Asian Representation in the Media

I grew up watching mostly western media and although these days, there’s much more
representation, back when I was still a little kid, there weren’t too many characters that
looked like me and POC representation was still not quite there yet. Racism towards Asians
was always much too normal to be normal and I was used to that, however, seeing other
kids build themselves up relating to people on TV while I, on the other hand, stood as an
outsider watching and hoping that one day I could see myself as the person I wanted to be,
does change the way you look in the mirror or at least for a while. Asians are usually
depicted as awkward, nerdy, unattractive, or some type of cringy stereotypical character
relating to the fetishized parts of the culture which would make me wanna vomit.

General POC representation was a bit better as I had shows like “That's So Raven” and
“Fresh Prince of Bel-air” and there were some shows with Latin American characters like
the one beloved by many kids including me “Wizards of Waverly Place”, however, many of
the characters were light-skinned and appeared to be white at a first glance. The Asian kid
was never the main character and I want to say it didn’t affect me too much, but there was
always this urk and longing to look like someone else and to be someone else. Especially in
a majority white town like Stratford where it’s hard to find someone you relate to more
closely, the media plays a bigger role since it can reach young kids and almost say “hey,
there’s more people like you out here and you matter too.”

“I only date white guys.” You tend to hear many young Asian girls say these words. It’s so
common when you look at many white and Asian interracial couples, the girl is pretty much
always the Asian, the guy is pretty much always white and the Asian guy is pretty much
always the butt end of the joke. Personally when I was younger, and I never said it out loud,
but this line held its mark in my mind although I’m still not quite sure whether it was because
of the subconscious programming from the media causing me to hold white guys higher or if
it was a genuine preference of mine stemming from something to do with my genetics. The
thought of my own culture was not repulsive to me and I was never the type to try to change
myself to fit in, however, I favoured the others more and sometimes I’d wish to be born as a
different person.

These days there are a lot more Asians and we have Tik Tok! Asian girls are now the
“trendy race” on that app which I’m still on the line with how I feel about that. On one hand,
the level of representation is going up and I feel as if we are having a moment to shine and
on the other hand, should a race really be a trend like that? Is that a form of grand societal
fetishizing? It just seems strange to have people formerly bullying us for our ethnic features
and then having something like the “Fox-eye trend” come out with a crowd of white kids on
the app pulling at their eyes for a beauty trend. I’m not sure what the new times will bring
us, but that means we’ll just have to wait and see.