There’s a scene in the Disney Channel show Good Luck Charlie when Amy Duncan, the mother of the main character, says that if she could choose anyone to play herself in a movie about her life, it would undoubtedly be Reese Witherspoon. As a 10-year-old Filipina-American in the early 2010s watching this scene, I drew a complete blank when I tried to answer this question for myself. I could not think of a single actress who could step into my shoes and not look or sound weird if they said “Ate” or “Kumusta ka.”
And now, as a college student in the early 2020s, I still can’t answer that question. Despite the immense progress that Asian Americans have made in the entertainment industry, I have yet to see a Filipina actress break into mainstream Hollywood. Yes, there have been Lara Jean as the Asian American “girl next door,” the groundbreaking Crazy Rich Asians, and the Awkwafina Cinematic Universe. But in all those new roles that have emerged in the past few years and have increased the Asian representation in Hollywood, I didn’t come across anyone who I could see playing the movie-version of myself.
I can’t answer that question without a caveat. I can’t answer that question without sacrificing some part of who I am. Maybe a young Lea Salonga, or Olivia Rodrigo if I was only half-Filipina. But it’s never a clear-cut answer. Not the way Amy Duncan, a middle-aged white woman, could choose from hundreds of A-list actors to bring her life story to the big screen. Is my life story not as worthy to be shared? Do people who look like me and talk like me not deserve to have the spotlight? Those were the questions that ran through my young head. And for a good while, I really believed that they were true.
As a kid, my favorite princess was Mulan because she was the princess who looked the most like me, but I look absolutely different. She’s Chinese, and I’m Filipino. I have darker skin than her, my traditional food is not her traditional food, my language isn’t her language. And still, our society suffers from the idea that Asians are monolithic; that all Asians are East Asians. Asian American representation in Hollywood is getting better, albeit minimally, but the people that are getting put on screen are not my Asian. It might be a collective victory, one that I should be celebrating, which I do, but I can’t help wishing for more.