When I was younger, I don’t remember ever seeing a lot of Asian Role models. I really liked Lucy Liu, but that was it. I didn’t see any others really that I could even try to identify with. I don’t know if I realized, until now, how difficult that was for me, but it effected my subconscious, almost telling me the limits of my own potential.
The biggest way it effected me was to tell me that the beauty I had, wasn’t what people thought was beautiful. I had this idea that I would never be beautiful enough. I couldn’t be. There were just some things that were impossible for me to do.
I didn’t realize how much I felt like this until recently when I was thinking about beauty. But I very much felt that others around me were just naturally prettier for many reasons. And it seemed to be confirmed to me by society. People found them prettier, asked them out more, had more friends. I guess, the friends part, is directly linked to my personality. But when I was younger, that didn’t really seem to matter to me. It seemed like everything in life was confirming what I feared in my heart to be true. I knew I was nice looking and beautiful, but it never seemed to be confirmed by society, only my friends and family. Which, as we know, means much more than confirmed by the faceless masses, but when I was younger, it didn’t.
I know it should have, because beauty isn’t just physical. But to me, society confirming this fact for me was all I needed to know. And sadly, this didn’t really change until recently.
Even now, it’s not like I am ‘cured’, because it’s a mentality for years you have to undo. It’s a slow process, and it can only happen if I tell myself everyday and work on going against what I observe, and still observe sadly to this day.