Posts tagged community

Aimee Suzara emailed us about an awesome theatrical project that she’s working on called “A History of the Body.” The piece has some overlap with our site, as it examines the impact of historic depictions and the exposition of Filipinos, as well as modern-day cosmetic skin whitening. 

In Aimee’s words:

The goal of this piece is to bring awareness to important, yet little-known, Filipino-American history and bring healing to the often-fragmented woman of color in America. The work has been presented as works-in-progress and staged readings, and supported by the Zellerbach Foundation, Kularts, Inc, and CounterPULSE. This year, the project was selected to be developed and presented by the historic Oakland Asian Cultural Center in 2012-13, with support of The East Bay Community Foundation and the City of Oakland’s Cultural Funding Program.

It looks like the project’s fundraising goal has eight more days to go and they’re almost there! We can’t wait to see it in person. Check it out and contribute if you can.

Read more here.

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My parents are Taiwanese immigrants and moved to the states in the late 70s. I am a first generation Taiwanese American. In fact, I just came back from a trip from Taiwan during my winter break from college. God the food was good!

I grew up in a house hold where we didn’t have much.  2 floor house with 3 families (1 on each floor including the basement) Mom would come home tired after work and cook whatever she lugged home from Chinatown all the way back to Brooklyn. Your basic meat, veggies, and rice. I always ate the meat, veggies were for the napkin, and later the trash. No money mean small portions of anything. I would always run upstairs to my grandpa and he’d make me fried rice. I did this for 3 years until 3rd grade. I was now the fat kid in class. 

Fast forward to highschool. I took up weight lifting. Turned some of that fat into muscle and started attracting some girls (not many) and was somewhat happy about having a stable weight. I had a pretty girlfriend, nice friends, and wasn’t doing too bad in school. Then college struck.

I was going to school in the midwest. I suspected that mid-westerners would be more overweight but apparently not. I struggled with the lack of Asian food found near my campus and succumb to eating the American, all day everyday. The only way veggies are done here is either boiled or drenched in butter. Luckily I joined a club(martial arts) which gave me a chance to work out “cardiovascular-ly” instead of just hitting the weights. I could run, I could kick, i could do a split(not really, but kinda) and felt life. My friends around me saw it too when I went back home for my first year in college. Than I quit that club to focus on my studies and social obligations and figured i’d have time later to work on myself. 4 years later, I’ve gained weight and with that some depression on how people looked at me. You can feel that they don’t look at you as a person, not your personality but what your thick dumpling skins says.

My mom would call me:

“Have you eaten yet” would be the first thing she says

“You know if you just lost a couple of pounds, you’d look perfect”

I saw the people in taiwan, and realize how much i dislike skinny jeans. But I did realize when talking to the locals there, their dumpling skin was very thick too. Their “filling” was what was shallow.

I’m working out now, little by little. I have a full engineering course load and little time to myself BUT! I did the math! 

For all your nerds out there. If I included a 2 credit class that I make up called “Have you taken care of yourself?” Then that means homework and studying for that class should be 10 hours a week for 2 credits. That’s all I can invest right now but working out, meditating, and walking around enjoying my city is, like my education, essential to my future. 

There was no lesson to be learned (unless you learned something then good for you!) I just want this for me, turn off the facebook, turn off the netflix, if you have enough room in your tiny apartment do some planks, do some push ups, jog in place. Screw it if your roommate wants to sleep at 2am and you’re trying to do some jumping jacks!

I am an engineering student, I have poor grades, I am a horrible writer.

Anonymous 

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My issues with weight and body image are like the many shared here on this site. My family, like others, didn’t think anything was wrong with calling you fat, hiding food from you, telling you no boy would date you if you didn’t lose weight, and talking about your weight behind your back. My mom made a point of complimenting my cousins and friends for being skinny in front of me. She always said they were skinny and beautiful. I have a handful of memories that probably run as deep as my issues with food and body. When I was 10 I was somehow in a conversation with my mother and aunt about weight. My mother looked at me and said, “You look fine. For now.” I asked her what she meant. She said, “You don’t need to lose any weight, but you better not gain any either. Your body is fine right now.” I remember feeling a deep sense of dread. I have felt, ever since, on the verge of becoming a disappointment by gaining weight. I have felt since then anxiety about being satisfied with myself “for now.” Some time in grade school I was working on an acrostic poem using the letters of my name. My dad leaned over at the unclaimed letters and pointed to the “A” in my middle name. “Why don’t you put there, Always Eating?” he said.

