 So how hard is it to find an Asian male in the media? Take for example one of our mainstream media outlets for the youth of our society. While MTV has somehow been able to show nearly every single race or ethnicity of both sexes and of varying sexual preferences on the show Real World, they have not shown any Asian American males. How real is that? About half of the seasons, there has been at least one Asian-American female, but no Asian American male. Why is this? The show seems to always makes sure to cast the bitch, the asshole, the sheltered white-boy/girl from the ‘burbs or boonies, the African American male, Mr. Abercrombie, the queer individual and then throws into the mix some other eccentric or promiscuous people and voila! Real World. But never have they put an Asian American male on that show. Why? Is it because we’re really just not that “real”? Or maybe it’s because Asian American males just don’t try out. We’re all too busy doing math or something. Of course not! 
I know for a fact that MTV does an open casting call for the show at Berkeley every year and God knows how many Asians go to that school. This may also answer your question of why there is always someone from Berkeley on the show every single year - we’re fucked up. The answer I believe is rooted deep in the history of some of the first Asians to arrive in this country and to be perfectly honest there is not enough time to delve into this little piece of history to educate everyone. But just let me suffice it to say that Asian American men have never been viewed as sex symbols. Or in other words we are not the hot sexy people America wants to see because America has never viewed us as hot or sexy. Many people point to Russell Wong, Jet Li and maybe a handful of others and draw the conclusion that Asians are making headway in the entertainment industry. Our fresh faces are pushing into the mainstream. We’re the next It face or in other words misrepresented minority male fetish. But that is just complete bullshit. What we ARE doing is providing America a nice steady diet of their Asian female fetish and caricature-like kung-fu movies. Seriously, how can you say that Asians are the new or even next It face in America, when the most commonly seen Asian male face out there is someone who is more renowned for his stunts and fists than his good looks. Just because he can fall 10 stories and then get up to use a bubblegum wrapper he finds on the street as a weapon does not make Jackie Chan a sex symbol. In fact in many respects he is really much closer to some sort of cartoon for mainstream America. When is the media going to recognize an Asian American male face as something beautiful? I want to see the faces of Asian American men not only in the martial arts section of Blockbuster but the drama and comedy section as well. I mean, I want to see a male Asian American face on the most coveted of all covers in the media … Teen People. I’m serious, why not? Pop culture is America at its very best, and at times its very worst. But most importantly, Teen People is the physical manifestation of American media and hype. When you want to be famous, you got to be on Teen People and that’s the truth! I have seen kids of every race on that cover except Asian. And when I say Asian I mean Asian. I don’t want to doubt whether or not the dude is hapa or whether or not his last name was changed to sound less “foreign.” I want a cover of Teen People declaring the amazing hotness of Ho-Chung Lau. Okay, well I’d settle for Harry Lau. But still, that will be the day when I know Asians and most importantly Asian American males will have arrived. And then maybe I can finally get to see the Asian guy going off on the ridiculously homophobic and opinionated white girl, who he just made out with the previous night, about eating his waffles for breakfast. Asia Chang
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