Content warning: this article contains mention of racism and sexual abuse.
“I’m here for the casting,” I tell the receptionist of the studio, my modelling book in hand. She directs me to a door, where a familiar sight awaited me: a room filled with East and Southeast Asian women, all about my age. As some cautiously initiate small talk and others scroll their phones or read a book, I sit down on the remaining seat.
My father is white and French and my mother is Vietnamese. Growing up in France, with a brief stint in the US, my white heritage was put to the forefront, while I unintentionally minimised my Asian roots. Besides when interacting with my mother’s family, I did not feel a deep connection to my other heritage. I did not speak Vietnamese, nor did I have many Asian friends. White was my default state of being and I felt a slight disconnect with the other half of me.
“White was my default state of being and I felt a slight disconnect with the other half of me”
I moved to London when I was 18 for my studies. And at the same time, I noticed there was a discrepancy in how I saw myself and how others saw me. I became weary of men who tried to guess my ethnicities for painful long minutes on end (“Let me guess – Japanese? Thaï? Chinese?”).
My brief stint in modelling was also a turning point. I realised that I was always cast as the token Asian girl, usually in shoots consisting of a red head, a brunette or blonde, a Black model and… me. Being systematically compartmentalised in this way, put in a box whose label didn’t quite match who I was, felt diminishing. But it was also, unexpectedly, freeing: I realised that if this is how I was being perceived, I should also learn to embrace this side of me.
I began the steps to learn more about my Vietnamese heritage and, like a lot of second-generation immigrants, an easy access point was through cooking. I ventured inside Asian supermarkets, trying to find…
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