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Late night sads, just realizing how few good narratives there are about being south Asian diaspora and that’s why I’m flocking to poorly written desi chars to project my feelings about body image and cultural isolation :/. I really hope that I can leave art school changing that.
It doesn’t help that a lot of the desi celebrities that rose to prominence in the West did so my humiliating themselves, their families, and their cultures and dressed it up as relatable comedy.
I can’t speak for how much of this is written by white people for a white audience or if it’s desi creators talking about their very real traumas as if it’s a joke but. God, either way it hurts kids. They learn turn themselves into jokes or believe their culture is inferior.
My experience with representation as a kid placed western culture at a level of superiority to my (overly simplified ) desi heritage. Like obviously desi culture has its flaws - but it never talked about how to overcome that while still retaining that love of family.
Idk this thread is all over the place but basically I just want more desi media where we can have complexity outside of “my dad is sexist and won’t let me wear short skirts” or “I grew up poor and became smart with hard work. Now I’m the American dream” in kids media esp
What I needed when I was younger was the understanding that desi culture is vast and varied and even with desi friends they don’t have your unique experiences. I needed to see that my relationship with modesty and sexuality is my businesses and not an ideological war.
I needed to see brown people with big noses and body hair being attractive, confident, and happy. I needed to know that western culture wasn’t the end all be all and my homeland wasn’t a repressive poverty stricken nightmare that needed to be escaped. That’s what I needed.
Idk it’s 2020 and the bulk of our representation is still desperately lacking. No more white characters with depth please y’all have had enough share it with the rest of us. Y’all get to be the annoying stereotypes and the butt of the joke like we are.
