A white woman shares the reactions she’s gotten when people learn she’s dating a Korean man: ‘I’m a Koreaboo’
On July 27, 22-year-old Liv (@ratiliciousxx) took to TikTok to discuss the reactions she receives when people find out that she’s a “non-Asian person dating an Asian person.”
“I don’t know if anybody else has experienced this, but I’ve experienced it one too many times where I’m just like, ‘Hmm,'” she begins. “So if you’re a non-Asian person dating an Asian person, do people, like, find out and get all excited about it?”
‘The types who fetishize their partner also thinks that everybody else dating an Asian person fetishizes them’
Liv, who models, says that “a lot of people” she’s met have “made the point to talk about” how her boyfriend is Asian.
“White people, I mean it hasn’t always been white people, but white people think that there’s an alliance between us. Like the types who fetishize their partner also thinks that everybody else dating an Asian person fetishizes them,” she adds.
One example of this, Liv explains, was early in her modeling career when a photographer asked to see some pictures of her and her boyfriend together.
“And then he saw it and he was like, ‘He’s Chinese too?’ He’s not Chinese and I mentioned that he’s not Chinese, but he didn’t really care so he just started talking about his Chinese wife and how ‘Wasian’ babies are the cutest babies and the rest of them are ugly,” Liv says, referencing the term “Wasian,” which is slang for “white and Asian.”
Another time, Liv notes, someone asked about her boyfriend’s ethnicity. Upon revealing that he’s Korean, she was told, “Oh, I’m a Koreaboo, so so are you.”
A Koreaboo, according to Urban Dictionary, is “someone who is obsessed with Korean culture so much they denounce their own culture and call themselves Korean.”
“I’m not dating him because of his ethnicity. I didn’t even know it before we started dating,” Liv says. “And then they were like, ‘Oh, what’s his name?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, it’s Elijah.’ And they’re just like, ‘Oh.’ Like, literally disappointed.”
The person in question, according to Liv, declared that “usually Koreans don’t have names like that,” to which Liv clarified that he also has a Korean name.
A different instance, per Liv, was when someone slid into her DMs and responded to a picture Liv had posted of Elijah.
“Someone slid up on it and was like, ‘Oh, is that your boyfriend? Is he Japanese? He looks exactly like my sensei that I had in Japan,'” she says.
‘As an asian person this happens all the time and it slowly drives me more and more insane’
Clement Goh, reporter for CBC News, wrote about his personal experience relating to the mainstream media’s recent emphasis on Asian characters as romantic leads, and how that helped him see himself as “sexy dating material.” While Goh has noticed positive implications for his dating life thanks to the surge of hunky Asian heartthrobs on the screen, he’s also noticed negative repercussions for Asian men when they don’t live up to their famous and often fictional counterparts.
“My best unmatch of 2022 came from not measuring up to someone’s expectations of a K-drama movie star,” Goh explains. “As my date laid out how I was uncharacteristic in every way — including being too accommodating and rehearsed while chatting — I started questioning what being authentic really meant. It made me realize the Netflix effect was a double-edged sword for my dating prospects.”
Fetishization across gender lines
TikTok users, many of whom are Asian, have taken to Liv’s comments to corroborate the Asian fetishization she discusses in her video. Others have revealed that they’ve also received offhanded comments for not being “anime Asian.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen someone talking about it online I’m so relieved,” @pomegranate_lov3r replied.
“Opposite side here, my ex had off handedly told his friends that I was Asian & they were so dissatisfied that I was Filipino & not ‘anime Asian,'” @imaginative808 revealed.
“As an asian person this happens all the time and it slowly drives me more and more insane,” @teresaviolettt wrote.
Fetishization often gets misidentified as appreciation. The fact of the matter is that those who fetishize those of Asian descent behave in ways that are incongruent with genuine respect of a culture and its people.
“They’re either labeled as undesirable according to Eurocentric beauty standards or gaslit into believing that fetishization is flattery. But like racial violence and discrimination, the sexualization of Asian women can lead to dangerous — even deadly — consequences,” USA Today reports of the fetishization of Asian women in particular.
The effects of increased representation of “hunky Asian men” in popular culture also appear to be twofold — on the one hand, it’s helped Asian men feel more attractive and accepted, in spite of research that claims they are “the least desirable racial group to women,” according to Time. On the other hand, however, increased interest in K-pop and K-dramas, for instance, can lead to the romanticization of Korean culture and the hypersexualization of Korean men.
For Liv, the fact that some people seem to have taken more interest in her boyfriend’s ethnicity above all else speaks to their desire to fetishize him, and, in doing so, both strips him of his individuality and reduces the unique value of their relationship.
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