#whitewashedout

[doesnotloveyou]

who in the HELL cast natalie whitegirl portman as the Biologist??? 

[lobselvith8]

Generally speaking, @apeollo, the Roman Empire was a lot more diverse than it’s been depicted on shows and movies set in the time period, and Pompeii is historically acknowledged to have been diverse as well (some artwork reflects this, like The Portrait of Terentius Neo).

Proud supporter of whitewashed movies flopping at the box office

[geekyetti]

When I was a freshman I made a goal for myself: Present about Asian-American representation in the Entertainment Industry while wearing my favorite color. Today is the day I fulfilled that goal. (Thanks to @aerika_17 for taking a picture). #whitewashedout #asianamerican

[sendingmylove]

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A post shared by Sarah 🍓 (@sarahberryy)

Not so sure of what I'm doing on this one but *shrug* 💩 . . . . #wip #graphicdesign #design #art #collage #adobe #photoshop #whitewashedout

[know4life]

A #WhitewashedOUT Ghost in the Shell Misses the Cultural Mark – thenerdsofcolor https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2016/05/06/jon-tsuei-is-right-a-whitewashedout-ghost-in-the-shell-misses-the-cultural-mark/ #WhiteSupremacy #WesternImperialism #Whitewash

[icantdrawbutidea]

When there as many minorities as white people in culture we won't have this problem. #diversity #whitewashedout #southasians

[geekyetti]

People defending Death Note casting: They're setting it in an AMERICAN city! It would be ridiculous to have an all Japanese cast!

Me: oh yeah I guess there's just no such thing as Japanese-Americans they're just a myth, an urban legend

[mastcomm]

#OscarsSoWhite Held Up a Mirror. Hollywood Still Can’t Look Away.

“Congratulations to those men.”

A month ago, exactly three seconds after she’d announced a list of Oscar nominees for best director that excluded women, the writer and actress Issa Rae appended those four words, an indictment sheathed in a ribbon of praise: “Congratulations to those men.”

The official announcement and its condemnation, delivered in almost the same breath on a live telecast, say a lot about Hollywood in 2020. The industry is in the clutches of an extremely public identity crisis, in which the fresh, multicultural image it aspires to (Rae, her co-host, John Cho) is undermined by the observable evidence (the list of nominees).

Before #OscarsSoWhite, a social justice campaign that began five years ago last month, the crisis had been contained. The fact that 92 percent of top film directors were men and 86 percent of top films featured white actors in the lead roles — a pattern dating back decades — did not often dominate entertainment news, least of all on Hollywood’s biggest night.

As the former academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, one of more than a dozen people who spoke to The Times for this history of the movement, said recently: “That was the industry: You’d scan around the room, and everyone looked the same. But people didn’t get what was going on. Members would say, ‘We’re professionals ­— we just vote for who’s best.’”

On Jan. 15, 2015, the academy awarded all 20 acting nominations to white actors for the first of two consecutive years, inspiring April Reign to create the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. Reign, then a campaign finance lawyer and pop-culture-obsessed contributor to a loose community of black Twitter users, was hardly a Hollywood power broker.

But her words, coming on the heels of #BlackLivesMatter, erupted like a big bang, creating the conditions for a constellation of social movements — from #WhiteWashedOUT for Asian representation to Time’s Up for gender parity — that intensified media attention on the industry’s treatment of historically marginalized groups.

In the movie business, nothing is feared like bad press, and by 2016 timeworn incentive structures had begun to tilt in favor of increased diversity in front of and behind the camera. Films like “Get Out,” “Black Panther,” “Coco’’ and “Crazy Rich Asians” drove a multicultural gold rush at the box office as well as the Oscars, where a record 13 winners of color took home awards in 2019 alone.

But as this year’s nominees suggest, the old establishment has not been displaced overnight. Only one performer of color — Cynthia Erivo of “Harriet” — was nominated, and female directors of top-rated films, like Greta Gerwig of “Little Women,” Lorene Scafaria of “Hustlers” and Lulu Wang of “The Farewell,” were left out.

And yet it would be inaccurate to say that nothing has changed since that morning five years ago when Reign logged on to Twitter, or that recent developments have been undone. In edited excerpts below, filmmakers, awards-watchers and academy members tell the inside story of how what began as a three-word hashtag forced an insular, $42 billion industry to change course.