My family wasn’t abusive. They were kind people who didn’t know that I was developing a hatred of my body, a fear of food, and a desperate need for others to make me feel beautiful. They valued thinness but never taught me about exercise or nutrition. Being skinny was something you were just supposed to figure out somehow. My mom was a cook at a take out restaurant, so she never needed to exercise - her body was lean from those long, laborious days. But, I never learned what healthy eating was, or how to exercise regularly. My parents didn’t value sports or outdoor play. Do other Asian parents teach their kids about being healthy? Or are many left to feel like thinness and beauty are things we just don’t know how to have.

I read other stories here and at I’m at once comforted and outraged by our similarities. What does it reveal about us that we’ve been through these same conversations with our moms? That we’ve been called the same names, compared the same ways, made to feel like love was equal to fat jokes? I start to feel like my issues aren’t linked to my mom in particular, but to my mom being Chinese. I start to feel essentialized by my own experiences. I look back at my family and I feel like my life is a cliche, and I hate it.

Anonymous

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I was reading an article in Cosmo a couple of months back and it had an article on the up and rising uni-rexia cases. Uni-rexia is when girls AND guys go to university and instead of gaining freshman/fresher’s 15, they lose 15+ lbs. I’m a part of that statistic.

Firstly, I’m not Asian American, I’m British Chinese and I really admire that you started a website like this over the pond. God knows that we don’t have that here. Back to Uni-rexia, basically the main impetuses for this concept is that most students, when they enter university (despite it being the best time of our lives) feel lonely and insecure. I was exactly that and it didn’t help that I had visited Asia the summer I entered uni, and I was so infatuated with how thin everyone looked in Hong Kong and Korea. I was in one of the boutique stores in Hong Kong and these girls were looking at me in disgust. At this point I was 18, a bit plump, but still healthy. Of course it didn’t help with all the advertisements swimming around Asia flaunting diet pills.

The minute I got back to the UK and started uni, my mum didn’t watch over me to check if I’d eaten a healthy portion, and my weight drastically dropped in the space of two months. I looked gaunt and tired and my poor mum (who thought I was a little plump before) was so worried. Yet to the rest of the world (and my dad) - I looked like the ideal Asian girl and I was so flattered with the comments I got. I guess, my anorexia stemmed from my dad’s constant ‘fat’ comments and I had bombed my A-level results in my first year of sixth form. I’ve never felt so ashamed to be that imperfect Asian daughter. My eating disorder came from my need to impress my dad, and in the end they were not impressed at all (and quite rightly so).

Yet, during second year and my final year (now), I still struggled with my weight, and it was not until my housemates and my closest friends formed an intervention and made me open my eyes to my problem. One of my friends, who was a former anorexic, just couldn’t watch me do it and forced me to do a normal (her) vs. super skinny (me) eating lifestyle for two weeks to see what I was doing to my body. I’m getting there and I’d like to thank my friends for everything. I’m still recovering under the guidance of my former anorexic friend.

On a side note, I’m supposed to be heading to Hong Kong this summer and I’m now a healthy weight. I’m dreadfully scared that I’ll relapse into thinking to get thin again.

Anonymous| United Kingdom

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I wrote this over a year ago, but looking back at it, I think it still makes sense. A lot of the feelings are still there, but at the same time not. I’ve grown up in the year that’s passed, and in a lot of ways I’ve grown stronger. But, seeing this site, I feel compelled to share this old blog post because only by discussing these things can we learn to accept them and move past them. So, here it is:

My weight has become somewhat of a joke amongst me and my friends. Or at least, it is to them. I laugh about it, I joke about it, but I kind of wonder silently to myself how much of it is a joke and how much of it is really just me feeling insecure about it. I was at dinner last week with my friends and somehow the conversation got turned to crazy ex-boyfriends, specifically, my ex-boyfriend of last year who, for the most part, I don’t talk about and don’t reflect on anymore. And one of my friends just mentioned passively, “The one that made you stop eating.” And I could just see the look on people’s faces. The joke was over and shit got real, and I had to explain myself.

I wasn’t a skinny kid. I was always too overweight, too fat, too whatever. My pediatrician said that I needed to lose weight or else I would have health issues. My aunts and uncles called me “pig boy” and my mom would ask me out loud why I was so fat. I was twelve. Even when I started to lose the weight, it wasn’t enough. My doctor still said I wasn’t normal. And finally, I shrunk myself down to a size where nobody cared what I weighed, nobody talked about it, I was just an average 16 year old with an average 16 year old body. I was fine. And I stayed fine for a long time. I was happy with how I looked. Sure, every now and then I would decide to eat healthier or go on these kicks where I want to exercise and be healthy, but it wasn’t like I was pathological about it or about food.

