Growing up, movies and television shows were my safe space. They were where I escaped, and where I could imagine myself to be anyone I wanted to be, from a high school girl who suddenly finds herself as the heir to the Genovian throne to a powerful mutant with telepathic and telekinetic abilities. Basically, for a few hours, I could be anyone but myself.

I was always a painfully insecure kid, timid and shy, avoiding any sort of attention or spotlight. The best scenario for me was to be invisible. If I wasn’t on anybody’s radar, then nobody could judge me. My insecurities had many roots — I was always a little chubbier; my voice was deep and raspy, but not in the sexy, husky Lauren Bacall way, more of a “somebody needs to get that poor girl some water ASAP” way; I thought of myself as fairly smart and well-informed… until I needed to share my opinions publicly, then I suddenly doubted everything I’d ever known and even second-guessed my grasp of the English language. You get the point. There were many internal struggles going on. If I’m being completely honest though, a lot of it boiled down to the fact that I was Asian. I absolutely hated it. I hated my small eyes, short stature, and big, flat nose. I was convinced that if I had been born White, all my problems would cease to exist and I would truly love myself. I constantly asked my mother why she didn’t marry a White guy, because then I could’ve at least been half-White, and hapas (people of mixed ethnic heritage) were so much more attractive in my opinion. Now all of this loathing and rejection of my heritage may have made more sense if I grew up in a predominantly White place like Maine or Iowa, but I didn’t. I grew up in Hawaii, where Asians were the racial majority. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t see people who looked like me in my life around me. The problem was that I didn’t see them onscreen. The heroines that I admired, the badass women who I wanted to be — they were always, always White. Asians barely made it onscreen and when they did, they were never desirable. Of course, there were the rare exceptions. Lucy Liu was surprisingly sexy in Charlie’s Angels, and even had Mr. “How you doin’” himself falling for her… literally. For the longest time, I thought the test of true love was whether or not a man still adored you even after you body slammed him to the ground. But that type of depiction — a strong, alluring Asian woman who got to be in charge of her own sexuality—happened once in a blue moon. Other times, when Asians were cast, they tended to be half-Asians — Maggie Q, Kristin Kreuk, Chloe Bennet, Elodie Yung … the list goes on and on. That is not to say that these actresses have it easy by any means. I understand and respect that being of mixed ethnicities comes with its own set of issues, ones that I don’t experience as a fully Asian woman. But seeing these stunning women take the lead onscreen only cemented in my mind the thought I had growing up—that if I was even only half-white, I would be more desirable and attractive. So I rejected my heritage and the color of my skin, and constantly fantasized about living my best life as a White woman.

I ended up attending a predominantly White college in California (that is not the reason I chose it, it just happened to work out that way). I knew the faces of just about every Asian student there, many of whom were from Hawaii. Ironically, it took me leaving the comforts of my friends and family, and being surrounded by people I had wanted to be like my entire life, for me to finally be proud of my heritage. Part of it had to do with the self-discovery and acceptance that often comes when you face one of life’s biggest transitions. I gained more confidence in who I was, and that trickled down to one of the biggest aspects of my genetic makeup— my race. Suddenly, I found my Asian identity to be unique in my circle of friends and I fully embraced the differences that came along with it. Growing up, my mother had instilled in me a sense of ‘us against them.’ “White people are different from us,” she’d say. I rejected that notion as a kid. “We are all American,” I’d retort back. To me, she was not embracing our life in America. But when I was in college, surrounded by my non-Asian friends, I realized that there was truth in her words. There were significant cultural differences I had never noticed before, ones I had been shielded from by my surroundings in Hawaii. From bigger habits like the way our parents doled out punishment to such small things as removing our shoes before we entered the house, I started to realize I was raised very differently from my non-Asian compatriots. Though, I viewed our differences with less negative connotations than my mother did. Perhaps it was because my parents were immigrants and I was the first-generation Asian-American — I fully embraced this country while they still had a foot in the place they called home. Or perhaps it was because their day-to-day experiences were much different than mine. They didn’t have the security I had when I spoke English without a foreign accent, or the comfort of feeling that I “belonged.” I don’t blame my parents for having a defensive shield when it comes to interacting with non-Asians; I just can’t help but think of the possibilities of them being treated like equals had Asians been better represented in the media.