‘Fed Up’

At 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, on Jan. 15, 2015, the nominees for the 87th annual Academy Awards were announced live on television from the Beverly Hills headquarters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

CHERYL BOONE ISAACS (president of the academy, 2013-17) The president gets to see the nominations about an hour and a half early, and as soon as I saw them, my heart sank.

APRIL REIGN (creator of the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite) My kid was upstairs getting ready for school and I was watching in my family room as I got ready for work. It struck me that there were no people of color nominated, so I picked up my phone. “#OscarsSoWhite they asked to touch my hair.” It happened in seconds.

DAWN HUDSON (chief executive of the academy) I had a very good idea what was going to come next.

REIGN I checked my phone at lunch and it was trending around the world: “#OscarsSoWhite they wear Birkenstocks in the wintertime.” “#OscarsSoWhite they have a perfect credit score.”

FRANKLIN LEONARD (founder of the Black List, a platform for unproduced screenplays) Her stroke of genius was that it was so economically put from a language perspective. And because there was basically no counterevidence, it demanded a certain attention.

SPIKE LEE (director, “BlacKkKlansman”) When black Twitter gets on your black ass … ooh, it ain’t no joke.

BARRY JENKINS (director, “Moonlight”) At a certain point, people just get fed up.

AVA DUVERNAY (director, “Selma”) It was a catalyst for a conversation about what had really been a decades-long absence of diversity and inclusion.

LEONARD It was the year after “12 Years a Slave” won. We had been led to believe that something substantive about the culture had changed. But then, just as in the transition from Obama to Trump, it turned out that maybe it hadn’t.

BOONE ISAACS It said a lot not just about the academy, but about America and where its bases of power are.

REIGN It could’ve been a bunch of different things — there were no women in the directors category, there were no visibly disabled people nominated — so #OscarsSoWhite has never just been about race. It’s about the underrepresentation of all marginalized groups.

At the center of the original #OscarsSoWhite debate was “Selma,” DuVernay’s film about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. Thought to be an early awards favorite, it was ultimately nominated only in the best song and best picture categories, with DuVernay and her star, David Oyelowo, left unrecognized.

LEONARD There was this attempt to say that Ava was just making a pro-black movie that was all fiction, and it was really L.B.J. that led the civil rights movement.

JENKINS I’m sorry, but the idea that “Selma” wasn’t an artfully made film was bull.

DUVERNAY I knew that I wouldn’t get director. But I really felt strongly that David would get actor. That really startled me and disappointed me.

In a “Brutally Honest” Oscar ballot published by The Hollywood Reporter in February, an anonymous Oscar voter called the decision by the cast of “Selma” to express support for #BlackLivesMatter at the film’s New York premiere “offensive.”

LEONARD There was this pushback like, “How dare these people speak up so aggressively.” It was the #AllLivesMatter response, but for movies.

DUVERNAY Studio people had been whispering to me, “You shouldn’t have done that.” But I would do it all again. If you cannot be respectful of our alignment with that cause, with that protest, with that rallying cry, then there was nothing that I wanted from you anyway.

‘A Shifting Tide’

On Jan. 14, 2016, all 20 Oscar nominations in the acting categories went to white performers for the second year in a row, elevating the stature of #OscarsSoWhite. (The next morning, a front-page headline in The Los Angeles Times asked: “Where’s the Diversity?”) At an emergency meeting a week later, Hudson, Boone Isaacs and the academy’s board of governors approved ambitious targets for a membership initiative known as A2020, aiming to double the number of women and ethnically underrepresented members in four years.

REIGN One time you could call a fluke, two times feels like a pattern.

BOONE ISAACS We had already been working toward increasing diversity and inclusion, but we went from first to fourth gear.

HUDSON A crisis happens, and it becomes a catalyst for accelerated change.

BOONE ISAACS The statistics showed that our membership was 94 percent white and 77 percent male. People would say to me that it wasn’t on purpose, and I would ask them: Are you sure?

LEE Cheryl Boone Isaacs really made it her mission to open things up so that the voting body looked more like America.

LEONARD It gave me a little bit of hope.

Later that month, The Hollywood Reporter published letters from academy members who opposed the changes. The new rules, these members said, implied that “all of us are racists,” were “capitulating to political correctness,” and “lessened” the academy’s value as “a measuring stick for excellence,” among other objections.

BOONE ISAACS I do have my share of hate mail for ruining the organization.