And then shit happened. I dated a guy. He didn’t make me stop eating. I think if he had told me to stop eating, I wouldn’t have done it and I would have just left it alone. It was the little things he would do. Criticize a dinner choice, nitpick at what kind of food I was eating or my friends were eating, or calling people fat - even the girl who plays Julie on “Desperate Housewives.” I was wearing a size medium and he would say, “How can you wear a size medium? You should be wearing a small” and he’d give me an amazing expensive track jacket or a t-shirt that was small or extra small. Fat was bad, fat was lazy, fat was disgusting. And I wasn’t fat, but it was like everything I did, everything I ate was going to make me fat. So I stopped eating those things. Eventually I stopped eating altogether, with the exception of eating a head of lettuce now and then, chewing sticks of gum, and occasionally throwing in a banana or an orange. I wouldn’t say I had an eating disorder, and I didn’t think I had an eating disorder. I’m a psychology major, I learned about these things, I’m not supposed to do these things. And people said I looked great. What was my secret?

I spent days just lying on my sofa because I couldn’t stand up. I didn’t feel hungry, I just couldn’t do anything. I didn’t have the energy to muster standing, so the days that I wouldn’t have to move, I didn’t. And I went crazy. I yelled, I lashed out, I freaked out. All my thoughts, all my feelings, everything was all about this one nagging thing - my body. It didn’t look like anything had changed that drastically, so it must’ve meant that I wasn’t doing it right, it must’ve meant that I had to eat even less and less and less. And nobody knew. I didn’t want them to know. And then he broke up with me and I’d eat everything in my kitchen. Everything in sight. And then I wouldn’t, and then I would, and then I wouldn’t. And it lasted for maybe six or seven months altogether.

And up until last week, I think only a handful of people really knew the extent of it. And when I saw my friends looking at me with these horrified faces, I knew it wasn’t something funny. And I could try to play it cool and try to play it off like it’s not a big deal because I am embarrassed; I am ashamed. But, I have to own up to what happened finally. To some extent, I’m a hypocrite. I tell people to love themselves, but to a certain degree, I hate myself. And I’m not here trying to get sympathy. I’m not here trying to get attention. I’m saying, this shit happens, and you might not see it, and the people around you might not say it, but it’s real.

Anonymous

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I’ve been reading your blog for a while and I’ve decided that I wanted to share my story. I’m 15 years old right now and just started my freshman year of high school last September.

My last year of middle school was a whirlwind. I was diagnosed with anorexia. I don’t exactly remember when my eating disorder started, but I think it started way before 8th grade. In 6th grade, I didn’t have any thoughts of losing weight or dieting. I was eating normal, had friends, and was even on the cross country team! That was my best year.

In 7th grade, a lot of pressure came down on me from my parents to get straight As. I was smart, but English was always difficult for me and every time my report card came, I would get a B+. I guess that is where my eating disorder came from. I started lowering my food intake and slowly lost weight. My doctor didn’t notice anything wrong and neither did I. When summer came, I had lost 20 lbs already and my eating disorder only got worse. In the summer I had managed to lose 25 more pounds. My mind was so lost at that time. All I cared about was losing weight. I began comparing myself to people and they became my inspiration to lose more weight. My doctor caught on to me when I came in to an appointment and lost over half my original weight. At first she didn’t think it could be an eating disorder. A month later, my weight became “dangerously” low and she had to send me to a hospital 1 and a half hours from our house. I stayed there for 2 weeks and was diagnosed with Anorexia nervosa. At the hospital, I was put on bed rest and since I was getting treatment for anorexia, I needed to follow their meal plan or get a feeding tube =( Of course I followed it. A tube seemed painful and if i had to eat i might as well enjoy it.

After the hospital, I was sent to a mental ward. I hated it 100%! It wasn’t even for eating disorders. I didn’t fit in! Everybody there was older than me ( i was only 14 and most people were 16) and they were all there for the same thing - depression and anger issues. I was the odd one out. I figured that I needed to get out as soon as I can so I faked my recovery saying things like “I understand why I need to eat” and things like that. I was discharged in 15 days! For my treatment plan afterwards, I went to therapy once a week. I didn’t like it all, and I told my mom. She agreed that there was nothing wrong and I didn’t have to go anymore.

Right now I am still 5’3 (the same height as I was in 5th grade) and 120 lbs. I hate it, but I know that if I lose too much, I would be sent back to the hospital. I get weigh ins with my doctor every 6 months and she trusts my weight to stable. I’m hoping that by the time that I am 18, I will be able to recover and not go back to my old ways. .. but it’s hard to know. I’m stuck between trying to recover on my own just waiting till I am an adult. ..

