More than Mulan

When I was in kindergarten, my teacher asked us to draw self-portraits. I drew a girl with long, flowing blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I am Asian. And I had a bowl cut. While I don’t remember doing this, when my mother told me the story a few years ago, it didn’t completely surprise me. As a child, my favourite Disney princess was Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. I was obsessed with Barbie dolls until about the age of 12 and I spent countless hours listening to Hannah Montana and Hilary Duff. As I got older, I became enamoured with fashion and watched countless hours of Gisele Bundchen and Kate Moss strut on Fashion TV. I had literally spent my entire childhood admiring blonde, blue-eyed, white women. So, when my mom told me the story about my self-portrait I thought, “Yup, sounds about right.” Now, I don’t blame my parents for my identity crisis as a toddler. Race, culture, and identity can be confusing to navigate, especially when they mix, as they do in my case. My grandparents were Japanese immigrants who moved to Brazil. My parents were then born in Sao Paulo, Brazil and immigrated to Canada four months after I was born. So, when people ask me, “What are you?” I never really know what to say. However, what I do know is that once my parents moved to North America, they were tasked with the impossible: teach me to embrace myself in a society that didn’t. In the 2000s, pop culture was thriving, but it lacked diversity. From 2007 to 2015, Asian actors represented only 3.9% of speaking roles in films. Crazy Rich Asians was the first Hollywood movie in 25 years with an all- Asian cast. But the problem isn’t that there aren’t any roles for Asians. Hollywood was, and often still is, notorious for casting white actors in minority roles. It makes no sense at all and yet continues to happen to this day. As frustrating as it seems, I didn’t understand the importance of representation until I felt seen on the silver screen. Last summer, while I watched Crazy Rich Asians, I cried at the most random times of the film.

The same thing happened when I saw To All the Boys I Loved Before. Until now, I didn’t know how to articulate the overwhelming feelings I had. And as I write this, I’m still not 100% sure that I do. I have come a long way in embracing my multiculturalism. I spent most of my childhood and adolescence minimizing my Asian-ness in hopes that it would make me more likeable, attractive, and relatable to my peers. Growing up, had I seen movie stars, celebrities, and models that looked more like me, I may not have believed myself to be the ugliest of my friends. Had I known that guys like Peter Kavinsky could fall in love with girls who look like Lara-Jean Covey, I may have had more confidence. Had I realized that Asians could be strong, well-liked lead characters, I may have stopped reverting to being the sidekick, if not trying to blend into the background. I needed films like Crazy Rich Asians and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before five or ten years ago. I am immensely hopeful for all the young girls who can now look up to Lana Condor, Constance Wu, Gemma Chan, and Awkwafina as they grow up. They will be able to bring their rice cracker snacks and bento-box lunches to school with pride and without being bullied. They will have movie characters to dress up as for Halloween and red-carpet beauty inspiration for prom. And they will finally have an answer to the question, “If your life were a movie, who would play you?” Halloween costumes and lunchtime snacks may seem trivial, but the accumulation of these moments leads to the resentment of Asian culture. My whole life, I was mostly surrounded by white people both in real life and in the media. As a result, I always felt left out. For too long, Asian characters were only presented to tick the diversity box and usually perpetuated a certain stereotype. But that’s slowly changing. So long as representation becomes more and more prevalent, young girls can no longer minimize their Asian-ness but instead embrace it. And soon, they will feel like the star of their own narrative.

by Mariana Uemura