“Where the ABGs at?!” yells an Asian American male in his early 20s at a crowded bakery that sits right across a glistening ocean. To those unfamiliar with this bizarre scene, the bakery in question is Seaside Donuts Bakery, a Cambodian-owned bakery in Newport Beach, CA. It is open 24/7 and particularly bustling late at night for those satisfying midnight bites. In 2024, a spur of Southern California (SoCal) Asian American content creators began interviewing and borderline-harassing other customers at the bakery, oftentimes playing into Asian American stereotypes.
ABG is an acronym for Asian Baby Girl/Gangster, which has historically been used to describe Asian American women in relation to gang culture. Nowadays, ABG’s definition has changed to loosely describe Asian American women who align with an aesthetic of bold lashes, dyed hair, raves, and sorority life. Additionally, instead of being a self-proclaimed term, ABG is now used to antagonize, belittle, and fetishize Asian American women who hardly fit the stereotype. Creators like Meatsauce79 will especially employ tags like #keshi, #raves, #boba, #valorant, #abg, and #abb, effectively creating this moodboard of the stereotypical Gen Z Asian American.
Of course, these trends reduce Asian American culture and identity to stereotypes that perpetuate a harmful image of the community. Simultaneously, they potentially reveal second-generation Asian Americans’ need for cultural belonging, which arises from their disconnect from both Asian and American culture, anti-Asian discrimination, and a lack of cultural space for Asian Americans.
The term Asian American was not always used to describe Asians in America. Originally, the term Asian American was developed in 1968 by UC Berkeley student activists Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee. The sociopolitical term rejected the derogatory term “Oriental” and unified different Asian groups through a pan-ethnic Asian identity. Now, the term has developed into a pluralized definition that is understood and used differently by Asian Americans, with some choosing to omit the term altogether. A 2022 survey designed by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace of nearly 2 million Asian Americans in California found that 51% described themselves as “ethnic-origin”-American and 29% used just their ethnic-origin. However, only 10% actually described themselves as Asian-American, which reflects the multitude of Asian ethnic subgroups that significantly differ from each other.
Though the Asian American label was intended for pan-ethnic inclusion, its limiting definition creates isolation. According to Jerry Z. Park, “To be Asian American is to belong to a third culture… a combination of both Asian values and American values.” Instead of belonging to both the Asian and American identities, Asian Americans become disconnected from both. For example, Elaine N.Y. Lê and Sonia H. Ramrakhiani found that Vietnamese American college students often experience a cultural divide, such as their Vietnamese culture upholding filial piety, a collectivist practice, and American culture emphasizing individualism. Resultingly, Vietnamese American college students shared patterns of emphasizing both self-development and financial security to support their parents. Although this study focuses on Vietnamese Americans, patterns of conflicting cultural values emerge across different Asian American ethnic groups. Similarly, to reconcile with these cultural clashes, younger SoCal Asian Americans put themselves in positions that both create identity and perpetuate stereotypes.
There also appears to be a generational division between older and younger Asian Americans. One reason is the first generation’s stronger national attachment to their home countries. This tendency was reflected in the early nineteenth-century first-generation Japanese migrants, known as the Nisei, who held stronger national ties to Japan than the Issei, their second-generation counterparts. Today, this pattern remains true, especially with Asian Americans who are born and raised in America rather than their parents’ home countries. Consequently, this division isolates second-generation Asian Americans even more from ethnic identity, as if they are too American for their Asian roots.
On top of this cultural disconnect, Asian Americans have faced racial discrimination, especially in light of COVID-19. Between 2019 and 2020, Asian Americans faced a spike in racial discrimination seen through the usage of discriminatory terms such as “Kung Flu” and “Chinese Virus.” In 2022, 58% of Asian Americans reported that Asian American discrimination is a major problem. Moreover, a Pew Research Center survey found that one-in-five Asian Americans have hidden some aspect of their heritage from non-Asians, at times to avoid embarrassment or discrimination. While only 5% of Asians 65 and older have done this, 39% of Asians ages 19 to 29 have hidden their heritage.
Stop Anti-Asian Racism & China Bashing Rally in Washington, DC | Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
Alongside Seaside Bakery, raves are another central aspect of the SoCal Asian American stereotype. Effectively constructing a cultural space for second-generation Asian Americans, Gen Z has even created Asian American-specific terms like “The Great Wall of ABGs” to describe Asian American women sitting on people’s shoulders. When interviewing SoCal Asian Americans at raves, Judy Soojin Park’s study found that music festival culture was paradoxical to the discriminatory stereotypes of Asian Americans, such as the “goody two-shoes” or “model minority” image, thus attracting Asian Americans as a form of resistance. Although Park’s study was published in 2008, a similar desire for cultural resistance is seen with Gen Z SoCal Asian Americans.
The emergence of Seaside Bakery and music festivals as collectively-understood spaces where Asian Americans congregate gestures at a larger issue of a lack of cultural space for Asian Americans. Currently, this cultural space is more visible, especially with America’s rising acceptance and popularity of Asian American culture, such as with Asian cuisine, music, and cosmetics. This Gen Z Asian American cultural space is also now physical, such as with The Source OC in Buena Park, CA, an outdoor mall that features Korean cuisine and entertainment. The Source OC also frequently hosts Korean-pop dance parties that are enjoyed by Gen Z Asian Americans. However, before this recent mainstreaming of Asian American culture, Gen Z seemed to lack cultural spaces that were not solely Asian or solely American.
I speak from personal experience, but I imagine that I am not alone in my upbringing. As a second-generation Vietnamese-American, I felt a heavy disconnect from both my Asian and American cultures. I struggled to understand Vietnamese, which made me feel detached from Vietnamese-dominated communities like Westminster, CA’s Phước Lộc Thọ, also known as the Asian Garden Mall. This divide between first and second-generation Vietnamese-Americans is also apparent in the recent political clash between VietRise, a progressive youth organization, and conservative first-generation Vietnamese-American politicians.
Flower Market at the Phước Lộc Thọ | Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
Similarly, I felt disconnected from American culture, especially in the educational sphere. Although I was expected to maintain high academic achievements, the educational curriculum never once addressed America’s ties to Asian immigrants, besides skimming over major war events such as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Every morning, I was expected to stand in an army-like formation of elementary-school children, singing America’s national anthems with my small Asian hand across my American heart.
SoCal Asian Americans have perpetuated a stereotypical Asian American identity through misleading and demeaning social media content. At the same time, their collective desire to uphold these stereotypical images signals a lack of meaningful and substantiated cultural identity. Racial discrimination and ethnic disconnection result in second-generation Asian Americans being ousted from both their Asian and American identity. The recent transition from anti-Asian rhetoric to the glamorization of Asian culture has only complicated the position Asian Americans hold.
Countlessly and perhaps inevitably, trends eventually die out or revive into something completely different. Similarly, this onslaught of raving, Seaside-going, Valorant-playing, boba-drinking Asian Americans, too, will pass and transform into something new. However, some people will hold onto these aspects of an Asian American identity because to them, that is what it means to be an Asian in America.
Featured image source: Friend of author
