“Hollywood is always trying to tap into what’s hot, and it’s a battle because Asians weren’t seen as hot before,” said Nancy Wang Yuen, an ethnic studies professor at Crafton Hills College who studies AAPI representation in Hollywood.

“Beauty standards are changing. When I was growing up, the blond, blue-eyed person was the only kind of beauty standard. Now, because we have K-pop and K-beauty, people are really appreciating the Asian face for the first time in the United States,” Yuen explained over Zoom. “I mean, fetishization always existed. But now people actually want to look like us. They’re like, ‘We want to have the glass skin. We like the K-beauty makeup.’”