, they freak me out).” Hum. She sounds like a normal teenage girl. No talk of Prada bags and Gucci, nothing about me-love-you-long time…hence I wonder what the significance to her is of choosing the alias “Asian-Princess.” She’s the quintessential Everygirl, and yet she is by her own words an “Asian Princess.”

3.  This 29-year-old woman who lists the Philippines as her hometown also adopts “Asian Princess” into her alias. She is, as her page lets you know, “the b*tch you all love to have.” Ok, beginning to move in the direction of the Asian man’s definition. Then, in one of her profile pictures, she’s in her underwear. (Really cute powder blue underwear, btw.) This Asian Princess is married to a white man who appears many, many years older than her. Ok, moving away from the Asian man’s definition and plunging head first into the non-Asian man’s model. I so confused.

4.  Another teenager, this one of Khmer descent, also calls herself an “Asian Princess.” In her biographical section, she writes: “aNk MuaH…iN maI life…JusS BeIng meH!!” Frankly, I don’t know what that means so we’ll leave it at that, no comment. If it helps the reader of this post to gain more insight into her character, she also says: “Hey waSSup peepoZ dis Bee sHanice Nd datz meh!!! WuNna Noe bouT meh jUsS aim Meh….JUSS tew tell ya ank muaCkh bout meh juss a single guh livin in dat Blo0od world.” I’ll stop now, since she’s only 17. I wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed at 17, either.

Who is the Asian Princess? She is any Asian woman an Asian man can’t handle and she’s any Asian woman a non-Asian man wants to bed and she is any Asian woman who in some way wants herself distinguished from other Asian women, ergo the self-designated title of royalty.

And that definition, my friends, could be applied to any proletarian Asian woman at all.

What Asian woman can any Asian man handle unless he beats her physically and emotionally to appease his own insecurity? That’s right. Make her feel worthless so she never realizes she’s in fact priceless. What Asian woman is not chased after by creepy, older, inassimilable white men whose only prospects of marriage are mail order brides from Asia? Pathetic white men who can’t earn the time of day from women of their own race, so they go for Asian women, who are more than willing to be conquered because they think white is better. And finally, when we can all at some level realize how piteous most Asian women are today, willing themselves to subjugation by Asian men or subjugation by white men, pick your poison, what woman wouldn’t want to distinguish herself from these other Asian women?

Oh yeah. All hail the Asian Princess. She is the broken woman conceptually raped by all men, imperialized, bullied, and lashed at, the Asian man’s scapegoat for all things wrong in his world and the non-Asian man’s sexual Plan B.

And finally, I love how my profile picture on here shows me with a dumbstruck smile on my face. It’s incompatibility with this post-that-degenerated-into-a-rant is like irony gold.