Even though I was raised in America, my parents still retained their cultural background. My dad is from Taiwan and my mom is from Singapore, so they raised me with traditional Asian beliefs. I had to maintain straight A’s; the dishwasher seemed like an unusual name for a place to store dishes; shoes were never to be worn in the house — a belief I hold so strongly to this day that if I were to ever start a religion, this would be the first commmandment in my bible. However, because I spent as much time with my real family as I did with made-up families like Lizzie McGuire’s and Uncle Jesse & Co., I was just as well-versed in the habits and traditions of American families without having “lived” through them. I didn’t realize what I was subconciously absorbing until the premiere of Fresh Off the Boat. As sitcom fans, my best friend (who’s White) and I watched the pilot episode together. He wasn’t enjoying it half as much as I was, and I realized quite quickly that it was because he wasn’t understanding most of the jokes. He was clever enough to understand when a joke was being made, but he didn’t understand the cultural context behind it. Unlike my unintentional education of his upbringing, he didn’t grow up watching Asian families on the silver screen. I could watch Modern Family and How I Met Your Mother and laugh along as effortlessly as any White person who related to it, but the same couldn't be said the other way around. The media affect everyone in different ways. There are some who are more susceptible to their powers of persuasion and others who are less inclined to fall for their charms. But whether we like it or not, the media are powerful, and permeate into every part of our society. That is why the powers that be have an intrinsic responsibility woven into the fabric of their jobs. When writers write characters, directors cast roles, and studio executives greenlight projects, they’re making decisions that could impact and change people’s lives in ways they could never imagine.

When I first heard about Crazy Rich Asians, I had only heard of the title and I had absolutely no interest in the movie. I assumed it was a stereotypical portrayal of Asians that would just give us another trope to take on in future projects. After learning more about it (and my personal connection to the setting of Singapore) I became extremely excited about the prospect of the film. It wasn’t until I was reading press coverage that I realized that the last time Hollywood had a nearly all-Asian cast was 25 years ago in 1993 — the year that I was born. Essentially, I had lived my entire life up until this point without Hollywood thinking that “my” story deserved to be told. What’s even scarier is that until I walked into the theater, saw the Warner Bros. logo play out as it has millions of times before, and watched Michelle Yeoh appear onscreen, followed by Constance Wu and Henry Golding, and Gemma Chan in a character introduction I had never seen for an Asian before, I didn’t ask for or even want the story. As an avid film consumer and hopeful filmmaker, I never once lamented over the lack of Asian movies. These past few years, I’d noticed that Asians were less prominent, even as background characters, than other “minorities,” but I never stopped to ask why we never got Asian movies.

Crazy Rich Asians is not a perfect movie by any means. It is full of heart and delicately handled by a cast and crew that clearly understands the significance of what this film means on a larger scale. It captures the divide between Asian-Americans and Asian-Asians masterfully, and perfectly depicts what it’s like to be surrounded by people who look just like you, yet still feel like a foreigner. However, it is a bit cheesy at times, and the story is stuffed with too many plotlines and not enough time dedicated to each of them. But maybe that’s the point. We deserve to have wonderful movies, and mediocre ones, and even bad ones. We deserve to put out movies that miss the mark and not worry that a failure means another century before we see an Asian-dominated cast lead a Hollywood film. We deserve it because we are as American as our White, Black, and Hispanic/Latino friends are, and our representation matters. 14-year-old me probably wouldn’t have understood the significance of this film, as 24-year-old me didn’t even know I needed it or wanted it until I saw the glamorous intros of the diverse Asian characters. In the past year, there have been two moments when film transcended mere storytelling into a momentous shift in my being. The first was when I watched a bunch of Amazonian warriors storm the beach in a graceful battle against German soldiers on the beautiful shores of Themyscira. I was convinced my heart would soar and burst out of my chest in admiration of the power and recognition of women. I had never felt more proud of being a woman than in that moment. I felt the same way when I watched each character get introduced in Crazy Rich Asians. I walked out of that movie with a sense of validation and pride in my heritage that I had been missing my whole life. While I am sad that it took Hollywood this long to tell these stories, at the same time, I feel it is also a blessing in disguise. It’s like drinking water. Water tastes decent at best during normal situations, but when you’ve been suffering in the heat for hours without a sip of liquid, that first gulp of ice-cold water is an explosive taste of satisfaction. But to feel that way, you have to have endured the torture of dehydration first. Asians have been thirsting for representation in Hollywood for decades and now, the floodgates have opened and we are hungry for more.