New survey results from a porn company (which I won’t link here because I don’t fucking want to; rhymes with xWamster—you can figure it out, promise) reveal that based on 50,000 responses from men, women, and nonbinary respondents in more than 150 countries, the ideal dream woman is a 25-year-old, 5’5”, Eurasian bisexual woman named “Shy Yume.”

Based on users’ responses, Shy (marketing materials call her “Shy” as a first name, but it’s also hard not to read into that as an adjective of the perfect, docile woman) also has straight, long, blackish hair; deep blue eyes; curves; an “average” boob size (D-cup breasts as defined by the site’s data); and an “average” waist and butt and is fully shaved and not a feminist.

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There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s start with the basics:

Everyone wants to fuck an Asian girl, we get it.

Shy Yume is Eurasian. Survey results showed that 38 percent of respondents preferred a white dream girl, just under 25 percent said race didn’t matter, and the next most popular racial preference was more than 10 percent Asian, thus resulting in Eurasian Shy.

“The image of the submissive, hypersexualized Eurasian woman is particularly disturbing because it draws on old oriental fantasies,” says Princeton historian Beth Lew-Williams, PhD. “The West has long imagined the East and its people to be feminine, servile, and ripe for consumption.” What is Shy Yume if not a resource to be used? Her first name is fucking SHY. Like, COME ON.

Asian fetishization hurts all minorities.

The idea that Asian people are docile and submissive has been used to discipline other racial minorities, particularly African Americans, who were pushing for equal rights around the time the “model minority” myth of Asian Americans became popular, explains Melissa May Borja, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

Mixed-race fetishization is also problematic.

Nothing reeks of dipshit to me like any man who calls you “exotic.” As Salonee Bhaman, a doctoral candidate in the history of women, gender, and sexuality studies departments at Yale, explained over email: The kind of thinking that fetishizes Eurasian or mixed-race people has “all the problematic elements of racial objectification/the fetishization of certain features combined with the stench of a creepy eugenic thinking about ‘mixed-blood’ or ‘mixed-race’ people.”

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Writer Ashley McDonough called out this behavior in an article titled “Can We Stop With the Fetishizing of Mixed-Race Children?” on MadameNoire last year, where she explains:

“Speaking of these children as though they are the ‘ideal’ is only doing more harm than good. Children are not meant to be like dogs you breed for specific features. But treating them like they are, as though the eyes they come out with, skin they have, and hair that grows from their scalp is meant to be unique and perfect, sends an unhealthy message and perpetuates ignorant and inaccurate ways of thinking.



“Not to mention, the fetishizing of mixed-race children is also harmful to those who identify as mixed themselves. All mixed-race children do not look the same, and promoting the idea that they should come out with green eyes and 3A curly hair is troublesome. And while there are certain advantages to being mixed, being questioned about what you are, being told you’re not enough of something, being deemed ‘exotic,’ and having conditions to why you’re attractive (“You are stunning! Are you mixed with something?”) would be uncomfortable for anyone.”

Shy Yume’s bisexuality also reads fetish-y.

More than 40 percent of respondents preferred the dream woman to be bisexual; in second place, a little less than 35 percent of respondents wanted her to be heterosexual; and around 13 percent of respondents said her sexual orientation didn’t matter.

“The idea/ideal of a bisexual woman is, as is too common for women, focused on a woman as a plaything for heterosexual men,” explains Kryss Shane, LGBT+ expert and social worker. “In this fantasy, the woman would not only exist to pleasure the man, but she would also be open and willing to allow him to participate in threesomes or orgies with him and other women. As such, he gets to play out all his sexual yearnings, and her role is only to provide the platform and opportunity for him to do so.”

Shy Yume has zero fucking agency...

Here’s something: 60 percent of users said their dream woman wasn’t a feminist. Unsurprising? Sure. Make you wanna throw your computer through a window and scream forever? Yep! What’s interesting is that more than 50 percent of respondents wanted their dream woman to be fully shaved as opposed to partially hairy and that the lowest percentage (just over 10 percent) said hair didn’t matter. So basically, we’re maybe good to go to the Women’s March as long as we return with bald pussies.

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...and her lack of agency is seen as a romantic selling point.

In a press release, the vice president of the porn company described Shy Yume as the Galatea to its users’ Pygmalion—which is lol for a lot of reasons. If you’re unfamiliar with Pygmalion and Galatea, it’s a Greek myth about a misogynist sculptor who is so repulsed by some local prostitutes that he swears off women (amazing proto incel vibes) and crawls into a hole to sculpt his “perfect woman,” Galatea.

She’s so perfect and beautiful that Pygmalion falls in love and is totally enraptured by this perfect woman who can’t love him back (she is a literal rock). Pygmalion is so pent up and horny because he can’t fuck his statue that he sacrifices a bull to the goddess of love, Aphrodite (also an amazing Kylie Minogue album of bops), and she takes pity on him and makes Galatea come to life. Basically, it’s about a dude who hates women, and the only woman he’ll ever love is so unrealistic that he has to make a damn fool of himself for Aphrodite to throw him a pity bone.

I’ll be damned if even one of the 50,000 respondents is able to carve a statue of their ideal woman, let alone fully type out the URL of their porn site of choice before Chrome jumps in to autofill the entire address.

In conclusion, ugh.

Yes, reading these survey results made me want to pass away. I wanted to curl into a ball and slide under my chair, but it also made me angry and want to scream and yell about it, which is exactly what I’m doing.

So why should you care? Close your eyes and think about your perfect romantic partner. Are they silent? Do you love pitiful men and women? The crush who gets your heart racing: Is it because they’re down for anything you suggest? Or do you find that the more agency someone has, the more they surprise you and push back, the more attractive they become? Do you get hung up when the rapid-response texter ignores you or when the unattainable person leaves you on read, as they usually do? I’m willing to bet that women don’t picture a diminutive partner willing to follow them around like a puppy dog when thinking of their ideal partner.



Maybe you’re strong enough and outspoken enough that this will never be a personal problem for you, but the idea that the general populace still prefers women to be silent is bad news bears for everyone. This kind of thinking, Shane explains, “can result in increased violence toward women when it furthers the expectation some heterosexual men have about what they are entitled to from a woman. With this brashness internalized, women can become victims of violence if they dare to have opinions or boundaries.”

Thinking of the “ideal” woman like this furthers biphobia, racism, and sexism in that it removes all details of a woman’s humanity and individuality, says Shane. “It shucks her from being a thinking, feeling being down to a living, breathing sex object.” Don’t be silent...be loud, be angry. But please, don’t let this Shy Yume shit fly.

Carina Hsieh Sex & Relationships Editor Carina Hsieh lives in NYC with her French Bulldog Bao Bao — follow her on Instagram and Twitter • Candace Bushnell once called her the Samantha Jones of Tinder • She enjoys hanging out in the candle aisle of TJ Maxx and getting lost in Amazon spirals.

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