By Ed Diokno
Views from the Edge
If you don’t know the actor by now– let me introduce you to Henry Golding. He’s only been acting for a year or so.
But … in the context of Asian American, or Filipino American, or Southeast Asian American cultural history, the image is pretty damn close.
Those eyes, those lips, that nose, that skin color, that hair (when I had hair) ! Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m nowhere near as handsome the breakout star of Crazy Rich Asians, but Golding landing on the GQ cover, arguably the fashion arbitrator for men (so it claims) is good enough for me say he (kinda) looks like me.
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He’s the first Asian man the editors of the men’s fashion magazine to be granted the cover.
“When Crazy Rich Asians hit theaters this summer, Hollywood held its breath waiting for the box office results, but anyone who knew anything about … well, anything, could’ve predicted it’d be the smash it was,” wrote GQ. “Beyond its success — and what a success it was — it minted Henry Golding as one of the industry’s must-hire new actors, and for good reason: He’s handsome, he’s suave, and that accent. A nation swooned, and GQ did too.”
Except for an occasional Bruce Lee on the cover of the esoteric Black Belt magazine, growing up in the U.S., I hardly ever saw someone who looks like me on U.S. magazines, movie posters or on the silver screen. When it came to role models, I had to search long and hard to find them because the standards of beauty, power and being outstanding were so overwhelmingly Eurocentric. Editors, who were also White and who make those media decisions, couldn’t bring themselves to not cater to what they thought their readership wanted to see.
Hopefully, this isn’t a one-shot event. Hopefully, other Asian men will be the cover images in more magazines; hopefully there will be other actors, sports heroes,;entertainers, politicians doctors, lawyers, social activists who will overcome those ingrained biases.
What happens when people who look like you are practically invisible in society? I think you know. Questions of self-worth, self-loathing, identity can sometimes overcome you, crippling you into adulthood.
In the big scheme of life, Golding’s accomplishment isn’t going to cure cancer, stop war, bring harmony to the world, but we shouldn’t downplay what it means, too.
With Golding’s breakthrough, I can imagine some Asian American kid, won’t have to wait so long to see someone who looks like him or her on a magazine cover. That kid might think that he’s (or she) is part of this country, that his brown skin, almond eyes and full lips are attractive enough to get on a cover. That kid might say, “Hey, he looks like me.”
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How the he’ll do you not know that Jeremy Lin was on the cover And Jackie Chan as well. I’m all for increasing visibility but a simple Google search could have told you that! I’m Asian too but this is total fake news!!!