“Tight,” an American Apparel ad proclaims in bold typeface above the photo of a slim woman with East Asian facial features and waist-length black hair, standing on the balls of her spread feet and wearing nothing but a pair of purple tights over her perky butt. I think to myself: Tight. It’s not just a reference to those oh-so-hip leg coverings, but to the model’s tight pussy and/or ass. It’s racist and offensive. While some may think it’s a leap, there must be some prevalent stereotype in America which would lead me to make such a connection. I didn’t just pull that silly idea out of my tight little Asian ass.

Here are a few other things I’ve learned about Asian women from 21 years of racist indoctrination: they are submissive, polite, and reserved in public, yet freaky in the bedroom; a geisha girl in private. Never mind the many Asian and Asian-American women who are complete anathema to the erotically exotic stereotype. Maybe this image of the hyper-feminine, child-like, oriental female which still exists in our cultural imagination fulfills the desire for the perfectly passive female unspoiled by feminism.

Racism and sexism are inescapable for any person of color, but I choose to talk about Asian fetishization because it affects my life. Yet I believe that the grotesque image of the model Asian female is hurtful to non-Asian women as well. Take the example of the mother who has a child with a fondness for the phrase “you’re not the boss of me,” and refuses to clean her room. This mother then looks at her child’s Asian friend who has just come over for a play date and proceeds to use the “model minority” stereotype as a point of comparison to her own child in order to shame her into doing her chores. Had the mother witnessed the little Asian child throwing food at her parents’ faces at the dinner table and slamming her bowl on the floor in a rage only a few days earlier, she probably wouldn’t have made such a comparison. The principle behind this mother’s seemingly harmless act turns into something more menacing when it becomes the thrust for a man saying to a woman: “If these Asian women (read: other foreigners, non-Americans) defer to men and aren’t uppity about it, why can’t you (white, black, or Latina women) be more like that?” This kind of racism, because it is held in a kind of positive light, then becomes a defense for sexism.

But the oppression of Asian women does not just come from non-Asian groups. As much as I hate to say it, I have witnessed a great deal of sexism in my first-generation Chinese-American family. My grandmother told my aunt to abort the fetus that is now my 27-year-old cousin upon being informed it was a girl. According to my grandmother, a girl born in that year would become a slut. From my mom I learned that loud, rebellious, adventurous girls don’t get far in life because no one respects them While wives are traditionally expected to be deferential to their husbands, my family is guilty, no matter however unconscious their actions are, of continuing this sense of male privilege. While this is not true of all first-generation Asian-American or Chinese-American families, from what I have observed, it seems to be a common attitude.

So the Asian-American woman is in a double bind, for she is both fetishized by non-Asian men and devalued by her own Asian family. How does this concern an Asian woman’s relationship, then? Well, heterosexual Asian women often choose white men over Asian men. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Asian females are twice as likely to marry a white male than Asian males are to marry a white female.

Some Asian males respond to Asian women who date white men by labeling them self-hating traitors to their race. This is harsh, but there may be some truth to it. We are all products of the society we live in, and in this society we are told that those with the power, often white men, are the ones we need to please to get ahead, which is why Asian women would play into the “submissive” role. However, a belief that women of Asian descent belong to Asian men is terribly degrading. That kind of thinking won’t do much to convince Asian women they will be more respected in a relationship with someone of their own race.

In escaping one stereotypical relationship, an Asian woman must often confirm another stereotype about her race. No matter what type of relationship she is in, her race is also an issue, no matter how slight or subconscious it may be. And as much as American Apparel ads can be dismissed, it recalls a much greater problem than some legging advertisement.