“The Model Man:” Shifting Perceptions of Asian American Masculinity and the Renegotiation of a Racial Hierarchy of Desire

Abstract

Although Asian-descent men in the United States have been subjected to negative race-gender stereotyping and sexual racism, evidence suggests that mainstream perceptions and Asian American men’s self-definitions are in flux. Drawing on in-depth interviews of U.S.-born and -raised, middle-class, heterosexual Asian American men, supplemented by popular media textual analysis, we examine how these men are drawing upon a new form of alternative Asian American masculinity— one that we call “The Model Man”—in order to renegotiate their position within the present hierarchy of romantic preference. “The Model Man,” a hybrid masculinity construction that combines the elements of White hegemonic masculinity and model minority-based “Asian” masculinity, is co-opted and deployed by men as sexual/romantic capital—especially in relation to White women—because it enables the men to present themselves as desirable romantic partners. Although this masculinity strategy contains possibilities for further straitjacketing Asian American men via the model minority stereotype—and for re-inscribing heteronormativity and patriarchy/heterosexism—it may possess an unexpectedly subversive potential in allowing the men to contest their masculinity status and even remap hegemonic American manhood.