When I was younger, I would watch Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Christina Aguilera, and Ryan Gosling on The Mickey Mouse Club and think, “I can do that.”
My family would look at me and tell me I was too fat, didn’t come from the right family, or wasn’t the right race.
Meanwhile, I had successfully auditioned for a professional Taiwanese children’s choir and been accepted into an acting organization called Kids on Stage. My parents didn’t know what Kids on Stage actually was. I told them it was an after-school program—and it kind of was, except you had to pass an audition to get in. Once I was accepted, I had someone else sign on my parents’ behalf. They never wanted me to become a performer.
As of this writing, I’ve spent my whole life plus-sized. I was never considered conventionally beautiful by the Asian beauty standards I grew up around, which seemed to require being thin—waifishly so—and having no glasses. Instead, I was a big-boned young lady with glasses, main character energy, and perhaps a little too much to say for my own good.
Even in my twenties, people suggested I go back to Taiwan for liposuction, LASIK, and double-eyelid surgery because it would be so much cheaper there.
But I liked how I looked with glasses. I didn’t want surgery to make me thin. And double-eyelid surgery? Nope. Not interested.
In my mid-to-late twenties, while working for various temp agencies around New York City, I connected with an agency that specialized in background actors for film and television. Rent still had to be paid, so I took whatever work I could get. Background work helped fill the gaps on days when the temp agencies didn’t call.
Over the years, I ended up on shows like 30 Rock, Mercy, Law & Order, Without a Trace, Nurse Jackie, Delocated, and Flight of the Conchords. I also worked on the Will Smith film Hancock and an Italian film called Christmas in New York, which had me wearing a full-length fur coat in the middle of summer.
I did that work for several years. I even appeared in a Verizon commercial as part of “The Network,” if anyone remembers those. I had a few bit roles in independent films and was featured here and there in other projects. Eventually, I stepped away to work in the Digital division at BET Networks. I was supporting myself, and a steady paycheck mattered.
Funny enough, the girl who was deemed “not pretty enough” ended up appearing on multiple television shows, being in The New York Times twice, having a documentary made about her, and winning several karaoke titles. One of those wins even landed me on the singing competition Karaoke Battle USA, which ran for one season.
I’m sharing this as a reminder: you don’t have to believe other people’s bullshit about what you can and cannot do.
I was told I would never be good enough, pretty enough, or camera-ready enough. Yet I made a living doing the very thing people said I wasn’t qualified to do.
And I come with receipts.
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