I have always wanted to be white. For years, I would loathe my skin color – its brown hue similar to dirt and feces. Growing up brown in a town that is ninety-two percent white was quite tough. I would never see anyone that looked like me – especially, in my classes, I just felt so different from my other classmates. However, this obstacle would extend into society’s ways of life. I had no role models – such as superheroes, that looked like me. I remember a distinct Halloween where as an eight-year-old I dressed as Harry Potter. With my Gryffindor robes from Wal-Mart, I looked like a low-rent Harry Potter (back then, I thought I looked pretty fly). The only difference between me and Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry Potter was his skin color – white. For this reason, I had sneakily taken my mom’s foundation and…show more content… Looking back, I think its outrageous how uncomfortable I was with my skin and how my confidence was down the drain (keep in mind, for a fifth grader.) I had stereotypical Asian men emasculated in Western mainstream media as they were portrayed as nerds, geeks and weak. In Hollywood, Asians, a group that rarely sees themselves represented on-screen, apparently has made up just 3.9 percent of speaking roles in 2015’s top movies. This reminds of Steve Harvey airing a segment on his syndicated talk show about absurdly specific advice books including How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men. “That’s one page,” Harvey finally said. “Excuse me, do you like Asian men?’ ‘No.’ ‘Thank you.’ Since I was young, I was particularly self-conscious about my appearance due to the way people often see Asian men – undesirable and not masculine enough. I wish I could tell my younger self to be proud of one’s skin color as this shade is equivalent to a strong-minded person. My skin is equivalent to my father, who faced hardships in immigrating to America with absolutely no money. From his poor childhood in Colombo, Sri Lanka
