Storytelling Saturday #9: “Back to Black”
Welcome back to Storytelling Saturday, where I share stories about my experiences as an international student and immigrant. Not my story, for once!
I still have mixed feelings about this experience, which wasn’t mine. I can’t work out whether I should be offended.
The setting was specific; it was an audition for an extra in a film set. They wanted a ‘diverse’ range of people to fill the camera. My friend went because they were looking for an Asian female. And she was turned down because it didn’t fit their description of an Asian woman. She had bleached blonde hair.
I know that film auditions are biased, wildly particular and often counterintuitive. Looks are everything, especially for an extra person. But, still, it bothers me. It bothers me that they said that they were looking for a specific race to fill their diversity quota, and then to turn down the person who is of that race because she had a fashion sense. (I should point out that we knew it was because of her hair, because the agent asked her if she could dye her hair ‘back to black’ for the film, and she refused.) To me, they were stereotyping diversity.
My friend didn’t bat an eye – she’s been in the entertainment industry most of her adult life and dismissed it as another day in the job. I realise that the sort of superficial judgment happens to everyone in this industry – someone’s nose was too high, some too tall, too short, wrong eye colour and so on. But still. But still.
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