"Ohhh, me so horny!" says Mika Tan, giggling and batting the false eyelashes that frame her dark, almond-shaped eyes. This Amer-Asian porn princess doesn't mind playing-to-type in titles like Hustler's Asian Fever: Sex Objects or Elegant Angel's Asian Sex Slaves.
But, in reality, Tan breaks with stereotypes every chance she gets. Bright, funny and super-intelligent, she has a degree in biochemistry. She often blogs or emails with fans on her MySpace page, on topics as diverse as politics (conservatively liberal), philosophy (open-minded) and religion (she is a practicing Buddhist).
When she's not on the set, she trades the fantasy of exotic cherry blossom girl for real life as a rough-and-tumble tomboy. Volunteering for worthy causes, Tan swings a hammer for Habitat for Humanity, has donated nights of dancing for Hurricane Katrina charities and she is an avid supporter of the US troops.
At this year's AVN Awards, Tan took the trophy for Unrecognized Excellence as the Most Under-rated Starlet of the Year; sort of left-handed compliment, but one that is well-deserved. And her most recent release for NinnWorx and director Lorraine Sisco, Façade, shows off Tan's talents as a diabolically deviant dragon lady.
Mika Tan sat down with Eros Zine to talk about cultural misconceptions, growing up geeky and The Rule of Thumb.
Eros Zine: Coming from an Asian background, was it difficult to make the decision to become an adult performer? Did your family have a hard time handling it?
Mika Tan: This is going to sound weird, but… in high school I was very driven. My dad was a real strict disciplinarian, you know? I got all straight-As, National Honor Society, the Student Council. I was in the Science Club. I was in the Filipino Club and I'm not even Filipino. A lot of my friends are Filipino.
I got my degree in biochemistry; typical Asian thing, isn't it? It did take me five years, though - I didn't do well in organic chemistry.
My dad's side is very military, very conservative, very right wing. On my mom's side of the family - my grandmother was married five times, used to own massage parlors so, on my mom's side, they were really cool about it. I have a couple of singers in my family; my cousin went to Julliard. On my mom's side, there are a lot of entertainers.
It took two years before I had to tell my dad. My mom said, "Don't tell your dad..." He broke the phone when I told him. My mom said he broke it on the side of the bureau that they keep the telephone on. I heard this BANG-BANG-BANG and was like, "I'll call you later." That was really difficult.
But it wasn't a difficult decision for me. It was kind of weird because I just kind of fell into it.
Eros Zine: Is your family okay with it now?
Mika Tan: My dad still doesn't want to talk about it. He'll ask, "How are you? You're healthy, right?" I think he just worries.
The reason I told him was because I came out in Hustler, and my dad has a subscription to Hustler so I had to tell him the month before.
Eros Zine: So, what made you decide to become an adult performer instead of going into a mainstream career?
Mika Tan: The thing was, I was stripping during my junior and senior years. I had a four-year scholarship, but after the fourth year, I was like, "Oh no. I have to start saving money to pay for this next semester..." So, I started stripping because this girl that I went to college with was stripping and said you could make a lot of money. It was a weird transition.
Then I worked in the biochemistry field. It was very boring. I was a research assistant and it was really, really boring and it really didn't make a lot of money. And I was like, "I can't believe that I spent all that time and worked that hard…."
Eros Zine: Do you find that people that don't know you stereotype you as inarticulate or unintelligent because you're a porn star?
Mika Tan: Yeah, I think that people do think that a lot and I have that question posted on my FAQs because I get asked that a lot. "You seem like an intelligent person. Why are you doing porn?" So, only stupid people can do porn?
Like I tell people, you only have certain amount of time in your youth and I love sex. I think it's fun. I like sex with different kinds of people. I just like the freedom and I don't know if I could ever go back to a day job.
And there's gonna be a time when they're not gonna want to shoot me anymore and I'm gonna end up doing MILF and GILF movies and, hopefully, I'll be doing good GILF movies. Grandmas-I'd-Like-To-Fuck.
Eros Zine: So, you're in for life?
Mika Tan: Yeah, I really like the people here. Especially coming from where I come from, because I worked in mainstream modeling and entertainment, too.
The last straw for me in mainstream was when my agent sent me to this director's house for a go-see and he opened the door and he had on a sarong -- like what is that? He was this older guy -- and I called her and asked, "He says he has a script for me but he told me to sit down while he went and got more comfortable, but he's already wearing a sarong!"
And she's like, "Just play along. It's okay…"
And I was like, "Uh-uh, I gotta go now."