Mindy | Groton, Connecticut | USA

My name is Mindy and I am 14. Currently a freshman in high school. I live with my mom, dad and younger sister. Gymnastics is my favorite sport and even though I am 14 which is kinda old, I would like to be able to compete one day!

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I wrote a one-woman show SLANTED many years ago about growing up as an overweight Chinese American girl in FL.

The show opened with this:

8 YR. OLD ANDREA

“Allah? Ama said if I ask, you will give so when I grow up, I want to be a skinny white American girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. I want everyone to like me. And I want that pink bicycle, the one with the flowers on it. And those gold knickers, the ones that go up to here like Erica has in school. (Bends down in prayer pose) Oh, and please give my family and friends good health and happiness. (Bows her head but then remembers) And I don’t want to be a Chinese Muslim anymore, I want to be Catholic…”

ANDREA (NARRATION)

It was 1983 in Ft. Lauderdale, the Spring Break capital of the world. Everyone was tan, skinny, and hot but above all, just down right white and beautiful. Then there was me. I was the first child in my entire ancestry to be born in America. You’d probably all call it good luck, but I felt like I was a fuckin’ catastrophe in waiting ‘cause in the middle of this paradise, I was born into a short, stocky, yellow colored, wacky family living in a one-story red brick house. From the outside, things looked pretty normal, but as you entered my house, you couldn’t help but notice the tug-of-war between old Chinese culture and new American opportunity especially in my mother’s domain, a state-of-the art classic seventies bright yellow kitchen which smelled like Panda Express.

So, of course, being Asian AND fat…well, let’s just say, I endured some horrible name calling and felt like an outcast, which lead to more issues:

ANDREA (NARRATION)

That was the end of bringing my mother out in public. She deserved to be punished so I’d give her the silent treatment.  I’d turn the TV volume to the max to tune her out, but her God-given voice could never be ignored…

Jin May aka “Ama” massages her face and pats her neck, while watching Andrea.

JIN MAY

Massage your face, that way not wrinkles. Pat your neck, no double chin…Are you watching Genital Hospital? It’s so loud. Can you hear me, can you hear me?

ANDREA

How can I not hear you?

JIN MAY

Oh, hello. How was school today?

FLASHBACK: DAY IN THE SCHOOL CAFETERIA

BRANDON

Hey Andrea, whatcha mom make ya for lunch? Ching-gong-ching-gong, bok choy, looks like fried chicken feet to me! Ya know, I was talking about you’s to my grandfather last night.  We were sayin’ how all of you’s look the same, can’t even tell the difference, ya know? Black hair, big faces, yellow skin, your eyes are so small, we can’t even see ‘em. That’s a nice Gucci purse… 

Brandon snatches Andrea’s purse.

ANDREA

(Tries to grab it) Give me back my purse!

BRANDON

(Taunting) You fat Mongolian, you ugly Mongolian…

ANDREA

I’m not Mongolian!

BRANDON

…You fat Mongolian, you ugly Mongolian…

ANDREA

Give it back! (Snatches it back) I didn’t do anything to you!

Andrea runs to the bathroom and purges a little of her mother’s food.

PRESENT TIME:

ANDREA

School was okay.

JIN MAY

You make nice friends yet to have over here?

ANDREA

Some, but I’d rather go over their house.

JIN MAY

Oh. What you want for dinner? You tell me, I make. (Crosses to the kitchen and puts her apron on) I make you fung, noodles, sugee, gumba. You tell me, I make.

ANDREA

(Opens the refrigerator) I want McDonald’s.

JIN MAY

McDonald’s? Why you want McDonald’s? I cook such good food…

ANDREA

…Because that’s what I want. (Takes out a food container) I want a quarter pounder with cheese and french fries and an apple pie. 

She puts the container back and slams the refrigerator.

JIN MAY

(Takes off her apron) Okay, we eat McDonald’s tonight. 

Food became such a comfort for me. And I didn’t have much luck with boys. And unfortunately, my eating disorder continued…

ANDREA (NARRATION)

We arrived to the dance and stepped into this grand beach side hotel. The ballroom was filled with pastel colored balloons floating in the air.

She sees Nonie and Rina.

ANDREA

Hey, there’s Nonie and Rina!

ANDREA (NARRATION)

It was time to strut our stuff on the dance floor…Hit it!

Nonie, Rina and Andrea are dancing to their favorite song, “You Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer. Andrea is off beat the whole time.

ANDREA

Rina, tell me the truth. Do I look fat?