RUTH CARTER (costume designer, “Selma” and “Black Panther”) They were afraid of one drop of black blood.

REGINALD HUDLIN (film director and producer, 2016 Academy Awards ceremony) That kind of stuff is encouraging to me. If you don’t hear from those people, you’re not making a difference.

DENNIS RICE (member of the academy’s public relations branch) I think we have to create an environment that supports diversity within our industry, but I’m color- and gender-blind when it comes to recognizing our art. You should look purely and objectively at the artistic accomplishment.

BOONE ISAACS Are you kidding me? We all have biases. You just don’t see it if it doesn’t affect you.

HUDSON We needed to make sure the membership represented a wide swath of the community, and that it was looking at a wide swath of films.

LEONARD I think what happened with the academy forced conversations among decision makers across the industry. What are we doing here? Why are we making the decisions that we’re making? And oh, if we continue to make the decisions that we’re making, we will be called out about it.

Last year, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California reported a 13 percent increase in the number of top films with people of color in a lead role since the year #OscarsSoWhite began.

PETER RAMSEY (one of three directors of “Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse”) You could see the tide shifting a little from the same few recognizable, white stars to movies that were in tune with younger and more diverse sensibilities.

LEONARD All of this corresponds with a generation of filmmakers — Barry, Ryan [Coogler], Ava, Dee [Rees], Jordan [Peele] — who came up in the industry over the last 10, 15 years and knew that they had to be that much better to have the same chance that their white male peers would have.

RAMSEY The animation world has always been really homogeneous, but I’ve seen more and more people of color and women come to prominence. If you look at the slates of places like Pixar and Sony and Netflix, that stuff is translating to real change.

JENKINS It wasn’t about promoting diversity for diversity’s sake, it was about correcting a blind spot — the artists of merit have always been there.

On Feb. 28, 2016, the Oscar host Chris Rock delivered a litany of jokes about the academy’s lack of diversity on its own stage. But one bit, in which small Asian children portrayed “dedicated, accurate and hardworking” accountants, sparked outrage. A representative for Rock said he was unavailable to speak for this article.

REIGN I don’t think that went as well as they’d hoped.

LEONARD It was in poor taste. We can’t demand respect for a community that we’re in if we’re not willing to afford that same respect to other communities who have their own struggles.

HUDSON I don’t think Chris meant to offend, but it wasn’t in any way appropriate.

HUDLIN I trusted Chris to do what he does — I wasn’t there to supervise or manage him. But I was caught off-guard. The last thing I would ever want is to offend anyone. The only thing you can do is say that you’re sincerely sorry.

‘Feast or Famine’

On Feb. 26, 2017, the night of the first Oscars of the A2020 era, more than 20 people of color were in contention, including seven in the acting categories and Jenkins for “Moonlight.” The winners included Jenkins (as a screenwriter) and Mahershala Ali, for “Moonlight,” and Viola Davis for “Fences.” After a stunning mishap in which the award was erroneously given to “La La Land,” “Moonlight” also won best picture.

REIGN 2017 felt different.

RAMSEY The door was widening.

JENKINS I don’t know if the numbers were shifting things, but I do think perspectives were broadening. #OscarsSoWhite had put the fact that so many people were being overlooked under a microscope. If “Moonlight” had come out three years earlier, I’m not sure how many people would have picked up that screener.

LEONARD On the one hand, maybe the new members changed the trajectory. But on the other hand, maybe, like “12 Years a Slave,” it was just that much better than everything else.

CARTER It didn’t feel like it was the black vote or the diversity vote, it felt like it was the right vote.

At the 2018 Oscars, four people of color were nominated in the acting categories. Peele, nominated three times for “Get Out,” won for original screenplay. In 2019, Ramsey, Carter and Lee were among a record-breaking seven African-American winners at a single ceremony.

RAMSEY It was 2019 when things seemed to really be maturing. The feeling I had was, “Oh, I think this is real.” It felt solid.

LEE The one thing I regret is that there’s not a picture of us all together holding our Oscars. Because it was bananas. It was crazy up in there.

JENKINS I was getting a glass of Champagne, and I looked up at the monitor and I think Hannah [Beachler, production designer for “Black Panther” and “Moonlight”] was onstage. I was like “Oh [expletive] — has anybody white won an Oscar yet?”

CARTER It felt amazing to be there with Spike and to be able to thank him from the stage for giving me my start [on “School Daze” in 1988]. Later, I was just a few rows back while he was getting his.

