Half-Asians

I’ve received multiple requests to feature the Japanese model/singer/actress Lena Fujii on the site, and a quick image search was enough to convince me why. She’s very pretty and sexy in a cutesy way – the kind of girl that fashion blogger Rumi Neely was referring to in her blog post about the Japanese-Caucasian models that are always featured in the Japanese fashion magazine Vivi (Lena is three-fourths Japanese and one-fourth Caucasian).

Lena has a blog (in Japanese), an English Wikipedia entry, a Japanese Wikipedia entry, and a Model Mayhem profile. And you can listen to her cover of Rihanna’s Pon de Replay here.

Pictures and video after the jump.

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There’s a website called The Chive – you might know it from the “Jenny the HOPA Dry Erase Girl” job-quitting hoax – which does a fairly regular segment called “Find Her”. The basic idea is they put up a bunch of pictures of hot girls that people have asked them to identify, and readers respond with comments if they recognize any of the girls.

Ladies that have made an appearance in “Find Her” include hapa hotties Melanie Iglesias and Alie Layus. I’m proud to say that my blog postings of Melanie and Alie were linked to from The Chive as places where people have “found her”.

After the most recent edition of “Find Her” (featuring, among others, the half-Filipina model Georgina Wilson) was posted a couple of days ago, I received the following email from one of my readers:

http://thechive.com/2011/02/21/when-it-comes-to-find-her-we-get-a-gold-star-27-photos/

picture number one she sure looks half asian… someone stated it was jasmine villegas.. but i’m not so sure. just wondered if you knew.. don’t worry if not.

thanks.
kris

Here is the picture in question:

When I first saw the picture, I thought there was no way in hell that this girl was Jasmine Villegas – I mean, Jasmine is a cutesy teenager with curly hair who was in a Justin Bieber music video, right? (Aside: I could do a whole series of posts on half-Asian girls who are somehow connected to Justin Bieber.) At least, that’s how I remembered her.

But, according to one of the Chive commenters, the picture originated from Jasmine herself via her tumblr blog. I’m not so sure that it’s actually her writing the blog, but after comparing the picture to other recent pictures I found of her – particularly the one at the top of this post – I’m convinced that the picture is actually her… well, the face at least.

The blog entry is titled “boy let me show you what you’ve been missing”. Well, I can see what I was missing – this girl is pretty damn hot. I guess this shouldn’t have been a surprise, considering her half-Asian, half-Latina heritage – specifically, Filipina and Mexican.

Besides the purported tumblr blog, Jasmine also has an official website and is on Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube. And, as usual, you can learn more about her on Wikipedia.

Pictures and video after the jump.

UPDATE: Looks like the tumblr blog has been taken down – it’s definitely not Jasmine’s.

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Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated released its annual swimsuit issue. As with last year’s edition, the 2011 issue features two half-Asian swimsuit models: Jessica Gomes and Chrissy Teigen.

After the jump are some photos of Jessica from this year’s online edition (expect to see a feature on Chrissy sometime in the near future). And for even more Jessica, check out her website and her Twitter.

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Last Friday, an article about the future of Asian-American identity, written by Jeff Yang, was published on SFGate.com (the website of the San Francisco Chronicle).

Within the article is this bombshell: by 2020, 20% of all Asians in the U.S. will be multiracial, and by 2050 that percentage will increase to 33%. This, despite the recent decreasing trend of interracial marriages involving Asian-Americans.

Also within the article is another bombshell: Meiko (pictured above), a folk-pop singer who is 25% Japanese, 75% Caucasian, and 100% gorgeous.

The article refers to quarter-Asians like Meiko as “quapas” (which validates my earlier usage of the word – I thought I was just making it up). Check out the list of quapa girls that I’ve featured so far, and you’ll agree that they’re as beautiful as half-Asians though their Asian features may be less prominent.

