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The Asian baby girl trend—social media videos in which young Asian American women transform themselves with makeup, hair treatments, glasses, temporary tattoos and more—is all over social media. Researcher Seonah Kim says the trend tells us a lot about commodification and shifting dynamics of cultural representation online. Clockwise from top left, photos courtesy @maiphammy, @MishChoi, @stephaniewose, @RoxetteArisa, @ohnonina and @Lolwutjan via YouTube.

Let’s get your first question out of the way: Seonah Kim is not interested in makeup.

“I’m like a film scholar who likes studying cinema more than watching movies,” Kim said. “I’m not into beauty, but I enjoy studying it—specifically, how Asian women’s bodies are racialized and gendered in media through beauty.”

Asian culture is enjoying a moment on screens and in streams across the United States, from Squid Game and Beef to K-pop. But most of Kim’s research looks at so-called “Asian baby girl” videos on YouTube, in which young Asian Americans dramatically transform their appearance with makeup, temporary tattoos, hair treatments and more. ��

Kim, an assistant teaching professor of media studies at 91��ý’s College of Communication, Media, Design and Information, began studying the Asian baby girl phenomenon as a part of a book project. But the real origin story of this research comes from interviews she did with South Korean women who darkened their skin as part of their beauty regime. Kim sought to understand why they did so when many of their contemporaries focused on making their skin lighter.

“They would tell me, ‘I know I cannot be Caucasian, but this is a way to experiment with a kind of American identity,’” Kim said. ��

Seonah Kim

She was especially interested in South Korean women who darkened their skin as part of their beauty regime.

In her extensive interviews with Korean women who darken their skin, Kim found a rebellious streak—people challenging the “model minority” stereotype and looking to stand out from the crowd. Many told Kim they chose to darken themselves to resist the narrative of people who want to be lighter.

That helped lead her to Asian Americans performing the Asian baby girl identity. In those videos, she saw influencers adopting a rebellious streak of Asian Americans from a generation ago, who challenged the “model minority” stereotype to stand out from the crowd.

Shifting dynamics on social

Now, with digital and social media, these transformations are a powerful source for attention. Just look at the virality of Asian baby girl videos, as Kim does.

“On social media, we see the commodification of an aesthetic that has a lot of historical context,” Kim said. “This idea of beauty was created by a few Asian American women who wanted to challenge deep-seated stereotypes in the United States. When the Asian baby girl becomes ahistorical, visually appealing and easily consumable, it tells us quite a bit about the shifting dynamics of cultural representation and the self-commodification of Asian American identity in digital media.”

The result of ABG videos—and heightened Asian visibility in current media—is a positive sign to Kim, though it’s not without its drawbacks.

“We’re seeing different types of Asian Americans—they’re outspoken, funny, angry, entertaining,” she said. “But at the same time, we risk trading one set of tropes for another. I’m not saying whether it’s good or bad, just that we need to be more critical of the media we see and the story it’s telling.”

In , Kim explored how YouTube’s attention economy has commodified Asian femininity. Though Asian Americans of a generation ago used beauty as a way to express independence and establish a counterculture, creators on social media don’t have that same influence over Western media.

“TikTok and Instagram reward content that’s visually entertaining and sexualized,” she said, “and unfortunately, I don’t see the digital space encouraging those types of discourses.”

It’s a topic she gets to explore in some depth in her classes, as well. Kim teaches an introductory social media course, as well as classes in media literacy and digital culture, where students can observe the impact of the attention economy on culture. The questions she gets there, Kim said, tend to focus on the media panic being generated around digital platforms and artificial intelligence.

“They really want to understand how social media works, to better evaluate that panic narrative,” she said. “They want to be better consumers of media.”

Her focus on commodification in ABG videos can be read as negative, but Kim said she appreciates the Asian American creators trying to carve out their own cultural niche in the digital media landscape, and who are producing different narratives about representation.

It’s a consideration she’s keeping in mind as she continues to study themes around representational inequality in transnational contexts. She’s especially keen on the idea of how the performance of ABG can challenge what it means to be seen as American. In fact, Kim is now at work on a book project incorporating her work on skin darkening among Korean women and the ways these women embrace and perform “Americanness” through the Asian baby girl phenomenon—along with how those practices challenge racial constructs in Asian contexts.

“Until now, from an Asian standpoint, Americanness is closely tied to the representation of whiteness,” she said. “Could that be replaced with a more Asian American representation—and what are the risks in doing so?”

Joe Arney covers research and general news for the college.