Kaila Yu ‘Fetishized’ herself before anyone else could, but not anymore

SP: It was really funny to me how you found your name, Kaila, from Kai. When you talked about all these Filipino R&B groups like Kai, Devotion and Innerlude, I was like, “I know exactly the groups she's talking about.”
KY: [Laughs] “Say You’ll Stay” was on repeat for me.

SP: Import modeling is a very specific Asian American thing. Taking the model part out, just being at Hot Import Nights as an Asian American person, what was that scene like?
KY: It was a massive phenomenon, because at that time, we had no gathering places for Asian Americans. There was nothing really. But after school, we'd gather in the parking lot at my high school, and all the fixed-up cars would be there. And people would be smoking and hanging out.

And then people really started fixing up their cars to another level where they were show worthy. So these shows sprung up, which had hundreds of people at first, and then thousands, and 25,000. It would be the event of the year, where everybody would gather with their cars, and then Hot Import Nights, it was also kind of a party. So then you'd have DJ performances and breakdancing.

SP: You also talk about how the Fast and Furious (films) led to the downfall of that subculture. What was it like to see those types of events and gatherings die off?
KY: That was a very unexpected effect of it. But once those movies became popular, fixed-up JDMs (Japanese domestic market cars) were hugely popular in all cultures. So then the Hot Import Nights and all these shows started getting inundated with non-Asians, which was, in a way, great. But then we no longer had our special gathering space, and that's what it was initially there for.

It was also about the time that I happened to be leaving this scene. But it just has never returned to being the same thing. But it's also such a different time, right? Because Asian Americans have different places to go, they don't need to only go to import shows. We have so many options now.

Kaila Yu on the cover of DSPORT Magazine in 2005.

Courtesy of Kaila Yu

SP: What was your experience of being in Fast and Furious and being on set for that?
KY: I was only on set for one day. It was really exciting because they had turned this parking lot—I think it was in the OC—into Japan, basically Tokyo, Japan. So everyone was dressed up and the cars were there. It was very, very exciting being on set. Me and Aiko (Tanaka), my best friend at the time, ended up doing it together, which was super fun. It was just gathering the import community onto a set of a real movie. It was super cool.

SP: Can you talk about Nylon Pink and that whole experience of doing music?
KY: It's funny, we didn't start as an Asian girl band. We had white guys in the band, like a drummer and a guitarist. But when they left, somebody would be like, “Oh my God, I know this super-talented guitarist, and she's Asian.” And then we were like, “We'll audition her.” And then she was amazing.

But once we became all Asian, it clicked into like, “Oh, this is now a unique thing that nobody else has.” It gave us a niche—both a niche, but also a glass ceiling. Because we would get to tour and get paid to do shows, but then once we got to the record label level, they're like, “Well, we don't know what to do. Who can we compare you to?” Because there's nobody they could compare us to.

SP: That also came with a certain demographic, in terms of fans.
KY: Yeah, we had regular pop rock fans, and then we had a bunch of middle-aged, white guy fans, who were definitely not fans of this genre of music. I talk about it in this chapter called “Lolitas,” about my drummer who joined the band at 17, and she looked way younger. The guitarist was an agency model, a beautiful woman, and she had her fans, of course. But these old, middle-aged men were mostly fixated on Jamie, the child. And I point out (in the book) that the Asian fetish has the undertones of infantilization. So that's maybe not surprising, actually.

Kaila Yu used to participate as a model at Hot Import Nights.

Chris Carlo

SP: I will admit it was a little hard to read because of the creepy factor, and also how you would push your bandmates to dress more sexy, when it was clear Jamie wasn't comfortable. How do you reconcile that when you look back at your younger self during that time?
KY: As my younger self, I was just like, “My experience is sex sells.” And then I'm looking at all these pop stars, and they're all doing sexy things. So I was just like, “Well, this is the entertainment business. This is how it works.” And of course, I look back and Jamie has suffered some trauma from this experience, but mostly from these middle-aged men being weird. It's definitely something I have to reconcile with. This whole book is me reconciling with me doing it to myself, too. It is sad that I did drag my “little sisters,” into this.

SP: A big part of your story—and I would say a lot of people's stories who grew up in the 90s and 2000s, especially for girls and women—was that competitiveness and competing against other women and girls. What was it like in that era and now seeing how women are more supportive of each other?
KY: It's exhausting to live in a world where you treat other women as competition. I've always been naturally a girls’ girl. I would have my group of girls that I trusted, but these other models are competition, or these other actresses. And back then, remember Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were very different singers, but in the media, they were pitted as enemies, when I don't think they naturally were enemies.

I'm glad the media doesn't do that now, and I hope more and more women just reach out to other women for validation instead of men. Because women can really offer true validation to each other.

A signed copy of Kaila Yu's cover of Import Tuner Magazine from November 2000.

Courtesy of Kaila Yu

SP: What do you think your life's trajectory would have been if you sought out women's validation versus men's validation?
KY: It could have been totally different. Growing up there was Connie Chung, right? As a young girl who was looking for male validation, I was looking more at my era like Beverly Hills, 90210. So I was like, “I want to be Kelly Taylor.” I wasn't looking to be Connie Chung, because she was very intelligent and accomplished, but not sexy. I was looking for male validation.

So if I was like, looking for female validation, maybe I would have looked up to Connie Chung, and maybe I would have been a newscaster or something like that. I think it would have been a totally different career.

SP: Looking back at your younger self, what is a message you would want to tell Elaine after all of this?
KY: That's really easy. I would just tell her she's unconditionally loved. And give her a big hug. My parents loved me unconditionally. I just didn't know it.

Kaila Yu.

Courtesy of Kaila Yu