LEE If it were not for April Reign’s hashtag and Cheryl Boone Isaacs being president — the work of two sisters — I would not have an Oscar.

REIGN I don’t believe in having one good night and then declaring, “Everything is great.” The pendulum swings back and forth, as we’ve seen.

This year’s nominations include just one actor of color (Cynthia Erivo), and eight of the nine best picture nominees feature overwhelmingly white casts. (Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” is the exception.) Still, the academy is on track to reach its diversity targets by this summer, according to a spokeswoman. In total, it has grown by more than 3,000 new members since 2016, a nearly 50 percent increase.

CARTER The 2020 nominations are shameful. I love Scarlett Johansson [nominated for both “Marriage Story” and “Jojo Rabbit”]. If she had played two very different characters in the same film the way that Lupita Nyong’o did in “Us,” might that have been deemed worthy of a nomination?

LEE After last year’s ceremony, I said, “It ain’t gonna be like this next year!” It’s always feast or famine with us.

DUVERNAY The majority of that voting body has not changed. It’s still 84 percent white and 68 percent male. From a voting perspective, even doubling the number of women and people of color doesn’t really tip the scales.

REIGN If you look at the demographics of this country or the demographics of moviegoers, we’re nowhere near true representation.

LEONARD You could have a year when literally every nominee is of color and that would still not mean that the systemic problems that exist in the industry have somehow evaporated overnight — any more than Obama being elected president means that we’ve solved the problem of racism.

REIGN We have to start way before the awards conversation. What kind of stories are getting greenlit? How are the characters described?

JENKINS I think we have to allow that the academy can have divergent tastes every year while still keeping the volume up and pointing things out. How can you have six Asian films that have received five or more nominations, and not one of them has ever been honored in the acting category? We just have to keep the conversation going and keep making movies.

LEE This thing’s not gonna turn around overnight. It’s been a battle from the beginning: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier. And why should we think that struggle is not a part of our existence?

BOONE ISAACS There’s always yin and yang, there’s always push and pull — always. But I am a big believer that you stay on point, you stay on goal, and you keep moving.

RAMSEY There’s too many other ways to get entertainment now than the tiny number of movies that get official academy recognition each year. #OscarsSoWhite is an alarm bell. It’s saying, “Keep up with us, or we’re going to leave you behind.”

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/oscarssowhite-held-up-a-mirror-hollywood-still-cant-look-away/

[sendingmylove]

Spring break? What's that? It's time to live and breathe design for my capstone exhibition 💀 Wish me luck. . . . . #wip #design #graphicdesign #adobe #indesign #photoshop #typography #photography #book #bookdesign #collage #art #asian #whitewashedout #help

[vlemx]

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@prilaga #whitewashsanddunes #whitewashedfloors #whitewashsurf #whitewashfloors #whitewashedoak #whitewashedhistory #prilaga #whitewashwood #whitewash #whitewashedmedia #whitewashwalls #whitewashfireplace #whitewashedwood #whitewashmagazine #whitewashed #whitewashedbrick #whitewashlabsuk #whitewashedwednesday #whitewashedfurniture #whitewashedwalls #whitewashedtattoo #whitewashlabolatories #whitewashlabs #whitewashfurniture #whitewashedout #whitewashbrick #whitewashwednesday #whitewashedfireplace #whitewashing #whitewashinghistory #whitewashedcottage https://www.instagram.com/p/Bve-S7QhNqM/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=xc8okehfmxiz

[starkdoctorwho]

Here's What Keiko Agena Thinks About Asian-American Representation On Gilmore Girls"

Keiko Agena and Emily Kuroda during the cast panel at Gilmore Girls Fan Fest on Oct. 21, 2017, in Kent, Connecticut.

Courtesy of Chela Crinnion

KENT, Connecticut - When Gilmore Girls first premiered on the WB in October of 2000, Lane Kim, portrayed by Keiko Agena, was one of the only young Asian-American characters on network TV. Her mom, Mrs. Kim (Emily Kuroda), was also a rarity: a Korean-born woman living in the otherwise very white fictional small town of Stars Hollow in Connecticut.