As the number of multiracial Asian-Americans increases in the next few decades, we are going to see more and more quapas in the U.S., to the point where there may be as many quapas in the future as there are hapas now. It’s on this basis that I’m making the statement in the title of this post (which was inspired by this statement made by Barney Stinson in the pilot episode of How I Met Your Mother). Also on the basis that they’re hot.

Mixing it up: Multiracialism redefines Asian American identity [SFGate]

I was inspired to write a post about Vanessa Minnillo after seeing her make a guest appearance on last week’s episode of 30 Rock. She was very funny as the ethnically ambiguous Carmen Chao: was she Mexican? Chinese? maybe Jamaican? You decide:

Of course she is half-Asian in real life: specifically, she is Filipina on her mom’s side, and Irish and Italian on her dad’s side.

She is best known for being named Miss Teen USA in 1998 and for hosting MTV’s Total Request Live from 2003 to 2007. She has also done quite a bit of acting, her latest role being her appearance on 30 Rock.

She and her fiancé Nick Lachey will be appearing later this month on an episode of Hawaii Five-0. She joins a growing list of beautiful hapa girls to appear on the show, including Dichen Lachman, Kelly Hu, and Reiko Aylesworth, to name a few.

Vanessa recently joined Twitter. And, as usual, you can learn more about her at Wikipedia and IMDb.

Pictures and video after the jump.

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Here’s another February cover girl on a Philippines magazine, this one on the cover of Cosmopolitan Philippines.

Solenn Marie Adea Heussaff is a Filipina-French commercial/print model, fashion designer, make-up artist, painter, singer, and actress in the Philippines. She finished in the final three on Survivor Philippines: Celebrity Showdown this past fall, and she stars in the movie My Valentine Girls which is being released in theaters in the Philippines this Wednesday.

Solenn is on Twitter and has an official Facebook fan page. Also check out her
Wikipedia entry, her IMDb entry, and this article from Rogue Magazine.

Pictures and video after the jump.

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I’ve written before about how great British magazines are compared to their American counterparts, but I could say the same about their corresponding Philippines editions (even the not-always-accurate Cosmo). Their biggest advantage of course is that they feature beautiful Filipinas and other gorgeous Asian women, with a healthy mix of mixed-race Asian beauties. Case in point: the February 2011 issue of FHM Philippines, with the incomparable Misa Campo on the cover and this hottie, Kim Lee, featured as the “Girlfriend of the Month“.

By day, Kim manages her family’s beauty salon and is starting up a jewelry/accessories venture, but she is best known for her part-time work as a model, primarily in music videos. You may have seen her and Justene Jaro in the video for Flo Rida’s “Club Can’t Handle Me”, or perhaps you recognize her from Far East Movement’s “Rocketeer” video. She is set to appear in the second Hangover movie which will be in theaters later this year.

Kim, a California girl who was born in Orange County and now lives in Malibu, is three-fourths Vietnamese and one-fourth French. That makes her the first three-fourths Asian that I’ve featured, as well as a member of the hot Asian-French club.

Check out Kim’s website, blog, Twitter, MySpace, official YouTube, personal YouTube, and ModelMayhem, and visit HipHopVideoModels.net for even more photos.

Pictures and video after the jump.

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I’m always fascinated by Americans who spend most of their childhood outside of the United States but who end up returning here as teenagers or young adults and doing quite well. A few examples of Americans who spent much of their youth in Asia include Rumi Neely, Olivia Munn, and this beautiful woman.

Angela “Angie” Goff is a traffic and entertainment news anchor on WUSA-TV Channel 9 in Washington, D.C. She was born in Seoul to a Korean mother and to a Caucasian father who was in the U.S. Army. She lived there for most of her first sixteen years of life, before moving with her family to a D.C. suburb. Check out her Wikipedia entry and this magazine article to see how she got from there to where she is now.

Angie is an avid blogger and is also on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo.

For more information, check out her WUSA9 profile and this blog posting. And check out these great photos (including the one above) taken by Katherine Hauschka of KateHaus & Alpine Moon Photography.

Pictures and video after the jump.

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