Growing up with white-only love interests in pop culture

I worked with the SBS Voices team in late 2020 to produce this video about growing up with white only love interests in popular culture. Enjoy the video, with full transcript below.

The only hot POC love interests that I remember from growing up were literally not real; Li Shang from Mulan, Aladdin and Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. And even though all of them were super-attractive, they still weren't the people that I had crushes on.

The person who was my ultimate dream crush as a kid was Raymond from the movie Aquamarine. He was blonde, super white and a surfer dude. I...heart eyes...when I looked at him. But growing up with white-only love interests and and always seeing the white, blonde, thin girl always get the guy, really impacted what I thought was desirable. And that's not to mention all of the internalised racism that came along with that.

I remember even as a teenager, quite recently, thinking "Eugh, that's not what I find attractive" when I looked at a brown guy. Growing up and not seeing people have crushes the way that I did, having houses that looked like mine, lives that looked like mine, really made me just feel like love wasn't for me either.

People were going out having parties, falling in love, kissing guys, and I was like, "Where are your parents?" There are no parents in this scenario. And it's why I really love that things seem to be changing. I really loved the line in Mindy Kaling's Never Have I Ever where Devi asks Paxton, "Would you consider having sex with me?"

A brown girl would never say that on television when I was growing up. I think that's really important to see that women can have that agency, that brown women can have that agency, that young brown girls get to see that and know that love stories belong to them as well and we get to shape them and make them our own. And that that can be a part of our popular culture going forward.

With thanks to Sarah Malik and the SBS Voices team.