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People Are Calling Out Western Media’s Seeming Obsession With The Asian ‘Hair Streak’

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The release of Deadpool 2 has fans everywhere rejoicing the return of the mouthy and irreverent superhero franchise. However, the introduction of one particular character in the sequel has garnered some criticism — specifically, for playing into certain stereotypes with the film’s only Asian female character.

In Deadpool 2, the character Kukio is played by Japanese-Australian actress Shiori Kutsuna, and is the girlfriend of character Negasonic Teenage Warhead, played by Brianna Hildebrand. Kukio has long, pink-streaked hair in the movie, which caused certain viewers to bristle at the longtime trope of giving an Asian woman color-streaked hair to add personality to an otherwise poorly-written character.

This stereotype was pointed out by Twitter user @nerdyasians, who criticized Western media for perpetually leaning into the trope.

Other people concurred that dyed hair on an Asian character is generally a feeble attempt to make the character seem more badass. (Apparently, Western media thinks Asian women can’t look badass with natural hair?)

However, some Asian individuals found characters with dyed hair to actually be a refreshing break from the norm and didn’t see anything wrong with the trend.

Of course, that isn’t really the issue — the issue is, why does American media create such flat Asian female characters?

People also took the time to celebrate Asian female characters who WERE allowed to rock their natural black hair.

Regardless of the motivations behind these kinds of tropes, it’s always important to take notice when they crop up repeatedly — because they can often be indicative of our own ingrained biases, and what we, as Americans are/aren’t willing to watch in our media.