Dragon Lady

Quality 0.50 · 1 view · Updated 2 months ago

Stereotype and stock character

title: "Dragon Lady" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["asian-american-issues", "slang-terms-for-women", "stereotypes-of-east-asian-people", "stereotypes-of-women", "female-stock-characters"] description: "Stereotype and stock character" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Lady" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Stereotype and stock character ::

Dragon Lady is usually a stereotype of certain East Asian and occasionally Southeast Asian women as strong, deceitful, domineering, mysterious, and often sexually alluring. Inspired by the characters played by actress Anna May Wong, the term comes from the female villain in the comic strip Terry and the Pirates. 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" also known as "China Doll". 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.

Background

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Poster_-_Daughter_of_the_Dragon_01.jpg" caption="[[Anna May Wong]] as the daughter of Fu Manchu in ''[[Daughter of the Dragon]]'' (1931)"] ::

Although sources such as the Oxford English Dictionary{{cite encyclopedia | encyclopedia = Oxford English Dictionary | edition= Second | editor= John Simpson and Edmund Weiner | entry = dragon, dragoness | publisher = Oxford University Press | year= 1989 | isbn = 0-19-861186-2 }} list uses of "dragon" and even "dragoness" from the 18th and 19th centuries to indicate a fierce and aggressive woman, there does not appear to be any use in English of "Dragon Lady" before its introduction by Milton Caniff in his comic strip Terry and the Pirates. The character first appeared on December 16, 1934, and the "Dragon Lady" appellation was first used on January 6, 1935.{{cite book | last = Harvey | first = Robert C. | author-link = R. C. Harvey | title = Annotated Index to Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates | year = 1995 | id = ASIN: B0006PF3SS

''Terry and the Pirates''

Main article: Dragon Lady (Terry and the Pirates)

Terry and the Pirates was an action-adventure comic strip created by cartoonist Milton Caniff. Joseph Patterson, editor for the Chicago Tribune New York Daily News Syndicate, hired Caniff to create the new strip, providing Caniff with the idea of setting the strip in the Orient. A profile of Caniff in Time recounts the episode:

::quote Patterson... asked: "Ever do anything on the Orient?" Caniff hadn't. "You know," Joe Patterson mused, "adventure can still happen out there. There could be a beautiful lady pirate, the kind men fall for." In a few days Caniff was back with samples and 50 proposed titles; Patterson circled Terry and scribbled beside it and the Pirates. ::

Caniff's biographer R. C. Harvey suggests that Patterson had been reading about women pirates in one of two books (or both) published a short time earlier: I Sailed with Chinese Pirates by Aleko Lilius{{cite book | last = Lilius | first = Aleko E. | title = I Sailed with Chinese Pirates | year = 1991 | publisher = Oxford University Press | place = Hong Kong | isbn = 0-19-585297-4 | last = Bok (pseudonym) | title = Vampires of the China Coast | year = 1932 | publisher = Herbert Jenkins | place = London | last = Harvey | first = R. C. | author-link = R. C. Harvey | title = Meanwhile...: A Biography of Milton Caniff, Creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon | year = 2007 | page = 213 | publisher = Fantagraphics Books | place = Seattle | isbn = 978-1-56097-782-7

Usage

[[File:Anna May Wong Stars of the Photoplay.jpg|thumb|Actress Anna May Wong]]

Since the 1930s, when "Dragon Lady" became fixed in the English language, the term has been applied countless times to powerful East, Southeast and South Asian women , such as Soong Mei-ling, also known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Madame Nhu of Vietnam, Devika Rani of India, and to any number of Asian or Asian American film actresses. That stereotype—as is the case with other racial caricatures—has generated a large quantity of sociological literature.

Today, "Dragon Lady" is often applied anachronistically to refer to persons who lived before the term became part of American slang in the 1930s. For example, one finds the term in recent works about the "Dragon Lady" Empress Dowager Cixi (Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi; ), who was alive at the turn of the 20th century,{{cite book | last = Seagrave | first = Sterling | title = Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China | year = 1992 | publisher = Vintage Books | place = New York | isbn = 0-679-73369-8}} or references to Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong as having started her career in the 1920s and early 1930s in "Dragon Lady" roles.{{cite book | last = Hodges | first = G. R. G. | title = Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend | url = https://archive.org/details/annamaywongfroml0000hodg | url-access = registration | year = 2004 | publisher = Palgrave Macmillan | place = New York | isbn = 978-0-312-29319-2

Anna May Wong was the contemporary actress to assume the Dragon Lady role in American Cinema in the movie Daughter of the Dragon, which premiered in 1931. Josef von Sternberg's 1941 The Shanghai Gesture contains a performance by Ona Munson as 'Mother' Gin Sling, the proprietor of a gambling house, that bears mention within presentations of the genre. Other American or British films in which Asian women are hyper-sexualized include The Thief of Baghdad, The Good Woman of Bangkok, and 101 Asian Debutantes, where Asian women are portrayed as prostitutes. Miss Saigon is an American musical with examples of this as well. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Lucy_Liu_Cannes_2008.jpg" caption="Actress Lucy Liu at the [[Cannes Film Festival]] in 2008"] ::

Modern usage (1990 – Present)

Contemporary actresses such as Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) may be constrained by the stereotype even when playing upstanding characters. These actresses portrayed characters whose actions are more masculine, sexually promiscuous, and violent. Lucy Liu is a 20th and 21st century example of the Hollywood use of the Dragon Lady image, becoming well known for her roles in Charlie's Angels (2000), Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and its sequel (2004), and Payback (1999) playing spy- and assassin-type characters.

