Sex and a City of Hot Asian Men

Last night, a good friend of mine hosted a Sex and the City party, in which we wore our cutest shoes, drank girly cocktails and watched our favorite episodes of the series. Revisiting the series reminded me of how neatly it manages to encapsulate the thrills and frustrations of being a single woman. The "A Woman's Right to Shoes" episode points out how much money I've spent on friends' weddings and baby showers, and dares me to register for gifts so that all those bitches have to validate my life choice of getting a PhD. (After all, the 8 years I took to get the degree is longer than the duration of any of their marriages so far.) I also can't help but applaud when Carrie goes on her rant after being dumped via Post-It note. As a woman whose last long-term relationship ended with the guy breaking up with me over the phone and then never talking to me again, and as as single gal who recently went on a date that ended with the guy giving me a Christian side hug, I also think that an ending that is thoughtful and decent shouldn't be too much to ask for. I guess the fact that so many women could relate to the show, in spite of its fantasy-creating glamour, is what made it successful.

But as much as I relate to the show, and as much as I've caught myself in conversations where somebody says, "Oh, this is like the SATC episode where...", there's also something incredibly alienating about watching it. Part of it is class, of course. I don't know anyone in their 30s who can live the kind of lifestyle that these women do on the show. Plus, there's the show's unbearable whiteness of being. The four leading ladies are white. All their friends are white. All the passersby in the background whenever they go shopping, eat at trendy restaurants, or attend club openings are white. They all end up with white men (unless you count Charlotte's Jewish husband as non-white). And with the exception of a few men of color (like the truly drool-worthy Blair Underwood), all the men they fuck are white.

And this is what truly bothers me: Not once in the entire series or subsequent films does any one of the ladies date or fuck an Asian man. (Samantha does spend one episode lusting after her South Asian yoga instructor, but the entire episode is also about the fact that she CAN'T fuck him because he's taken a vow of celibacy. Of course.) The lack of Asian beefcake on the show is not so surprising. Asian men don't get represented as sexy or desirable in American popular culture, and perhaps the most famous Asian man who has circulated through American media in recent years has been, lamentably, THIS GUY. And THIS GUY is not much better. Latino men have the macho Latin lover stereotype going for them. African American men, stereotyped as having big penises, produce catchphrases like, "Once you go black, you can't go back." Asian men, however, are small and anemic computer nerds who wouldn't know how to navigate a woman's body with a map and a flashlight. Asian men have no place in the world of Sex and the City.

As an Asian woman who has known quite a few hot Asian men, and who's always looking out for my Asian brothas, I present the following evidence of what the makers and viewers of Sex and the City have been missing out on:

Daniel Henney

Daniel Dae Kim

Naveen Andrews

John Cho

Sendhil Ramamurthy

Victor Basa

Russell Wong

Hidetoshi Nakata

Aaron Kwok

Rick Yune

Archie Kao

Johnny Tri Nguyen

Takeshi Kaneshiro

Holy hotness. What heterosexual woman of any ethnicity wouldn't want to tap some of that? Here's what I propose: If the Sex and the City movie franchise were to end in a trilogy, the last installment should feature no men BUT hot Asian men. That's my idea of a thoughtful and decent ending. In fact, I'll volunteer to write the screenplay. And work as the casting director.