Dragon Lady

For other uses, see Dragon Lady (disambiguation).

Dragon Lady is usually a stereotype of certain East Asian and occasionally South Asian and/or Southeast Asian women as strong, deceitful, domineering, mysterious, and often sexually alluring.[1][2] Inspired by the characters played by actress Anna May Wong,[3] the term comes from the female villain in the comic strip Terry and the Pirates.[1][3] It has since been applied to powerful women from certain regions of Asia, as well as a number of Asian and Asian American film actresses. The stereotype has generated a large quantity of sociological literature. "Dragon Lady" is sometimes applied to persons who lived before the term became part of American slang in the 1930s. "Dragon Lady" is one of two main stereotypes used to describe women, the other being "Lotus Blossoms". Lotus Blossoms tend to be the opposite of the Dragon Lady stereotype, having their character being hyper-sexualized and submissive. Dragon Lady is also used to refer to any powerful but prickly woman, usually in a derogatory fashion.[1]

  1. ^ a b Herbst, Philip (1997). The color of words: An encyclopaedic dictionary of ethnic bias in the United States. Intercultural Press. p. 72. ISBN 978-1-877864-97-1.
  2. ^ Sweet Mysteries of the Orient. Book review of The Asian Mystique, by Sheridan Prasso
  3. ^ a b Prasso, Sheridan (2006). "Hollywood, Burbank, and the Resulting Imaginings". The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, and Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient (Illustrated ed.). PublicAffairs. pp. 77–83. ISBN 978-1-58648-394-4.