A body could never define a personality: fetishisation of Pacific Bodies in popular culture.

Content Warning: Racism, Sexual Assault. 

The world has changed rapidly since 2014’s Tumblr thigh-gap era. Victoria Beckham recently recalled a conversation she had with her daughter and stated that “it’s an old-fashioned attitude, wanting to be really thin.” Perhaps her insight came with age and with raising a young woman who is afflicted by the same societal standards as she was. Although we still have Lori Harvey and Kim K squishing themselves into a painful beauty standard, the people have spoken. Kalo thighs and legs are now desired by the elite as the standard of beauty in 2022. 

Pop culture forms the collective public thought, the residuals leftover from what we determine to be high culture, and through means of communication and tension, a standard for us all to achieve or compete against. 

This is the future we wished for our children, as popular culture now seems skewed towards the realistic brown body, rather than against it. Nothing is better than a brown person who falls more in love with themselves everyday. But in this new age, new body standards aren’t a fix-all. Whichever way you’re built in 2022, the conversation about the predatory fetishisation of brown people in popular culture needs to be had. For example, since day one the media’s reaction to Jason Momoa has been one of thirst, an idolisation which only subtly covers their enthusiasm in sexualising brown, Pacific men. 

Brown bodies have been fetishised since colonisation. This started with tourism’s favourite lie of the “romantic South Pacific,” where beautiful pacific women & fa'afafine apparently existed for the attention of white men on boats. Our people were seen as loose, free, and available to be the subjects of white desires, with long hair which swung side to side, as our wide hips danced in lustful carelessness. This is a perception fueled by entitlement, leading to the violation of our ancestors against their will. Pacific people were confined as sexual savages, our bodies policed as the Europeans did to their women. Now we live in 2022, with this tension between aiga, church, and being fetishised as a brown person, with a body which doesn’t define our personality. 

Subreddits which contain illegally sourced videos of islander people’s OnlyFans or Snapchats are being identified and taken down in swaths by Reddit. The presence of these sites speak to the still prevalent, though now hidden, market for consumption of illegal and unethically sourced illicit images and videos which fetishise us. Unfortunately, the issue doesn’t stop with specifically Pasifika women, but a range of minorities who have been historically sexualised (Asian, Black, transgender). Kanye West confessed he gets his pornographic material from Reddit, which is probably leaked OnlyFans content or videos of people taken without their knowledge. Sir, that is a crime. 

Empowerment is our weapon. Despite the popular trends, we’ve always had a swag that they could never surgically replicate. You are the ideal. You have always been beautiful. And that beauty is just part of a fantastic and unique whole. You deserve to love yourself, you are owed respect as a human. A body could never define a personality. No more fakamaa’i. Just because they’ve noticed it, doesn’t mean it was ever for them.