Asians are having a moment, and they're not all crazy rich. K-pop stars are now front-row fixtures at runway shows at the behest of American designers. Korean beauty is no longer just a "trend"—it's a staple in American women's routines. And according to the last season's runway diversity report, the fall 2018 shows featured more women of color—including models of Asian descent—than ever before. On the surface this certainly looks like progress, but for many women who don't fit the idealized mold of what it looks like to be Asian, this representation has begun to feel opportunistic.

That it's taken this long for Asians even to be seen isn't exactly surprising. Given that Korean and Japanese beauty innovations have so thoroughly saturated the beauty market, you'd think that the beauty advertising space would be just as inundated. That hasn't exactly been the case.

The visibility of Asian women in the beauty world was nonexistent when I was a kid in the 1990s. I read a lot of magazines with white women on the covers and in the pages, and only when we traveled to the Queens neighborhood of Flushing—home to my grandparents and the second largest Chinese population in New York City—did I ever see Asian women on signs for salons and spas. (Upstate New York, where I grew up, is not exactly an Asian-American enclave.)

Back then, not even established Japanese brands had Asian spokesmodels representing them in the American market. That didn't go unnoticed by Asian-American women. "The lack of Asian women in the media, including beauty advertising, did influence me as a little girl in what—and who—I defined as beautiful," says Andrea, a recent law school grad in New York City. "I’m very proud to identify as an Asian-American woman, and I value seeing someone who looks like me in advertising." For my other friend Pei, a grad student in San Francisco, the lack of Asian visibility no longer even registers. "Yes, I've noticed there are very few Asian women role models in any industry—beauty or otherwise," she tells me. "But I've just gotten used to it."

Revlon was one of the first to hire Asian spokespeople, beginning with actress Valerie Chow in 1998 and following with Lucy Liu in 2000. But 2010 was the real watershed year. Not only did Vogue dedicate an entire fashion spread to eight Asian supermodels in their December 2010 issue, but Estée Lauder also named model Liu Wen, from the Hunan province of China, its global spokesmodel, making her the first Asian woman to partner with the beauty giant. And not long afterward, Maybelline named Shanghai-born model Shu Pei Qin its newest global ambassador, where she joined Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actress Zhang Ziyi (who'd been part of the Maybelline roster since 2001).

Still, the timing seemed to be strategic. "China is our fastest-growing market," explained Jane Hertzmark Hudis, Group President of Estée Lauder Companies, in a 2010 interview with W. "What better way to honor that than to hire a native of the country?" In addition to seeking out Asian or Asian-American women for their talent, it was also a savvy business move. That's become increasingly clear with the continuous additions of Asian spokesmodels in the beauty industry ever since: Chinese model Sui He was named the face of Shisiedo's global makeup line in 2012; L'Oréal Paris tapped South Korean model Soo Joo Park in 2015, and that same year K-beauty blogger Irene Kim collaborated on the limited-run Estée Edit and L'Oréal Paris added Chinese model Xiao Wen Ju; Maybelline brought Taiwanese model I-Hua Wu on board in 2016; and last year Chinese model Fei Fei Sun joined Estée Lauder. Hair care, however, didn't really follow suit. The most notable contracts are Pantene, who collaborated with actress Priyanka Chopra in 2017, and Redken, who worked with Park in 2015 and partnered with K-pop star Amber Liu this year.