RINA

No, Andrea. Your diet worked, you look great.

ANDREA

Do you see Lou anywhere? I don’t see him anywhere, have you guys seen him?

NONIE

I think I saw him near the bathroom. 

ANDREA

Okay, I’ll be back. 

She walks away through the crowd.

ANDREA

(To fellow party people) Excuse me…Hi..Oh, thanks…

She overhears a guy JIMMY talking to LOU in the bathroom.

JIMMY

So Lou, are you gonna fuck Andrea?

LOU

(Pushing him) Hell yeah. I’ve never fucked a Chinese girl before. (Fixes his bow tie) Do I look okay?

ANDREA (NARRATION)

In that moment, I wanted to go back and ask the one thing I never did.

IN A DREAM-LIKE SEQUENCE, SHE TURNS TO HER MOTHER AS A LITTLE GIRL:

ANDREA

Ama, what do I say when they make me feel bad about myself?

JIN MAY

Sweetheart, just smile big and say, Nee Jigou Wong Ba Dan, Nee Che Da Bein Sze Deeyou. 

Andrea comes back to reality where she just heard Lou’s words. She walks away and bumps into people.

ANDREA

(To fellow party people) Sorry…so sorry…

ANDREA (NARRATION)

And I didn’t feel like a princess anymore. I left the dance early and back at home, I had this void in myself that I needed to fill. 

Andrea opens the refrigerator.

ANDREA

I filled it with massive amounts of food…Chow fun, beef bao, chicken fried rice, lichee. 

She purges in the bathroom toilet and stares at her face in the mirror.

JIN MAY

(Knocking) What are you doing in there?…Are you sick?…Let me in, I can help you!

ANDREA

(Covering up) No! I mean yes! I mean I’m sick, just wait a second! I think I ate something bad. Hold on… hold on! (Opens the door) Hi.

JIN MAY

Hello. You look tired, your face all red, you okay?

ANDREA

Yeah I’m fine, I’m just tired, I’m gonna go to bed.

JIN MAY

Wait, I have questions. How was dance and is Lou your boyfriend now?

ANDREA

No, he’s not my boyfriend. Guys don’t date girls like me. Do you ever see mixed couples around here? If you do, everyone stares at them. Why would a guy want me when he could have an American girl?

JIN MAY

Because you are more special. You are different.

ANDREA

Then they’ll just want me because I’m different…

JIN MAY

No, that’s not what I mean…

ANDREA

I don’t want to talk about it. Good night. 

Over the following years, I grew to appreciate my ancestry and everything my parents went through to get to America. I was proud of being Chinese and when I moved to LA, well, I felt right at home! 

The show ended with this:

ANDREA (NARRATION)

And I knew that it would never end, that there’d always be somebody out there ready to knock me down, making me want to raid the fridge and run for the toilet…But I try my hardest not to because I am not going down like that…But I do cry and I kick and scream at the world until I am physically exhausted…And now I see myself as I truly am and I am flawed and I am imperfect, and that is what makes me beautiful…And I hope that day will come when I can face my worst demon in the eyes and in a loud and clear voice, say what my mother had taught me: NEE JIGOU WONG BA DAN, NEE CHE DA BEIN SZE DEEYOU… Which in translation means EAT SHIT AND DIE ASSHOLE. Now that, would make my mother proud.

The show was a very therapeutic and lovely experience. I have been able to face my worse demons and tell a certain few off in my adult life! And I’ve been able to keep the story alive in adapting it into a TV pilot and a web series. Now, I’d be lying if I said I’m 100% secure of myself everyday. It’s still a battle and I struggle with everything. But no matter what the day brings, I can say that I love who I am inside, and I’d rather be me than any other person on this earth.  

Andrea Lwin | Los Angeles, CA | USA

Andrea Lwin is an actress/writer living in Los Angeles, CA. Aside from credits in both film (Underground Comedy Movie 2010 with Adrien Brody, Mini’s First Time with Alec Baldwin) and TV (90210, Party Down, So Notorious, Alias), Andrea’s most proud body of work is her highly praised autobiographical one-woman show, SLANTED. With producing partner/director, Cristina Anderlini, they have co-created the adaption of SLANTED into a web series (LA Web Series Outstanding Achievement Awards, Rising Star Award at the Women’s International Film Festival) and a TV Pilot (Slamdance Finalist).  

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Yes, you read that right. I really want(ed) to be brown.

I can tell that this narrative is going to be different from others. But it’s the truth: I grew up wanting to be brown.

