Half-Asians

Michelle Stephanie Banzer was named Miss Kentucky USA in 2007. I remember seeing her in the Miss USA pageant that year and thinking the judges made a huge mistake by not advancing her past the preliminary stage. But then again I’m a bit biased.

She has also done quite a bit of modeling, sometimes using the stage name Michelle Zen, and she is currently a Royal Flush Girl for the World Poker Tour. She is represented by Prestigious Models.

Michelle’s mom is of Vietnamese, Chinese, Mongolian, and Russian descent, and her dad is German, Cherokee, and Irish. She can read, write, and speak Vietnamese and English fluently.

She is on Twitter @MichelleBanzer and is also on Facebook and MySpace.

Pictures and video after the jump.

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Another blog written by a hot half-Japanese model: Jessica Michibata has a blog of her own at Honeyee, written in a mix of English and Japanese, where she shares news and perspectives about things going on in her life.

Interestingly, she recently posted an article about how she is a fan of fellow half-Japanese blogger Rumi Neely, who I featured last week.

Jessica is also on Twitter @jessybondgirl.

JESSICA MICHIBATA -BLOG- [Honeyee]
She is really cute [Honeyee]

All I can say is… whoa.

The World Poker Tour has hired a team of six girls to appear at WPT events as the Royal Flush Girls. And all of them are mixed Asian! Including two of my favorites, Michelle Banzer and Melyssa Grace.

The Royal Flush Girls are:
Michelle Banzer – Vietnamese, Chinese, Mongolian, Russian, German, Cherokee, Irish
Melyssa Grace – Filipina, German
Jennifer Haley – Korean, Japanese, German, Irish, French, Scottish
Melanie Iglesias – Filipina, Spanish, Italian, Puerto Rican, Brazilian
Sunisa Kim – Thai, Cambodian
Katrina Topacio – Filipina, Spanish

You can follow them on Twitter @RoyalFlushGirls. You can also individually follow @MichelleBanzer, @melyssagrace, @melanieiglesias, and @DaRealSunisaKim.

UPDATE: You can also follow @JenlynnHaley and @katrinatopacio.

Pics of the girls from the official WPT Royal Flush Girls webpage, as well as a YouTube video, after the jump:

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It has been a busy few weeks for Olivia Munn since I published my last post about her. Her new book Suck It Wonder Woman! hit the bookshelves earlier this week, and she is currently on a book tour to promote the book. The next stop of the tour is here in New York City, tonight (Friday July 9) at 8pm at Midtown Comics on 40th St. and 7th Av. in Times Square. Future stops include Long Island, Dallas, Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Torrance.

Book Tour begins! First stop: Yay City!!! [OliviaMunn.com]

Also, she recently joined The Daily Show as “senior Asian correspondent”. Her addition to the show has elicited some silly controversy. The author of this article from Jezebel.com claims that The Daily Show has a male-dominated culture that marginalizes women, and that Olivia was hired based on being good-looking rather than on having comedic talent. There has been plenty of backlash to this story, from Daily Show staff as well as from others in the media.

Check out these clips of Olivia’s first three appearances on the show, as well as these articles addressing the show’s “woman problem”.

The Spilling Fields – Vietnamese Fisherman [The Daily Show]
Kremlins 2 – The New Batch [The Daily Show]
Arizona’s Photo Radar [The Daily Show]

The Daily Show’s Woman Problem [Jezebel]
Women of The Daily Show Speak [The Daily Show]
Is Olivia Munn too sexy for “The Daily Show”? [Salon.com]
Olivia Munn of G4, Goes Beyond Comic Pinup [New York Times]
Outrage World: How feminist blogs like Jezebel gin up page views by exploiting women’s worst tendencies [Slate]

A few years ago there was a show on TV called The O.C. The cast was loaded with hot ladies, particularly two women who have been suspected of being part-Asian: Olivia Wilde (who was a hotter-than-hot blonde on the show, and who is 100% Irish) and Rachel Bilson (who was rumored to be half-Filipina – in fact, the January 2007 issue of Cosmopolitan Philippines says she is half-Pinay – but Wikipedia indicates she is Italian and Jewish).

But for me, the hottest girl on the show was Navi Rawat. Navi played a Latina girl on the show, but in real life she is half-Indian and half-German. She later went on to star in the TV show Numb3rs (I can’t resist hot girls who are good at math – e.g. Lindsay Lohan’s character from Mean Girls), and currently she has a recurring role on Burn Notice alongside fellow half-Indian actress Gabrielle Anwar.

(By the way, in case there is any disagreement whether half-Indian counts as half-Asian, please refer to indiansareasian.com.)

Pictures after the jump.

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Rumi Neely is the author of the fashiontoast fashion blog. She is half-Japanese and half-Dutch/Scottish. She is well respected in the fashion industry, regularly scoring front-row seats at many runway shows. She’s also gorgeous!

She wrote a fascinating post on her blog about her growing up as a half-Japanese girl in Tokyo and Hong Kong, and discovering in high school how impossibly beautiful half-Japanese girls can be.

She is currently featured in an advertising campaign for Forever 21. YouTube has a behind-the-scenes look at her photo shoot.

Rumi is on Twitter @rumineely.

fashiontoast
Half and half [fashiontoast]
Behind the Scenes: Rumi Neely + Forever 21 Photoshoot [YouTube]

In other half-Asian fashion blogger news, Christina Masterson (previously featured on my blog here and here) is no longer a co-author of the agogofashion fashion blog. Not unexpected, since co-author Jen Humphrey has been exclusively authoring the blog for more than a month and managing the blog’s Twitter account.

Christina’s past contributions are still available in the archives, which are totally worth digging through to find absolutely stunning pictures such as the one above.

I also found a couple of video links featuring Christina, the first is a Levi’s commercial, the second is a scene from the movie Monster in Law.

January 2010 [agogofashion]
Spot Levi’s 501 : First Time – commercial 2008 [VidPop]
Monster in Law Part 15 [YouTube]

Top Asian Models posted pics from a sexy photo shoot featuring Thai Marie Cali (half Thai and half Sicilian) and Sasha Singleton (half Thai-Chinese and half Scottish-Irish). Plenty more half-Asians can be found there as well!

Hot Asian Models Thai Cali and Sasha Singleton Photo Shoot [Top Asian Models]