Hollywood costuming

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Nancy_Kwan_cheongsam_scene_in_Suzie_Wong.jpg" caption="Nancy Kwan's costume in ''Flower Drum Song''"] ::

Dragon Lady characters are visually defined by their emphasis on "otherness" and sexual promiscuity. An example of headwear for Dragon Lady costumes is the Hakka hat or other headdresses with eastern inspiration. For body wear, traditionally Dragon Ladies have been put in sexualized renditions of the cheongsam or kimono. Examples of this in The World of Suzie Wong include Nancy Kwan's character in cheongsam that accentuates her hips and breasts.

Modern costuming

For modern-day Dragon Lady characters, much of costuming is closely linked to their archetypal characteristics and features. Bond girl Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies and Lucy Liu in Charlie's Angels both frequently wear tight-fitting black outfits in accordance with their characters' roles. In Kill Bill, Liu dons a kimono, harkening back to Dragon Ladies of past.

Relationship with other stereotypes

The "Dragon Lady" stereotype is most commonly presented in conjunction with, and in contrast to, that of the "Lotus Blossom", in portrayals, differentiated primarily through the moral codes of their characters. However, both tropes strongly emphasize the "otherness" of these characters in juxtaposition to their white counterparts, and their sexual relationships with white men in particular. The "Lotus Blossom" serves as a foil to the Dragon Lady, demure and submissive to her domineering and powerful. Both tropes are largely defined by their racial implications of sexuality, and desirability to the American audience. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Stop_Asian_Hate_IMG_2194_(51082857751).jpg" caption="Sign at an anti-Asian violence event in Washington D.C."] ::

Activist, academic, and critical response

The Dragon Lady stereotype has evoked significant conversation from critics and academics for its hyper-sexualization of Asian women and the impact on modern day stereotypes and social issues. For example, one way the "Dragon Lady" and "Lotus Blossom" tropes have seen modern day influence on the sexuality of Asian women is through pornography, where they are seen as more "submissive" and unlikely to take agency. Activists have called for a reclaiming of the sexual portrayal of Asian women, and point to the origins of these stereotypes and their desired effects to be rooted in anti-immigration and anti-miscegenation attitudes from the era of Chinese exclusion and the Page Act of 1875.

Explanatory notes

:1. Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895, is described in such tones and the playwright all but uses the word dragon. She is "perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgon ... I don’t really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth ..."

References

References

  1. Herbst, Philip. (1997). "The color of words: An encyclopaedic dictionary of ethnic bias in the United States". Intercultural Press.
  2. [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2005/09/18/books/book-reviews/sweet-mysteries-of-the-orient/ Sweet Mysteries of the Orient. Book review of ''The Asian Mystique'', by Sheridan Prasso]
  3. Prasso, Sheridan. (2006). "The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, and Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient". PublicAffairs.
  4. Roby, India. (2021-03-24). "Hollywood Played a Role in Hypersexualizing Asian Women".
  5. Cronin, Brian. (2021-09-25). "Why Shang-Chi's Sister Had to Change for the Marvel Cinematic Universe".
  6. "Escape Artist", ''[[Time (magazine). Time]]'', Monday, January 13, 1947.
  7. For example, the review of ''Daughter of the Dragon'' in ''[[The New York Times]]'', August 22, 1931.
  8. Bigelow, Poultney. "A New View of the Empress Dowager of China; Tsu Hsi, the Little Woman Who Rules the Celestial Empire and its Three Hundred Millions of People". ''[[The New York Times]]''. June 26, 1904.
  9. Wang, HanYing. (2012). "Portrayals of Chinese Women's Images in Hollywood Mainstream Films— An Analysis of Four Representative Films of Different Periods". Intercultural Communications Studies XXI.
  10. "Daughter of the Dragon".
  11. Grimm, Joshua. (2020-09-30). "The Lotus Blossom and the Dragon Lady". Liverpool University Press.
  12. Lee, Sohyun. (2024-01-19). "The specific visuality of women of the global South in the media of the global North". Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.
  13. Zhou, Yanyan. (December 2016). "Lotus Blossom or Dragon Lady: A Content Analysis of “Asian Women” Online Pornography". Sexuality & Culture.
  14. Shimizu, Celine Parreñas. (2007). "The hypersexuality of race: performing Asian/American women on screen and scene". Duke University Press.
  15. Clark, Audrey Wu. (2012-08-10). "Disturbing Stereotypes: Fu Man/Chan and Dragon Lady Blossoms". Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies.
  16. Wu Clark, Audrey. (2012). "Disturbing Stereotypes: Fu Man/Chan and Dragon Lady Blossoms". Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

asian-american-issuesslang-terms-for-womenstereotypes-of-east-asian-peoplestereotypes-of-womenfemale-stock-characters