Let me elaborate on this so it makes more sense. My mother was born in the Philippines. She is one of twelve children, all of whom possess very dynamic personalities. She moved permanently to California after graduating from UP Diliman with a degree in statistics. The American Dream so many immigrants hold close to their hearts became a reality for her; Through a combination of good work ethic and the privilege of a quality education, my mother implemented herself full force into the working world, where she met my father.

My father, on the other hand, is as White as White can be. He’s lived in nearly every state on the West Coast, and speaks little languages other than English. To his credit, he’s really cultured, and does his best to be educated and substantive on global issues without taking up too much space. I can tell he fell in love with my mother for her heart and soul, and not to fulfill some sick fetish. This vibrant love, odd as it might have seemed to everyone else, eventually led to my birth in 1988. I was a week late, sideways, and not moving despite the efforts of my tenacious mother. This should have been a tragic foreshadowing of conflicts to come, but my mother decided to keep me anyway. (That was a joke.)

I grew into a young boy with hazel eyes and dark brown hair. I remember my eyes being a source of intrigue for all adults around me. It didn’t take me very long to notice that I looked absolutely nothing like my cousins. I was a lone fair-skinned boy in a family almost completely populated by young men and women with beautiful, deep, brown skin. It was never mentioned out loud (well, not to my face) but it was definitely perceived on this end.

Union City is an amazing place to raise a child. The sheer diversity of the suburb forces parents and children to confront those with different backgrounds without even trying. In the earlier years of my childhood, I was too oblivious (and having too much fun) to make any links between skin color, ethnicity, beauty standards, and the like. As I grew older, I became to draw on these connections, but in a way that I feel differs greatly from other Asian American narratives. I don’t know if I can chalk it up to growing up in a family that possesses immense pride in Philippine cultural heritage or if it’s because the resources in Union City were decent enough that it was easy to find other Filipino Americans, but in any case: I inherited the belief that brown skin was beautiful. Yeah, Sleeping Beauty was white and blonde, as was her prince, but the men and women in my family’s television shows were brown. The boys and girls my cousins had crushes on in school had short black hair and dark brown skin. The music we listened to on the radio was performed by brown and black artists. I can’t say the rest of my family consumed these influences the same way, but for me, they set the standard.

I am eternally grateful that I was raised in an community where having brown skin, dark hair, and dark eyes could become a source of empowerment rather than a marker of difference like it has proven to be in so many other communities. Yet I can’t say I was exactly thrilled when it finally dawned on me in 3rd grade that I didn’t actually have dark skin, dark hair, or dark eyes. I’ll never forget the day that I took my “Most Improved” Photo for Tae Kwon Do class. It hung on the wall for about a month. I remember feeling very proud of myself for finally getting on that damn wall of achievement until the polaroid was push-pinned on. What I saw staring back at me in the picture was a lanky boy with terrible posture who looked so pale he could pass for a corpse. I wasn’t proud anymore. When I got home, my mom instantly took notice of my mood. I confessed how I felt in the only way I possible I could articulate: “I hate being White. I want to be brown.” I can tell that as a mother she wanted to comfort her child, but as a strong-willed woman and as the wife of a White husband, she also didn’t hesitate to remind me that thinking in such a self-deprecating manner was both shallow and offensive to my father.

As the years progressed, I grew - both vertically and horizontally. It was nobody’s fault but my own; my parents really did all they could to try and foment a love for vegetables within me but their prayers went unanswered. However, it never occurred to me to think of myself as unattractive for being fat because, for so many years prior, I had already considered myself unattractive for being white. When I look back on it, it’s eerie how my skin color took precedence over all other insecurities. My teeth were crooked, I wore glasses, and I was overweight, yet above all these things, I only obsessed over how my skin set me apart from my cousins and my friends. Unsurprisingly, this was the one insecurity that stood the test of time, as braces, contact lenses, and intense puberty took care of the other sources of unhappiness for me.

High school was a lot of joy and pain. I was picked on for the way I dressed and for my proportions despite having lost a substantial amount of weight. People would stare daggers at me if I came to school with a shirt on that indicated in any way I was remotely related to someone from the Philippines. The same occurred the few times I attempted to join our school’s Filipino Youth Association. I remember being very, very interested in our school’s Asian American Studies class, and being elated at having the opportunity to really learn about my people. I could only wish my teacher’s appreciation for my enthusiasm were matched by some of my classmates. People were not shy about whispering to each other loudly, inquiring as to why (the hell) I was in the class. The pride I had in who I was, the pride my family had worked so hard to instill within me and within each of my cousins, was slowly but inexorably disappearing. At one point I dreaded coming to school. It was too much to deal with people telling you that literally everything about you was wrong. Accepting my sexual identity as a queer male only exacerbated things. Yet somehow, by my senior year I can say I was confident with how I looked. I had a decent circle of friends, my braces were off, and I was better dressed. The one thing remaining was my white skin.

