Change My Race

There are many movies and TV shows about people longing to change their identities to live a different life. This kind of desire stems from the unhappiness these people have about themselves thus the idea of “what if I were somebody else?” Just having those thoughts brings along hope and escapism that real life does not offer.

Nowadays these kinds of thoughts are somewhat no longer unreachable. With advancement of plastic surgery changing life through changing face is no longer a distant dream. Girls, now even guys are flocking to the plastic surgeons for a dream self. Looks are now like items on the supermarket shelves available for pick, choose and buy.

As normal as this has become, in a recent SBS documentary by Anna Choy, something more disturbing is lurking around and coming out of the shadows. The documentary titled “Change My Race”. It is about Asian girls longing to look like westerners and ridding of their “Asian features”. In the documentary, it demonstrated how South Korean girls race for the western look and eventually all look alike. The program demonstrated how a recent Miss Korea pageant has finalists who all look exactly the same. When flipping from one headshot to another, nothing has changed except for the hairstyle and the outfit. The standard of beauty set by the west had driven these girls to throw their genetic look out of the window to become Barbie clones.

However, what is more disturbing is when the program brought us back to Australia. It followed three Asian Australian girls who went under the knife so they could look more “Australian”. As they all said, they sound Australian but they were neither fully recognised as Asian nor Australian. Some of them experienced bullying simply because they look different. They believe by looking more Australian, aka Anglo-Saxon, they would be more accepted and they would feel better about themselves. One of them did not want to alter her look but her parents forced her to do so because they want her to look pretty and by pretty Anglo Saxon. They were able to pay for her operation and want this to show how much their daughter loves them.

Having worked as an actor in Australia in the past 10 years I can certainly understand where these girl came from. Having the “Asian look” has been both a blessing and a hindrance for me. I got called in every time they wanted an Asian man but then at the same time I got called in mostly because they wanted an Asian man. My agent had worked very hard to get me out of that Asian man box and slowly we see that effort is working. However, this does not stop those Asian man calls. I do believe that after all these years I am very comfortable with how I look. I am Asian and look Asian that would never change. But at the same time I do understand where these girls came from because when I was a kid I was one of them. I have a pair of eyes that only show up with double eye-lids when I am tired. Noticing that I tried to look tired so I look like the celebrities I saw on TV and in movies. I also tried to put a peg on my nose when I went to bed so that my nose could be higher before my kiddy nose ridge sets for life. I did admire, adore and envy the good looks these people in films and TV have. My parents spent a lot of time trying to make me understand that I am who I am and if I do not appreciate myself nobody will.

I will be totally hypocritical if I criticise these girls for longing to look like “Australian” so they could fit in and feel better as an Australian. I do not blame her, or in one case her parents. I blame the stubbornness of our Australian media that after all these years we are still unable to see a real Australia on stage and on screen. In the past it was “no trained Asian or ethnic actors” but we all know in the past 10 years or so a lot of Asian and ethnic actors were trained by various drama and theatre school including NIDA. That “myth” for me was broken but the stubbornness not so much. It is still comforting that the younger generation of media practitioner are less “configured” to the idea that our society should be all Anglo-Saxon, although we probably need to wait till a major change up above before a further big step could be made.

As for these girls, I completely feel for them. I must admit changing your face to change your race is an extreme move but then who can throw the first stone when nobody in the society is qualified to do so? All I wish is that the faces of our society will continue to change so our race does not matter anymore.

Click picture to watch "Change My Race" on SBS