Gilmore Girls was sometimes applauded and sometimes criticized for its depiction of Asian-Americans, but in the 17 years since viewers were introduced to Lane and Mrs. Kim, conversations about Asian-American representation in Hollywood have gotten more pressing and heated. In May 2016, people used the hashtag #whitewashedOUT to express their feelings about Asian-American characters in film and television being replaced by white actors (most notably, Scarlett Johansson as the lead character in the live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, a Japanese anime).

Mrs. Kim (Kuroda) and Lane (Agena) on Gilmore Girls.

WB / Netflix

At the second annual Gilmore Girls Fan Fest in Kent, Connecticut, on Oct. 21, the topic of representation came up during a Q&A portion of a panel that included Agena and Kuroda. After noting that there still aren't enough Asian-Americans on television, one fan thanked Agena and Kuroda for being two strong, beautiful, intelligent women for her daughter to look up to. She then asked the actors if they looked up to any Asian-Americans on TV growing up.

When I grew up, I looked at Caucasian people and I just thought that I was them, I think," Agena admitted. "I just related to their stories and they were my heroes because I didn't have that, and I didn't know that I missed it. She continued: I didn't understand that that was a thing until now because things are changing. We get very excited when we see people of color, and especially Asian-Americans, onscreen. It is very moving and I think it's events like this and it's comments like that that really bring home what it means, and I have a different appreciation of that now because of this [festival] and because of you making that comment.

Agena explained that not as many people watched Gilmore Girls when it first aired on the WB, so the recognition for the show's diversity felt like a slow burn.

From left to right: Rose Abdoo, TVLine's Kim Roots, and Liz Torres at Gilmore Girls Fan Fest.

Courtesy of Chela Crinnion

For me, I sort of watched it grow in tiny little steps, and so I'm grateful to be a little part of the progression, she said.

Earlier on the panel, Rose Abdoo, who played Gypsy on Gilmore Girls, mentioned that she was thrilled to work with Liz Torres on the series because when she was younger, she looked up to the actor, who portrayed Miss Patty on Gilmore Girls.

I used to sit on Saturday nights and I would watch All in the Family with my family, Abdoo said of the series that costarred Torres as Theresa. We loved Sally [Struthers], of course, as Gloria, and I had a particular fondness for the upstairs neighbor, Theresa.

Abdoo, who grew up in Michigan, is of Lebanese and Dominican descent, while Torres is Puerto Rican. You're one of my idols, Abdoo said to Torres, who was also on the panel. I looked at you and thought, There's a lady with dark hair and big eyes on TV, and I wanted to be me because of you.

More

[thenerdsofcolor]

BuzzFeed's Susan Cheng on the State of AAPI Pop Culture

BuzzFeed’s Susan Cheng on the State of AAPI Pop Culture

It’s been nearly a year since we were hit with the double whammy of Tilda Swinton and Scarlett Johannson. Now with Iron Fist and Ghost in the Shell just around the corner, we’re joined by BuzzFeed News’ entertainment reporter Susan Cheng to let us know where Asian Americans currently stand in the greater pop cultural landscape. …

[diesh]

via Twitter

[0111001-blog]

Self Discovery & Sushi Rolls: A Personal Narrative

     When I was only one year old I was adopted from China and brought to America. As a child I had no concept of race or ethnicity, I thought nothing of it. When I began to realize I was different from the other kids I thought that it was a wonderful thing, until I was taught otherwise. 

     Only being a small kindergartener I learned that kids can be cruel and pick at you until you wish to be invisible. I remember going to school and being asked why my eyes are so small. That was my very first experience feeling bad about myself. From there the terrorizing only continued. I was bombarded with questions like “If you’re Asian why are your parents white?” or “So they aren’t your ‘real’ parents right?”. Throughout all of my elementary school days I remember feeling extremely out of place, a struggle I wish I didn’t have to go through. Every night I would pray that one day I could be as pale as the other girls in my class. Most of my childhood consisted of hoping that maybe someday God could make me white. 

