Mixed Media Watch Throwback: On Hybrid Vigor and Fetishizing Mixed People
Compiled by Latoya Peterson
Jen Chau – Oh No, Hybrid Vigor on the Big Screen?!
By the way, for those of you who are not famliar with the term “hybrid vigor,” the definition is:
- the marked vigor or capacity for growth often exhibited by crossbred animals or plants
However this is not based in reality…it’s bull…and we at MMW do not like hybrid vigor theorists who go around spouting this nonsense. I’m sure you’ve all heard it (sometimes from mixed people themselves!): “Mixed people are the most beautiful and the healthiest and the smartest and the……..” JUST STOP.
Carmen (Van Kerckhove) Sognovi – Half Asian is the New White?
The Jan/Feb issue of Psychology Today magazine included an article titled Mixed Race, Pretty Face? It was all about–you guessed it–hybrid vigor. But specifically, it was about the fact that Asian/white mixed people are supposedly the most beautiful of all. Oh and look, who’s the first person they mention in the article? Nice! this gives me an excuse to post another pic of Keanu Reeves on MMW! 
- Actor Keanu Reeves and supermodel Devon Aoki have more in common than fame, fortune and good looks—both are also part Asian. Known in popular culture by the Hawaiian term hapa (meaning “half”), people with mixed Asian and European origins have become synonymous with exotic glamour. In Hong Kong and Singapore, half-Asian models now crowd runways once dominated by leggy blondes. In the elite world of Asian fashion, half-Asian is the new white.
So the article goes on to quote several scientists who talk about how genetic diversity supposedly equates to beauty. And they also base a lot of the story on this really bogus-sounding study from Australia (we told you about it back in October) that claimed “Caucasians and Asians rated average Eurasian faces as more attractive than average faces of either race.”
Jen Chau – Do Our Faces Really Need to Be Examined More?
I was actually asked to participate [in The Hapa Project] at a mixed student conference a handful of years ago. When I respectfully declined (because it already seemed questionable to me), the student who was helping Kip looked at me like I was crazy. He might as well have said: “What?! You’re passing up the opportunity to be in a book, pictured in all of your naked-collarbone glory with other hapas? HAPAHAPAHAPAHAPAS forever!!!”
At the time, the project came off as slightly self-fetishizing to me. I know there is a thin line between that and pride. And it seems that Kip’s intention is to lean more towards pride, but I don’t know whether that will be accomplished — The Hapa Project’s mission statement:
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