I’ll be honest, I haven’t done any writing today. I forced myself yesterday, with everything that was going on…and it stressed me out.
I still want to write today, and I do plan on it, but for today’s blog, which I am posting very late in the day, I thought it might be better to share some videos that I feel are important.
These videos highlight why I feel it is important to have diversity in art and the media.
I want to show perspectives from all sides, not just my own. Things that affect my friends, family and my community…and how harmful the lack of diversity in the media truly is, and why as artists we need to take this into consideration.
This first video talks about beauty standards in the Philippine’s, specifically looking at skin lightening and the impact it has on women. Clariz talks about how the media tries to make it look as though there are only “light-skinned” Filipino’s through their casting, advertisements etc…when 90% of the population has dark skin. Many of their stars and celebrities are mixed race (with white) or foreigners, and therefore have lighter complexions. The lighter skinned characters in their films and shows are portrayed as the leads, and depicted as having glamorous lives while the darker skinned cast members are often depicted as lower class.
This is extremely similar to how in North American media, mixed people and light-skinned people, are often cast to represent and portray POC (this includes Asian, Indian, Indigenous) on television…and how the lighter skin characters tend to have better narratives, whereas the darker character’s are portrayed as less than or negatively stereotyped.
This is a problem, and it really needs to stop. I hate seeing shows where the darkest female character is “rude, arrogant and bossy” and the writers pretend that she’s just “confident.” Those are negative stereotypes attributed to the colour of a character’s skin.
The art community needs to do better.
As Clariz said in her video, “The problem they have right now is that they just don’t have enough representation where people can actually see themselves on T.V.”
Something that resonates with what I discussed in my blog post on Writing Diverse Character’s. We writers are just as responsible as visual mediums are, for creating proper representation.
Something that myself, and my parents loved about Bratz dolls when I was a little girl, was that there was actual representation.
Now, although I love my Sasha dolls, when rewatching a Bratz Kidz film with my 8 year old niece, my niece pointed out that Sasha was very rude and mean towards her friends. Sasha’s character, was always bossy. This is a negative stereotype, that was used in a children’s television series, with toys (that I loved), that portrayed Cloe as this sweet, overly anxious blonde, in contrast to Sasha, who was much of the time a bully.
Sasha was also known for having great taste in music, and for being an amazing dancer. Also stereotypes. She could have been an animal lover, like Yasmin, or been into design like Jade, or dealt with severe anxiety like Cloe…but no. She was written as a bossy black girl, who has good rhythm.
If an 8 year old little girl can see it, how many other little girls do you think resonated with the animations version of Sasha?
Yes, I loved my dolls, they had the same skin tone as my mom and my aunts and cousins. When I played with them, they weren’t stereotyped like this. Since I had so many Sasha dolls (because it wasn’t easy to get dark skinned/tan Barbie’s at the time), I made them one big family of sister’s. The oldest sister, named Big Sasha always looked out for her younger sister’s. She helped them with their homework, loved their pets and she always bought them ice cream.
Like…they could have written her like that, but they didn’t.
I still love the brand, and the dolls because I loved having dolls that looked like my friends (one in every colour), but from 2020 onward, I don’t want to see these racial stereotypes in children’s entertainment.
Sasha deserved better.
The next video is by 16 year old Nana, who talks about what it is like being a dark-skinned black woman during black history month. She starts off by highlighting colourism, which was addressed in Clariz’s video on Filipina beauty standards (posted above), and explains how there are different privileges and stereotypes for people based on their complexion. As she says early in the video, “It took me a while to learn to love my skin,” which Clariz also said in hers when talking about how at age 11 she was bleaching her skin.
These are young girls, and Nana states this. I love when she points out how problematic this is:
“Why should I as a 16 year old girl in this ever changing society, have to learn to love their skin? That’s how you know how much colourism has impacted me, or has always been in the back of my head.”
This really hurts my heart.
I don’t think people understand that, for POC, these conversations, thoughts etc. are apart of their every day. It isn’t a trendy topic that just pops up on Twitter or on your favourite morning gossip show once every few months. These are ongoing issues.
Nana talks about how in her sixteen years, she has always know that lighter-skinned black girls are viewed in one way, and darker-skinned black girls in another. One being considered “better” than the other, and one only being celebrated because it is currently “trendy” in the media (this video being made around Black Panther’s release). She also points out how when you type #naturalhair on Instagram, you will get light-skinned girls with bouncy curly hair.
I know this to be true…and those girls are more often than not mixed race. I know this, because I myself am a mixed race girl, with this hair texture.
Girls with tighter curls and different textures are under represented on social media. Since 2018, this has at least improved a little on Google Search (Instagram unfortunately is still the same). You will however notice in this collage that I made of the first images I got that 2 of these women are mixed race.
You might also notice that each of these women have different hair textures! Which in my personal opinion, is a good thing, because it does show diversity, and what is natural hair for EACH of these women, and women who are like them. It allows for people to see themselves. Something that Clariz felt was missing in the media representation of Filipina’s.
I love how Nana throughout her video breaks things down from stereotypes and slight-derogatory compliments (i.e. “you’re pretty for a black girl”), and how harmful they are. Her video highlights why it is so important to listen to peoples voices both within and outside of your community.
This next video is by Sherliza Moé, where she talks about Colourism in Asia.
