Reflection 1

In our last class, I realized that all minority women in the media deal with different stereotypes associated with their race. However, all women deal with sexual expectations. If they are not stereotyped as the virginal, naive woman, they are characterized as the overly sexual, exotic woman. There is no in between.

The class discussion affirmed what I had thought previously. When asked, the class named Asian women, but Asian women from either China, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, or Japan. The reason this happened is because the media portrays Asians as only from those countries. I too, was ignorant of this until I was applying to colleges. I was born in New York, but my parents are from Guyana, South America. Guyana is the only non-Spanish speaking country in South America, and considered part of the Caribbean. However, my ancestors are from India. For some time, when asked to fill out questions from the census or school related forms asking what my race was, I would check Other because I did not know what I was considered. Then, a teacher I had, informed me that because my ancestors were from India, I should check Asian. I then realized that Asia consists of so many more countries than what the media portrays and there are a lot of people that are not represented in the media, including myself. Even the articles we read about stereotypes of Asian women, did not include all of Asia, just Asians that are displayed in the media. I guess that was because there are little to none representations of the widely known understanding of Asians to begin with, much less all of Asia.

The discussion made me think of our discussions in the beginning of the semester about the hierarchy in the media of the dominant rich, white, upper-class, man. Media is tailored to their interests, rather than to everyone in society.