beabadoobee, glue song, and the entitlement of a fanbase
This year, Valentine’s Day in the world of TikTok meant the highly anticipated release of Filipina British artist Beabadoobee’s single, “Glue Song”. Stans and casual listeners alike have had their ears glued—cringey pun intended—to the 15 second preview, begging her to officially release the song onto streaming platforms.
“Glue Song” was written and dedicated to Beabadoobee’s new boyfriend, Jake Erland — and many fans have a lot to say about their relationship, despite not knowing much about them. While the majority of Beabadoobee’s longterm fanbase have vocalized their support for her new relationship and her happiness, others have made jabbing comments and so-called jokes that Beabadoobee, sometimes referred to by fans and friends as Bea, herself has called out as inappropriate and unwanted. Whether or not fans have ill-intent over discussing Beabadoobee’s personal life with one another, it does bring about several concerns about what it means to be an Asian woman with a huge following.
Comments circulating around Bea and Jake’s relationship have been about how the Filipina artist went from one white boyfriend to another, essentially diminishing her as a person to whom she does or doesn’t date. Unfortunately, Beabadoobee isn’t the only, and probably not the last, unfortunately, female Asian celebrity that has or will get backlash for dating someone outside of her ethnicity and race. Whether intentional or not, comments about who she is “allowed” to date perpetuates a bigger problem that promotes dangerous, harmful stereotypes about Asian femmes.
While there are many examples of non-Asian people fetishizing and oversexualizing the Asian women and femme-presenting people they date, to equate every interracial couple as a product of dehumanizing factors only further promotes that idea. Kylie Chueng writes about Olympian Sunisa Lee’s own experiences being in an interracial relationship where she faces both anti-Asian racism and misogyny within both Asian communities and non-Asian communities, mainly from cis men.
Within the Asian community, malicious Beabadoobee TikToks have accused her of only being attracted to white men, even insinuating that she doesn’t find BIPOC men attractive. These so-called memes frequently come from Asian men themselves, who see any Asian woman with a non-Asian partner as a “race traitor” who is putting herself in situations where she will be fetishized and hated. A lot of her audience who make these claims don’t see Beabadoobee, or really any Asian woman living in the West, as their own person. They don’t realize that Bea herself has the capacity to understand when someone is being genuine to her or not. In one interview with i-D, Bea talks about the extremes she’s faced as an Asian woman in London from Asian hate to Asian fetishization and in another interview with Billboard, she states, “I am a woman and I am also Asian. I could go out and get assaulted and also get beaten up because of my race”. She is vocal of the horrors her and many Asian women and femmes face, so to present her in a way where she is too stupid to understand is a disservice to Bea herself, and to the community.
Beabadoobee isn’t a caricature presented on a fictional screen, but her own person with her own lived experiences well aware of what her community faces. She is not an example of the harmful stereotype of a lotus flower woman who presents herself only to white men. She deserves her own autonomy of making her own decisions, not being told by the bad side of her fanbase about who she’s allowed to date to make them happy.
