The Asian Baby Girl transformation phenomenon on YouTube: Negotiating Asian American identity and aesthetic visuality on digital media

Asian Baby Girl (ABG) represents a prominent second-generation Asian American archetype rooted in the 1980s and 1990s, where youth navigated sociopolitical constraints by creating a distinct culture that challenged historical legacies of exclusion and the ‘forever foreign’ portrayal of Asians. Their particular aesthetic has gained prominence among Asian American beauty creators on YouTube within the past five years, particularly through ABG transformation videos. This article examines how these videos construct and commodify Asian femininity within this digital space, shaped by YouTube’s attention economy. While ABG transformation videos contribute to a uniquely Asian American cultural space in digital media, they also homogenize Asian femininity, reinforcing an East Asian-dominant, hypersexualized and decontextualized visuality. The commodification of ABG on YouTube particularly relies on marketable archetypes of Asian femininity, exacerbating intra-ethnic othering among Asian Americans. By analysing how digitally performed ABG becomes ahistorical, visually appealing and easily consumable, this article highlights the shifting dynamics of Asian American cultural representation and the self-commodification of Asian American identity in digital media.