One thing I did learn in mainstream was marketing myself. I had to fight being Asian -- because I don't really look like Chinese or Japanese. They don't know where to stick me…
Eros Zine: Well, speaking of stereotypes, how do you feel about the stereotype of Asian women as submissive?
Mika Tan: Well, I've played that role and other roles. There's also the Asian dominatrix. I think the average consumer for porn is in their mid-30s, you know, and the guys that have the Asian fetish usually have military service or they do a lot of traveling and they see exotic Asian women and think, "Wow, they're so cute." But coming from a military family...
Eros Zine: Were you raised to be kind of submissive to men?
Mika Tan: You know, I was. My mom is extremely submissive to my dad. If my dad says, "The sky is red…" My mom will say, "Yeah, you know, I can kind of see that..." I was raised that way.
But my mom is like, "I don't know what happened to you. I didn't raise you this way. You're so opinionated! Where did that come from?"
But I was always my dad's favorite. We used to go out and go fishing and I used to hang out with the guys all the time.
Look at me -- look at my hands! (She has short nails and her hands are banged up.) I was scaling a fish and I cut myself.
I think men stereotype every genre, because all men have a certain thing that they like and they need to see in the video in order for them to get off. And a lot of them get off on the Asian thing, and I've done that lots of times - the "me so horny" thing.
Eros Zine: You're against the stereotype of the Asian man, though...
Mika Tan: Yes! It's funny. All my boyfriends before porn were Asian -- all of them.
Eros Zine: Well, what about the stereotype of Asian men having small penises?
Mika Tan: I'll show you a little trick -- if you shake their hand, look at his thumb. You can judge the girth or if they have long, skinny thumbs. That was part of my sex talk when I got my period. A female relative told me -- she said, "Don't waste your time with the small ones."
Eros Zine: So, you're building a website to help break the stereotype?
Mika Tan: It's Generasianxxx.com and it's the stereotype that I want to break. Because I feel really bad, sometimes, when I do American-style porn; in one video, the host was an Asian guy, and he said, "Oh, I would love to fuck you, but I can't because my dick is too small!"
So, I'm like, "Oh, that sucks." Poor Asian guys - it's almost like they're emasculated or something, you know? And they're not all small and they not all timid and they're not all nerds. We're not nerds -- we're just overachievers. That's all.
Eros Zine: So, where did you find Asian talent to shoot for the website?
Mika Tan: I was scouting them. You have to think in terms of an Asian man -- because an Asian man is not going to want a white guy to exploit him. It's different if it's me asking them to do it.
The thing is, they know. An Asian guy will say, "The white guy is expecting me to fail. He's making fun of me." You know what I mean? Because American boys are making fun of Asian guys. And that really makes me sad.
So, what I did -- I couldn't find a company to back me on it, so I did it with my own money. I had to hunt for almost nine months going to bobba tea houses, going to UCLA campus and handing out my cards, and to all these Asian hang-outs. I was at all these bobba tea houses, passing out my cards and shaking hands and checking out thumbs.
Eros Zine: Did you find that they were enthusiastic to do it?
Mika Tan: Yeah, I did. I shot 147 guys and did a big casting call. I rented this all-you-can-eat sushi bar in Little Tokyo; I rented the top floor and wondered how many people would show up.
I had so many people show up. I told them first of all -- if you're a first-born Asian man, you have to leave because your parents will kill you and I don't want to have that on my head. If your doing mainstream or thinking about it, your gonna have to pick up your stuff and leave. I interviewed them on-camera and shot them all documentary style.
There is no Asian porn and I think we should accommodate them. They don't have anything to watch except for the stuff out of Asia, and in those, it's kind of like the girls are not having a good time.
But I'm having such a hard time. People keep telling me, "Well, the market's not tested..." But this is a big market. To me, I think I'm just going to build the website and I've been feature dancing and picking up contacts at all the adult video stores in the towns where I travel. I'm just going to do it myself.
I mean, these guys are big with big pop shots. I made them practice and I gave them the "Porn 101" DVD from AIM (Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation) and I made them a little intro packet. I drew diagrams of the positions and what they're called. I had a little handbook for them.
Eros Zine: That is so geeky! But I noticed there is also all kinds of informative information on Generasianxxx.com, about what models should know before they do their first scene.
Mika Tan: What can I say? I was a TA at university.
Readers can find out more about Mika Tan at mikatan.com and on her MySpace page, and about GenerAsianXXX at generasianxxx.com.
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