The first time I saw a sexy Asian man on TV, he was doing kung fu. In my world, he was the only mainstream famous Asian man, a belief reaffirmed by strangers who would call me by his name: Hey, Jackie Chan! Before I could comprehend the prejudice behind those words, I was proud to be compared to someone so iconic.

Growing up, I began to see other Asian men on TV, but they were decidedly less sexy. I grew up on Ken Jeongs characters in Community and The Hangover. Although hilarious, his Asian maleness always felt like part of the joke. Hollywood has a long and ugly history of portraying Asian men from all corners of the diaspora as weak, undesirable, nerdy and asexual tropes that are perpetuated everywhere, from dating apps to porn sites .

While the 2010s gave us Crazy Rich Asians, the rise of K-Pop and Shang-Chi, it still felt like Asian men in movies and TV existed in sexual extremes. They were either fetishized declared sexual demigods like Henry Golding and Simu Liu or deemed sexually irrelevant. The full spectrum of humanity simply did not exist for Asian American men.

Then came Season 2 of The White Lotus, which was the first time I saw an Asian male on screen that was equal parts captivating and sexually complex. A month after the latest season wrapped up, I couldnt figure out why I couldnt stop thinking about Ethan Spillers character and why he resonated so much. And then it hit me. Finally, here was an Asian male character that was sexually nuanced.

Despite being on vacation in picturesque Italy, for much of the season, Ethan, played by Will Sharpe, seems uninterested in having sex with his frustrated wife, Harper, played by Aubrey Plaza. At one point, Harper finds Ethan mid-jerk off and tries desperately to create the circumstances for him to have sex with her, to no avail. Whatever your opinion of Ethan, to see an Asian man pursued, to be simultaneously horny but not horny enough to have sex with his wife, was new. And sure, the outline of the giant dick we saw might have been a prosthetic , but it got its point across that Asian men get to have complex desires of their own instead of just being a prop for other characters.

Ethan is a departure from traditional Asian male representation on TV, and its worthy of examination since it clues us into why mainstream depictions of Asian men are so off in the first place.

Theres one obvious problem with an entire demographic being deemed undesirable by the Western media, asserts Karen Wu, an associate professor of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles. This can make it challenging for Asian American men to find romantic partners. And that not only sucks, but it can also create inferiority complexes.

An OKCupid survey from 2014, a few years before Asians became more prominent in Hollywood, found that Asian men are the group most likely to be rejected on dating apps. Although theres more visibility for Asian American men than ever before, many continue to run into issues that stem, at least in part, from stereotypes perpetuated in popular culture. Wu tells me that this type of rejection leads to harmful behaviors like working out obsessively, fixating on finding white partners, or (in extreme cases) becoming incels .

And so, this message that there are very few sexy Asian men, with the rest being labeled undesirable, is damaging on several levels. However, Wu tells me that Asian men can become aware of this pervasive negative representation and work together with their community to demand better.

Asian men and women are often pitted against each other, and Asian women are sometimes blamed for Asian men not being deemed desirable, Wu says. However, she urges all genders within the community to recognize the source of the issues and actively work to dismantle them.