By this point, I’m sure you are seeing a pattern here. Sherliza however, speaks about how there is a misconception that Asian people who want to lighten their skin are trying to “look European/white” but in reality, this desire had been around long before they had been influenced by European and American media and beauty standards. Much like the European hierarchy, if you were rich, you were indoors and therefore less likely to have a darker complexion compared to someone who was working outdoors. Having a lighter complexion was associated with wealth, and having a darker complexion was associated with poverty.
“This is so ingrained in Asian people that we still carry these colouristic views today, but of course history is not the only thing to be blamed for colourism, but media is to blame too,” she says, before heading into her rant about Asian media.
I like that in this video she includes advertisements from of Asian and Indian actors and actresses, clearly stating how having a lighter complexion will help them win in life.
This is so harmful and damaging. In the one, women continue to mistake a man for being a servant because he’s a darker shade of brown. In another a woman who apparently used to be “African” (yep they did black face) completely changed races and became Asian by drinking some type of liquid.
Yah…I know. She was also talking to a grizzly bear, who wanted to be white like a polar bear. Yep. It was pretty messed up.
Her video highlights how this both effects men and women in these communities, as the ads constantly tell men that unless they are pale, women won’t find them attractive. For the women they take this one step further and say, if you’re not pale, you’ll never get married.
This is why proper representation is so important, and why Miwa Ueda’s, Peach Girl made me so happy when I was younger, because like…there was a girl with my complexion in a manga/anime, who had to learn to love herself because people constantly ridiculed her for having darker skin as an Asian woman!
Lack of representation allows for harmful stereotypes to continue to exist. I loved how in a lot of works by Miwa Ueda that she had character’s who were not “conventional” beauties according to Japanese beauty standards. These character’s often learned to love and accept themselves for who they were, and fought against negative stereotypes like, “girls with dark skin are easy” or “girls with dark skin don’t take care of themselves.”
I know it sounds ridiculous, but these are stereotypes that have been ingrained in peoples minds from the time they were children, along with this idea that if you are darker, you are undesirable, and that is wrong.
Sherliza discusses this in great detail when she breaks down Edward Avila’s video, and why she disagrees with him in his statements on why Korean people want lighter skin. She points out how he completely dismisses colourism, and instead tries to say that having light skin is a “personal preference.” Sherliza’s response to that was, “But why is it the personal preference?” and goes on to talk about how the media heavily enforces the idea that having lighter skin will make you more attractive, and will somehow make you happier. She even shows images that people made of celebrities, like Rihanna who were photoshopped to appear white, with comments on them like, “Rihanna would look so much prettier if she was white.”
This seriously emphasizes the importance of having more proper, diverse representation.
Edward makes the statement in his video, “Why do you have to be validated by the media or something we see on the internet?” He thinks that if it is bothering people to see a lack of representation they should just, not engage with it and get off the internet.
Sherliza responds infuriated and sarcastically, “If you are a tan girl constantly surrounded by pale ass people (you can go to 21:06 in the video), so you feel pressured, ugly, and depressed by that, then just go live in a cave. Disconnect your internet. If you don’t see caramel skin being promoted in your area then just don’t look at the media at all!”
She then points out that Edward himself, is Filipino, and decides to go on to talk about colourism in the Philippines like Clariz did in the first video I discussed.
She finishes off by deciding to expose herself, and talk about back when she was 13 and into cosplay and anime. She talks about how it was annoying to cosplay the characters “accurately” because many of the characters were (are) pale. “My skin tone wasn’t nearly as light as these characters and I used to dislike my brownish skin colour so much in the past. I remember even asking a friend to photoshop my skin lighter, so it looks better like…it’s so cringe worthy to think about the past. But yah, there was a lot of this going on when I was 13 to 14,” she says in her video.
She goes on to say how at age 16 she believed that makeup looked so much better and vibrant on people with lighter skin, and would secretly wish to be a few tones lighter. She mentions how during this time the only Asian makeup artists that she would see had light skin. It made her think she wasn’t able to wear certain colours or types of makeup. She said that when she stopped worrying about the colours not looking “right,” and found what worked for her, that she stopped obsessing about having a lighter skin tone.
She finished the video, by putting emphasis on having more diversity in the media. She says, “Hire people who are qualified for the job but give the brown skinned people, the caramel skinned people, a chance!”
To go off her last statement, I want to add that it is important to not only give them a chance at actually being present in the media, but that when they are shown, their characters aren’t written as negative stereotypes that are often attributed to people of their race or complexion.
I want artists, writers and film makers to be mindful when they are creating. How are they portraying the world around them? Are we having more repeats of Sasha from Bratz, a harmful stereotype which enforces the whole, “rude black girl” trope, or are our character’s more complex, and multilayered?
Are we writing Asian men with darker skin who are considered very handsome and attractive, versus poor, geeky or “ratchet”?
Do we show diversity not only by including other races of lighter skin tones or mixed race people in multicultural countries like Canada, England, and the US but those of darker complexions as well? Is there proper and mindful representation being done for people within those communities, or is the representation dangerous and enforcing negative stereotypes?
Each of these girls spoke about how from young children, we are conditioned to think this way by society, and how they had to learn to love themselves. This is not right, and definitely needs to change as we move forward.
I believe with proper representation, people within these communities will love themselves from day one, and people outside of these communities will no longer be fed and enforce these stereotypes subconsciously (or consciously in some cases).
I know that this post was a lot longer than my other ones, but I do hope that it helps you to better understand why it is so important for us as creators to make content where our audiences can see themselves represented.
Ardin Patterson 