Frishan Paulo
"The first time I saw myself was when I was a young kid watching TFC, The Filipino Channel. But she wasn’t quite me; she was a half-Filipina celebrity with pale smooth skin and Caucasian features who would still be considered more Filipino than me because she was actually from the Philippines. While I, a small brown Filipino-American girl with too big eyes and a too wide nose to be considered anything other than Filipino was still not Filipino enough since I’d been born and raised in America. I had asked my mom if that lady on TV was the same ethnicity like us. Later, she had me washing exclusively with papaya soap and told me to stop rubbing my nose as if it would get wider. That was the first time I saw someone of my ethnicity.
The first time I saw myself was when I was 8 years old. It was Katara from Avatar the Last Airbender. She is a brown girl, a powerful waterbending prodigy who used her skills to actively fight and dismantle the patriarchy of both the Northern & Southern Water Tribes, as well as save the whole goddamn world. Aang would have been lost without her. But really, it wasn’t so much that I saw myself in her so much as I had wanted to be her. I wanted to be strong and independent and cause change in the world. I dressed up for her that Halloween because someone said I was too brown to be Toph. That was the first time I saw the person I wanted to be.
The first time I really saw myself was last year, when I was 21 years old. My friend suggested watching a cheesy movie for his birthday, so Filipino Students Association watched The Debut, a movie from 2000 featuring Dante Basco. I saw myself in Basco’s character, a young boy who was so initially ashamed of his Filipino heritage that he wanted to skip his sister’s debut (which is pretty important for Filipinos) and tried so very hard to separate his white friends from his home life. I watched him argue with his parents, and I watched him struggle to speak his native language, much to his family’s embarrassment and disappointment. I watched him come to the realization that maybe he loved being Filipino. I cried when I watched this movie. I had never seen anything capture my exact struggles with my culture and heritage and experiences. “Honestly same” was the phrase of the night. This movie came out when I was 4 years old, but it’s so old and obscure; there’s a good possibility I never would have heard of it had it not been for my friend. Where are the Filipinos in the media? East Asians got their turn with Crazy Rich Asians. I think it’s Southeast Asians’ turn now."