College was more or less a deja vu experience. I gained a ton of weight and lost it all within the course of three years. I learned to care a lot more about how to present myself because there were far more people in college and I had developed the belief that I was capable of dating one of them. I became obsessed with how I ate, because after two instances of getting fat and having the opportunity to lose the weight, I didn’t want to make the same mistakes a third time. A lot of the things I complained about in high school were absent in college - I was able to join Kaibigang Pilipino without receiving death stares or questionable reactions from those already established. I was able to take Asian American Studies courses and provide input without enduring the whispers around me. It wasn’t until I attempted to discover a new side of myself as a Queer Pinoy that my paleness decided to come back into my life as a perennial burden.

Please understand that my experience is but one of many, and it’s not my intention to generalize anyone’s experience through narrating my own. The vibe I received from attempting to permeate the queer subculture was that things were really territorial. Knowing the right people - and them knowing you - were the two most important things. And to have that power, I gathered that I needed to be especially attractive to others. As my attempts to reach out to people faltered miserably, I began developing the idea that no amount of education, no amount of awareness of my heritage or history, no amount of inner peace would count for anything if the exterior didn’t fit into the narrow stencils provided. At that point I didn’t need a reflection in the mirror to realize I didn’t look anything like the other “more conventional” Queer Pinoys. Nevertheless I spent countless hours obsessing over this reflection, wondering what I could feasibly do to alter what I saw in the mirror so that other men would appreciate it. It didn’t occur to me how self-deprecating such thought processes were because when you’re outnumbered by a majority that’s so dominant, it becomes incredibly difficult to maintain hold of your logic.

I had lost myself in what others wanted. It became easy to dismiss compliments because they weren’t coming from men I wanted to court. In fact, I got into the habit of deflecting compliments with reminders of my other deficiencies. It wasn’t enough that a friend thought I was photogenic or my smile was genuine because I didn’t have visible abdominal muscles, large arms, or a large chest - and perhaps most importantly, that I didn’t have a man, since if I really were so photogenic, wouldn’t I have been cute enough for someone? It frightens me how real this all was. I was at least smart enough to supplement my endless bitching with action, and before long, I had developed a routine at the gym which I to this day maintain.

I admit that in recent years, this addiction to the gym has been rather fruitful. Slowly but surely, my body is starting to look like what i wanted it to be when I was an undergrad. The one insecurity that remains through all the crunches, squats, lifts, miles, jumping jacks, and protein shakes is the factor which has been so divisive for years; I am still white. I am trying very hard to accept that this might not ever change, unless I bathe in sunless tanner or subject myself to intense skin cancer risk by laying out excessively. I cannot lie though - it is still difficult to confront. When I go to the Castro, I see people who are more fit than me and I see people who carry more weight, and I notice that, whatever the build, these men are at least aligned in their skin tone to make some sort of a majority. I can’t help but stand out in the spaces I inhabit, and yet at the same time I feel insignificant for having fair skin, as if I am a piece of furniture being glossed over. Some people have implied to me that feeling awkward and singled out is par for the course, since the establishments I frequent were created in the interest of absolving Queer Asians from similar feelings at unofficially White institutions. I definitely agree with this but I also don’t see how this imbalance should deprive me of the right to feel comfortable in my Filipino skin even if it is not the same brown that everyone else esteems.

I am now 23, and am doing my best to heal. I have the immense privilege of good friends who know what is best for me, and possess nothing but honesty and genuine care for my well-being. It’s a huge sigh of relief to know that I can have such a support system. The most important thing they’ve taught me is that ultimately, whatever opinions society as a whole can conjure up will always be subordinate to how I feel about who I am and what I do. I understand that it’s up to me to decide how comfortable I am with my skin, and that nobody can make me feel inferior without my consent. At the same time, I wonder if I will get over myself, and if I’ll ever allow my talents and ambitions to completely eclipse these more superficial concerns. I do believe I have that capacity, but I am anxious to discover when this goal will be reached. Until that day comes, I am working vigilantly to fall in love with everything about me - my accomplishments, my shortcomings, my gains, my losses, and even my ambivalence, so that I can afford myself the best possible view of everything.

Adam | NorCal, CA | USA

Pinoy, Queer, White, Male. In that order. Adam is a wannabe scholar seriously considering grad school and a voracious karaoke enthusiast.

