Melissa Leongs name has been splashed across headlines since she was announced as one of three new judges on MasterChef Australia. However, the 37-year-old food writer is no stranger to attention, though a lot of it in the past has been unsolicited and racially-motivated.

Having grown up in Australia after her parents migrated from Singapore in the 1970s, Singaporean-Chinese Melissa says she is the subject of Asian fetishisation, also known as yellow fever, on a daily basis.

As a woman of Asian origin, its a daily onslaught of fetishistic comments from strangers about your appearance and sexuality, and if Im asked, But where are you really from? one more time, I might explode, Melissa recently told HuffPost Australia.

Yellow fever refers to non-Asian peoples explicit sexual preference and desire for Asians, and more often than not, is a term used to describe Caucasian mens fetishes for Asian women. Yellow fever is problematic because it doesnt view women as complete and complex individuals, but as a representation of offensive stereotypes such as subservient and hyper-sexual or the hardworking model minority.