MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Following the American occupation of Japan during World War II, there emerged a domestic phenomenon within the United States of the fetishization of East Asian women. This occurrence has been studied at great length, with notable contributions by Sunny Woan and Elaine Kim. Considerably less scrutiny, however, has been applied to its more modern manifestation pertaining to American military activity in the Middle East. This void in the literature is due primarily to its recency, the “War on Terror” beginning only in 2001. Nevertheless, there exists sufficient evidence to suggest both correlation and causality. This paper submits that the American military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has engendered a sexual, cultural, and aesthetic fetishization of the Middle Eastern woman in the American mind. As a side effect of imperialism, the often Orientalized and caricatured features ascribed to Middle Eastern women have become cosmetic commodities to be aestheticized and mimicked by American audiences. The paper will examine the post-9/11 fetishization of Middle Eastern women in American popular culture, using the extensively documented post-war fetishization of East Asian women as a pathological framework. Emphasis will be placed on the consumption of the exoticized Middle Eastern woman as represented by media figures such as Kim Kardashian, culture-specific television programs such as Shahs of Sunset, and the cosmetic trends that have followed as the West culturally consumes the colonized female other. This paper will contribute to the developing conversation about this nascent phenomenon and place it in a historical context, specifically as it relates to a history of American militarism.