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There are so many communities in which I feel like an outsider. I was born in Seoul, South Korea and was adopted by a white family from the US when I was eight months old. My family never treated me any differently, but by the time I was school aged, I realized how being Asian in a predominantly white school made me different, even at age five. I didn’t know what I was “supposed” to look like or how to dress, but I knew that though I wasn’t the “ideal,” I wasn’t even the “norm.”

I remember thinking my thighs were fat when I as about eight. This seems too early, but when the other girls were wearing the “slim” girl sizes, I had to wear the “regulars.” As I transitioned into juniors sizing just as I was about to enter high school, I skipped over size 0 entirely, and started with 1. Eighth grade was the first time I ever purged. In high school, I began a routine of binging and purging or sometimes just purging. I played sports and was active in the community and my high school and no one was the wiser.  

As I started dating, this problem only got worse. My self-esteem was so absent that I would gladly agree to go out with anyone who would have me. This included boys that were mostly interested in the fact that I am Asian. Or at least, that I look Asian. Except, I don’t have any of the cultural background expected of me, so I wasn’t even what they were really looking for in a girlfriend. I spent so much time worrying about how I looked and how to become more “Asian” because deep down, I knew I was an impostor. My weight dropped to 95 lbs and I was still disappointed in myself for being so “fat” and “un-Asian.”  Why weren’t those 0 pants 00s instead?  

Eventually I got to college and through a series of stupid choices, I ended up in the ER and was told that the only way I was leaving was to get outpatient therapy. I’m so grateful for that therapist. We worked out my identity and self-image issues and I’m so much better for that. So where am I now?  I’m heavier than I’ve ever been and I’m struggling with the same feelings of self-hatred and self-doubt. How did I get to be this fat?  Why can’t I just stop eating?  Except now I’m married to a wonderful, loving, supportive guy and we’re working through my issues so that I can be healthier and our marriage can get stronger.

Anonymous

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I thought I wanted to be thin, but I think what I really wanted was to be white.

My anxiety over my weight started all the way back in junior high. I was one of only three or four Asian kids in my small-town Midwestern middle school. I didn’t really know the other Asian kids well, and I didn’t feel I fit in with the white friends I’d made in grade school anymore. You know how it is. In grade school, it’s all about kickball, foursquare, and P.E. classes designed around playing with giant parachutes. Middle school is a whole different ballgame. The popularity contest kicks into high gear. Groups of friends morph into cliques; innocent giggles about boys turn into hardcore scheming for dance invitations and the chance to be a couple. All of a sudden, beauty matters—really matters. And I, the brainy Chinese girl with the glasses, didn’t feel I had it.

So I started obsessing about my weight. Who knows why I fixated on that, given that I was, I know now, actually very slight. I suppose simply because the predominant message the culture throws at insecure girls and women is that there’s something wrong with their weight. I was convinced I was fat, and that if I wanted to fit in, if I wanted to be liked, if I wanted to be popular, if I wanted to be happy, I had to lose weight.

Except it wasn’t about weight. Looking back on myself then, I realize that whenever I pictured how I would look once I reached whatever target weight I’d chosen, I pictured myself as Niki Taylor or Christy Turlington. In other words, I pictured myself as white.

It sounds crazy, I know. Why equate white with thin when, on average, Asians like myself are thinner anyway? But here’s the logic, as far as I can remember it: Thin = beautiful and white = beautiful, so thin = white. I wasn’t beautiful, therefore I must not be thin, but if I could get “thin,” I could be beautiful, which meant…white.

It took me years to get beyond that thinking. I dieted all through my adolescence. Slim-Fast, the cabbage soup diet, the all-purpose eat-as-little-as-possible diet. I exercised obsessively, tracked my use of workout videos in a little diary in which I also recorded my waist, hip, thigh, and calf circumferences.

None of it worked, obviously. No amount of diet or exercise could make me white, and no amount of diet or exercise could make me like myself as I was. I finally stopped when an old schoolmate told me that I looked like I was dying.

It’s hard to imagine feeling like that now. I’ve grown up and grown out of self-hate. I’ve grown to accept and embrace myself. But I still don’t have any pictures of myself during those times. I must have gotten rid of all of them in some final burst of self-rejection, or maybe it was just too hard at one point to remember how I was back then.

It took me a long time to come around. I’m glad I did, and I’m glad I don’t envision my ideal me as white. I don’t know if it’s any different for young Asian-American girls now, given that there’s a more diverse representation of ethnicities in the pop culture. I really hope so, but I know that at the end of the day, there will always be girls who struggle. This is for those girls: It does get better.

Jude | San Diego, CA | USA

Jude is an occasional fiction writer and an English major in San Diego, California.

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