Meghan 'Absolutely Right' to Call Out 'Malicious' Stereotype of Asian Women

Meghan Markle was "absolutely right" to target the trope of the "dragon lady" in her first Spotify podcast episode since Queen Elizabeth II's death, according to one leading academic.

The Duchess of Sussex called out films like Kill Bill and Austin Powers for their representation of Asian women as simultaneously hyper sexualized and aggressive.

Titled "The demystification of the dragon lady," the latest episode dropped on October 4 and included interviews with comedian Margaret Cho and journalist Lisa Ling. It was also the first installment since the death of Harry's grandmother on October 8, 2022.

Audrey Wu Clark, associate professor at the United States Naval Academy, told Newsweek: "She is absolutely right to frame these characterizations as malicious. The discourse of the dragon lady stereotype dates back to the 1850s when Vigilance Committees on the West Coast were targeting Chinese women whom they assumed were prostitutes."

"Their efforts, in part, culminated in the first Chinese Exclusion law, the Page Act of 1875, which barred the immigration of all Asian women on the presumption that they were all aggressively hypersexual women when, in fact, many of the Chinese prostitutes were trafficked."

The podcast episode includes an audio clip from Kill Bill in which Lucy Liu's character, O-Ren Ishii, says: "The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or American Heritage as a negative is I collect your head."

Meghan then says: "Movies, like Austin Powers and Kill Bill, they presented these caricatures of women of Asian descent as often times over sexualized or aggressive."

However, Liu has previously defended the film against the suggestion her character fits into the trope of the "dragon lady."

In a Washington Post Op-ed in April 2021, she wrote: "Kill Bill features three other female professional killers in addition to Ishii. Why not call Uma Thurman, Vivica A. Fox or Daryl Hannah a dragon lady?"

"I can only conclude that it's because they are not Asian. I could have been wearing a tuxedo and a blond wig, but I still would have been labeled a dragon lady because of my ethnicity.

"If I can't play certain roles because mainstream Americans still see me as Other, and I don't want to be cast only in 'typically Asian' roles because they reinforce stereotypes, I start to feel the walls of the metaphorical box we AAPI women stand in."

Clark said: "I think there is a lot of truth in what Liu said: to emphasize her Asianness, notice that Liu's character O-Ren Ishii was in a kimono and not in a yellow jumpsuit when Uma Thurman's character Beatrix Kiddo killed/ enacted revenge upon her.

"I have a lot of due respect for Quentin Tarantino and perhaps he, too, was underscoring this problematic racial stereotype by making this costume choice."