    As I grew up, the pestering continued, but in different ways. As a child, most of the harassment came in the form of innocent questions, but it soon grew into harsh jokes that would make me grow achingly informed that I didn’t belong. I distinctly remember within the first few months of my freshman year I was at a party with a group of friends. We were all in the living room and the sun began to descend. People were starting to grow tired and the conversation went dull and faded into nothingness. The only sound in the room was the quiet hum of the television. As I diverted my attention to the screen I noticed there was an allergy commercial featuring a cute dog. Since dogs are my favorite animal, I instinctively got excited and broke the silence by saying “Look how cute that puppy is!” as I finished my statement, a person who I thought was my friend cracked  a joke and said “I bet you’d eat it”. Hearing someone who was completely unprovoked make a comment like that made me wonder if I was doing something wrong. I felt his words seep into my chest and I could barely develop coherent words. I almost felt like I deserved it, like I had set myself up just to get knocked down. I just accepted the fact that I couldn’t get mad because I brought it upon myself. As the gears in my head continued rotating, I was contemplating so many different things, but at the same time nothing in my head made sense. I was asking myself so many questions, but I had no answers. I was thinking so much, but the only thing I couldn’t quite think of was a response; and so I just laughed along with the rest of my white friends. Deep in my gut I felt extremely sick, and at that moment I just wanted to disappear. After I left his house, I thought about ways to avoid that friend for the rest of the week.

    A few months later, I had brought sushi to school for lunch. In the back of my mind I was nervous to bring it because I knew I’d get teased. Despite my conscious telling me no, I was still looking forward to eating it. When I pulled it out of my lunch bag, my friend to my left asked for a piece. As I handed it to him another boy across from me mumbled under his breath “Way to embrace your gross culture” while stifling a laugh. To divert the attention from me, or simply to talk about himself, I’m not sure which but frankly it didn’t matter to me, a third friend began to explain that he actually quite enjoyed sushi. While my other white friends began to agree with him and discuss their favorite fish combinations, a fire grew in my stomach. At first I was upset that this boy had the audacity to insult me incorrectly, considering sushi is Japanese, and not Chinese. The more I thought about it, the anger began to subside and turn into confusion because I started to realize that my “sushi eating culture” is more socially normal and accepted for white people, than it was for me. It seemed that I wasn’t allowed to enjoy something as simple as a snack without my race being dragged into it. My skin color was a burden, and at the time, I was far too weak to carry it.

    My self awareness intensified and I began to hide my culture the best I could, I would ignore when people asked me questions about my heritage and background. I asked my parents if we could stop going to the Chinese New Year celebration and I didn’t bring sushi to school anymore. I changed myself so much, that one day, the same boy who had patronized me countless times, including the time at lunch, had told me that I’m “basically white”. At that moment I thought that was the best compliment anyone could ever give me. I accepted it with a giant smile. The more I think about it now, I should have told him to leave me alone and that he was “basically the most annoying and prejudiced person I’d ever met”. I continued to be painfully aware that I wasn’t white but I did my best to act like I was anyways. I disassociated myself with my culture as much as people would allow me to. I didn’t stand up for myself or others anymore, I wanted to blend myself into the crowd as much as possible. I would stay silent when people made fun of my Asian classmates and pretend that my heart wasn’t breaking for them. Since then I have learned that remaining quiet is a form of violence as well.

    Being an Asian American I knew that people like me were in small numbers. Although it seems strange, I found a sense of pride again on Twitter. There was a hashtag trending titled #WhiteWashedOut. It was a collection of tweets from all sorts of Asian Americans explaining their backgrounds, experiences with racism, shutting down misconceptions, and most importantly, taking a stand against Hollywood for consistently casting white people in the roles made for Asian people, also known as whitewashing. I scrolled through the endless tweets until I reached the bottom. I read articles and watched videos of people describing problems that I have faced my entire life. For the first time in my life, I felt like there were people who understood me and I wasn’t alone. I continued to do research, and after months of hard work I slowly learned how to accept myself after years of hating my body.

    It’s easy to get broken down, and at times it feels nearly impossible to build myself back up. After all of the hours I’ve spent reading self help and surrounding myself with as much positivity as possible I’m still not all the way there. It’s difficult, but I’m constantly making progress. I’ve learned that I’m not alone and that countless people have endured similar hardships as me. I’ve learned how to love and accept myself. I just hope that one day others will understand and accept me as well.

    I don’t feel the same uneasiness I used to experience when people asked me about where I’m from. I’ve learned to Google “Asian makeup tips” without feeling ashamed. When someone mocks me by asking why my eyes are so small, I don’t laugh because I’m uncomfortable, like I used to. I laugh because they don’t realize that they’re making themselves sound foolish. I’ve become such a better person after realizing that being different makes life wonderful and much more exciting. I’m thankful that I’ve learned to love my situation and that the discomfort that has lived with me for so many years has finally moved out. As I have grown older things have gotten better, and I think that one day I might bring sushi for lunch again.