Why Negative Representation Still has Positive Effects
I grew up in a small, predominantly white town in suburban Ohio. My graduating class consisted of approximately 500 students with Asian and Pacific Islander students making up around 3.14% of the student population. The irony of this statistic became a running joke amongst my friends and me (who labeled ourselves the “Asian Invasion”) because we made up 3.14% of the population. Get it? Because we’re supposed to be good at math? Even more ironic was the fact that I hated math and yet I pretended that I didn’t. I overcompensated for my hatred by claiming that learning math was like “learning a different language”. Even now, I am disgusted at myself for writing that line.
Why did I feel the need to overcompensate my love for math instead of just admitting that I didn’t like it? Maybe it was my innate need to prove that I am ‘Indian enough’ by fulfilling this stereotype. I clung to meaningless expectations and tried to excel at school by filling my schedule with AP classes and using extracurriculars as boosters for college applications. My self-worth was intrinsically tied to my academic worth because no one had told me otherwise (apart from my therapist, 6 years later).
Pop culture didn’t do much to help this situation either because the only representation my friends and I had growing up were collections of stereotypes that we begrudgingly accepted because something was better than nothing.
As a sophomore in college and the topic of representation still weighed heavy on my mind. So, I wrote an article discussing the importance of representation in media, how important it is to feel seen in pop culture, and the effects it can have on your psyche as a young person. Although I was spending my free time writing hot takes on representation, I still found myself stuck in the toxic mindset of trying to be the ideal “good little Indian girl.” My self-worth was still intrinsically linked to my academic performance. I was a pre-med neuroscience major, on a South Asian dance team, obsessed with fitting in with the South Asian crowd on campus while still trying to be a palatable version of myself for my white peers. It was only recently that I realized how I became a diluted version of myself because I never knew it was ok to be anything else. It was only recently ago that I learned it was ok to be unlikeable.
Obviously, my own experiences are not representative of everyone. But I feel people of color are often told they need to fit a specific mold to exist in society and if they fit outside that mold then there is no place for them. From a young age, we were fed this idea that women of color only existed as one-dimensional characters to add color to the lives of our white counterparts. Our entire identity in media was tied to how assimilated we were.
That being said, there were definitely instances of, what I like to call: rebellious representation. These were the women of color who defied the norm and created their own spaces. They were fleshed-out characters who most people saw as unlikeable and unhinged – they were beautiful. My first experience with rebellious representation came from Lemonade Mouth in 2011 with Naomi Scott’s, Mohini “Mo” Banarjee.
For those of you who haven’t watched Lemonade Mouth, you need to get on that. However, for those of us who have that “Determinate” rap memorized, the story of 5 underdogs taking the world by storm and challenging an archaic system scratched our brains in just the right way. I, like many, was obsessed with Lemonade Mouth and was entranced by Mo because I saw myself in her. Or, at least, what I wanted to be.
She was your stereotypical good Indian girl to strove to make her immigrant parents proud. She was a star student with an excellent list of extracurriculars. Most of all, she was conflicted: should she live her life on her own terms and face the disappointment of her parents or should she just follow the path that’s been set for her? This conflict comes to a climax in Mo’s solo number, “She’s So Gone.” Eventually, Mo realizes that she needs to choose herself. But while Mo helped me realize my struggle as a third culture kid at 13, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan’s, Devi Vishwakumar from Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever, helped validate my inner child at 22.
While Mo was the poster child for the good Indian girl, Devi is every Indian child’s intrusive thoughts projected onto the screen. Devi makes almost every wrong decision possible and is then faced with the consequences (cue the “well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions” Tik Tok sound). From boys, to school, to her relationship with her friends and culture: Devi’s messiness is honestly super refreshing to see.
For so long, Asian characters on screen are shown as nerdy bookworms who never take a step out of line and Devi defies all of that. Devi is human and the journey she goes on to heal from her trauma is so refreshing. She’s someone who is allowed to make mistakes and step out of line. And yeah, she makes a lot of bad decisions, but isn’t that what growing up is about? Being a teenager is all about making mistakes and then realizing how to deal with those mistakes. For someone who was never allowed to make a mistake, it was amazing to see an Indian girl on screen that is so unhinged.
It’s a commonly known fact that young girls are forced to grow up faster than their male counterparts due to the societal expectations placed on them from a young age. However, no one really talks about how much faster young girls of color are forced to grow up compared to their white counterparts. We are sexualized, exoticized, and othered at such a young age, that being palatable is all we know. We are not allowed to make mistakes or step out of line for the fear of being ostracized by our communities. Therefore, seeing the representation of young South Asian women subvert that idea in media is healing. Yes, representation is important but negative representation does just as much to help showcase women of color as three-dimensional characters as positive representation does. It’s time we rid ourselves of the antiquated idea of good girls gone bad and just let women be themselves.