‘are you a porn category, or are you white?’ a conversation with SexyAsiansInYourArea on performing East Asian femininity

In their short scratch performance, Sexy Asians In Ur Area Dying 2 Meet U, Camilla Anvar and Zelda Solomon explore tropes, language and what it means to be both sexy and Asian within and against the circumscriptions of Asian femininity delimited in theatre and beyond. Deputy Editor-in-Chief Michelle Firth chats to them about their show, East Asian representation and the complexities of finding a place in desirability amidst the perils of self-objectifying and fetishizing. 

Can you tell me a little bit about yourselves, and your theatre company, SexyAsiansInYourArea?

Camilla: ‘Well, actually Zelda and I met because we both wrote in to The Stage newspaper, complaining about the Mikado and yellowface – and our pieces happened to be published next to each other, both slamming this old man [who mansplained Japan while advocating for the continuation of the Mikado]. And I like to say that’s how our friendship was born.’ 

Zelda: ‘Yeah, so from there, we began to talk about tropes and the limited roles available to us in the arts. You know, because university is quite small and Edinburgh is quite white, going to auditions and being Asian – you always get the parts that are like, God, or old woman… or things that are like… not quite human? And other than that – there’s not much room. And then on the flip side, you get the hyper-sexualisation of Asian femininity – the spam and pop-up ads, where most people’s exposure to Asian women is literally like ‘sexy Asians in your area dying to meet hot men!’ So, we used that particular trope as an entry point to explore what kind of spaces are available to Asian women in theatre.’ 

Camilla: ‘Exactly! It was like, I’m tired of being desexualised, but I’m also tired of being sexualised! So I’m in this weird Venn diagram where I don’t know how to feel good about myself anymore. And so our whole process began with the question: what do we want to do and what do we want to say – not for the audience, but for us and us only. Because I’m tired of feeling shit about being Asian – I just want to feel Asian and feel fucking good about myself!’

Zelda: ‘And our theatre company was birthed from that!’

And, can you tell me a little bit about your show?

Camilla: ‘In general, we wanted to explore and unpack the ways that we perform or show Asian women and Asian people. And you know what, actually, as much as I want to say we made this show and we have all the answers – we made this show because we have a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. So it was a research project and a discovery.’

Zelda: ‘Yeah, as we questioned what it means to be sexy and Asian, we were thinking a lot about how we can explore these two things that are inextricably linked – how can we explore individual sexuality and individual racial identity alongside each other in a way that is not tied to being fetishized or self-fetishizing. And I think that’s a really difficult question, and I don’t really have the answer to that and I don’t think I ever really will.’ 

Camilla: ‘That’s why there’s loads of little sketches. Because it isn’t just like: ‘hey – this is what we want to say’ – because what we have to say is really nuanced and complicated.’ 

Zelda: ‘Yeah, it’s a lot about communicating the relationship between simplification and nuance. So, we play with surface level costume – the different tropes and outfits that you put on [when performing Asian femininity]. But then a lot of it has a kind of dissonance – we play with things like sound, subtitles and music, things that imply more depth than what would be a very shallow representation.’ 

So, how would you say that your experiences as (sexy) Asian women have motivated you to start your own theatre company?

 Zelda: ‘I think a lot of it is linked to trying to find a place in desirability. My favourite scene in the whole thing is where Camilla does the voice-over for the Hamilton Philippa Soo sketch – comparing wanting to be desirable to a director and wanting to be desired by a partner… And how selling yourself is really similar to performing your sexuality in everyday life – I think that’s the charge behind it.’ 

Camilla: ‘Yeah – because, in theatre, you are reduced to what you look like – so it’s such an interesting space to explore what it means to perform Asian femininity. And it was so funny because – for one of the sketches, we put on Japanese school-girl outfits, and I looked in the mirror and I was like, ‘Oh! Wow! I look nice.’ And then I was like, ‘what the fuck – what does that mean?! How have I internalised this kind of fetishization?!’ And it’s funny trying to wade through what you have internalised – what is patriarchy, what is white supremacy, and what is wanting to look and feel Asian? What have I internalised in order to feel good about myself, and will a director or a partner only see me through this lens all of the time – that’s something I ultimately can’t control. So, this play was like – how, even for a second, can I control that in a space that I want to?’

Michelle: ‘Yeah, I think that’s why I was so drawn to your Instagram before I even saw your show. I think there’s a common internal conflict between wanting to be proud of my Asian-ness and embrace my Asian femininity – but then also being like, hold on, what am I performing? Am I trying to get people to respond to me in a certain way? Am I fetishizing my own Asian-ness? But that’s what I think your show does so well – you bring to the fore the complicated relationship between desirability and fetishization that I think so many Asian women must struggle with.’  

Camilla: ‘Yeah, that’s true, our Instagram really became a space of community – so many people were drawn to it.’ 

Zelda: ‘And we didn’t expect that to happen at all. Before we had even made our show, there were so many people who wrote back to us like, ‘love this, love you guys, thank you for doing this.’’

 Camilla: ‘And I think that’s also a symptom of a media space where only 1.9% of representation is afforded to East Asian people – and even less for women – people are so starved of representation. We wanted the show to be like a little hug from us to people with the same lived experiences – to be like, we understand the conflict – the good parts and the bad. That is why, at the end of the film, we thank our parents, our friends and ancestors, all of the Asians that came before us and all of the sexy Asians to come. Because knowing that you are not alone in this… It’s an incredible thing. There are so many people who go through this and have the same thoughts; and knowing that you are not alone in something, just makes it so much lighter – the load is not there, I’m not alone. So finding community through that is just the most delicious thing in the universe.’ 

You can find out more about SexyAsiansInYourArea through their website and instagram. To watch their show, follow this link or see above.

Zelda Solomon is a history of art student currently studying in Edinburgh. She is on the Edinburgh College of Art board for decolonising the curriculum, and is part of the newly instigated Understanding Race in the Contemporary World course which build a new elective for first year students from 2021. She is also on the curatorial team for UncoverEd which is a decolonial exhibition highlighting BAME Edinburgh alumnae. She has written multiple articles on the subject of cultural appropriation and anti-racism published on Crxss, TheBroad online and Road To Nowhere which is a new zine composed of all second generation immigrants and BAME writers to raise money for Yemen aid.

Camilla Anvar is an Theatre-maker and Multi-disciplinary Artist based in Edinburgh and London. She has extensive theatre credits including Creditors directed by Stewart Laing at The Royal Lyceum Theatre and Winner of Best Children's show in 2017 EdFringe with Aulos Productions. ‘Like Drowning’ which she directed in Fringe 2018 was featured in Wired Magazine and was published by Cambridge based zine Interval. Last year she was president of Bedlam Theatre in Edinburgh where she also started initiative: BAME at Bedlam which performed devised physical piece DO/DON'T at Fruitmarket Gallery last year. She also has exhibited performance pieces at Talbot Rice Gallery and Gerald Moore Gallery. Her film ‘A Different Category’ that was a collaboration with animation artist Linnea Haviland exploring otherness, was in Bilbao film festival and was also shown in festivals at The Barbican, BFI and is going to the London Animation Festival this year. She also recently completed a residency with theatre company RASHDASH and Yellow Earth Theatre Actors Academy as well as being part of Traverse Young Writers.