“You can be/do anything you want!”
No, you can’t.
I was watching Glow Up (because I have run out of gentle competition shows to watch and reluctanctly gave it a shot. It’s not bad, but it’s so out of my interest zone. I think there is a lot of art on display, but the restrictions of the medium irritate me. Such as all the models are thin and stereotypically pretty. And that while the judges urge the makeup artists (MUAs) to be creative, it’s within a very limited scope. VERY limited. Also, while I appreciate that Val is passionate, she borders on being a caricature with her Ding. DONG! and other catch phrases) and more than one person uttered this banal phrase.
“You can do anything you want.”
NO YOU CAN’T.
I understand wanting to bolster kids’ esteems, but giving them false promises is not the way to do it. Look. I knew from since I was a little kid that I could not be president.
“Minna,” I hear you say. “You could be president if you want! Anyone can be president.”
Or, “Minna. That’s being ridiculous. Most people can’t be president.”
That’s my point. There are things I can’t be. Yes, technically, I could be president, but let’s be real. America is not ready to elect a fat, queer, areligious Asian AFAB person who defies all definition. Hell, i’m not ready to elect me. You may say it’s a technicality, but I say it’s reality. We weren’t ready to elect an established white woman, for fuck’s sake! No way in hell I could ever be elected. I realized this at a very young age, so it exposed ‘you can be anything’ as a lie.
It’s a form of gaslighting, honestly.
“Oh, sure, honey, you can be a ballerina when you grow up. No, it doens’t matter that you have no sense of balance, are as stiff as a board, and no sense of rhythm.” Come on.
My brother and I used to argue about if someone could learn to be good in an art or not. He believed that if someone practiced and studied hard enough, they could be highly competent in that art. In his case, photography. In my case, writing.
I said, yeah, most people could become competent in an art, but you needed the initial talent/spark/intangible somethnig to stand out from the rest. I told him that I could study photography until the cows came home and I still wouldn’t be able to get the pics he does. He has an innate ability to look at a scene and know the best way to shoot it. It’s been enhanced by his practice, but he had it to begin with.
Just as I have an innate ability to spin a story. I’m not as good as description, and I decided it doesn’t matter to me. I could get better at it, but it’ll never be natural. I care about the psychological makeup of people and how they interact–I do not give a shit about the tree they’re standing in front of. I know one of my weaknesses is scenery. I know that my strengths are dialogue and creating characters. I know that I can nail the inner motivations of characters. What their house looks like? Nope. If I mention it at all, it’ll be pretty basic. “They had a brown suede couch that they kept sliding off.” Things like that.
Most pople CAN write, yes, but that doesn’t translate into them being able to write well. just as most people CAN snap a pic, especially with the proliferation of cellphones. But that doesn’t mean that any particular person is good at it, though; it just makes everyone think that they’re the next Ansel Adams or in the case of writing, Celeste Ng.
Back to the subject at hand. I think it’s better to be honest with people and tell them the reality of whatever it is they are seeking to do/be. Obviously, you don’t want to crush their dreams under your heel and say, “You will NEVER be/do ______!” Because, who knows? They may actually beat the odds and make it to the NBA, even if they’re 5’6″ and get winded after running for five minutes. Highly improbable, of course, but theoretically not impossible. But, I do think saying something like, “You have a really hard road ahead of you. This is what it takes to be in the NBA (and break down the list). If you still want to pursue it, I will support you.”
That’s an extreme outlier. But I do think it’s important to give people a realistic view of what they want to do. for example, when I was a kid, I wanted to be an actor. I loved performing for people and I had a natural charisma that drew people to me. My father loved performing so I came by it honestly.
What would have been nice to have someone tell me that my options as an Asian American woman were slim. I won’t say none because I could have been an extra on the MASH set. But at that time, there were hardly any Asians in movies/TV, and the ones who were had to do the stereotypical broken-English/recent immigrant schtick to get by. I wanted someone to tell me that it was possible, yes, but I’d have to fight against sexism and racism the entire time. Throw in the fact that I was not skinny, and it was almost a pipedream.
I will say that it’s better to be a person of color in the acting business now than it was when I was a child. There have been many more Asian people in movies/TV than before. But it’s still frustrating because many times, it’s the oppositive of exotifying the character and making them basically white. Still. Giving that I can’t remember ANY Asian people in TV or movies when I was a kid (except the aforementioned MASH extras), I’l begrugdingly take it. I know that something with a genderqueer, queer, non-religious Asian person as the lead role is asking too much, however.
I think it’s a fine balance between being realistic about someone’s opportunities in any given field and stamping on their dreams. It’s good to have hope, but…I’m just going to say it. I tihnk there’s too much toxic positivity in America (and apparently Britain where Glow Up is filmed). I wolud love it if we moved more towards compassionate realism, but I doubt that will happen any time soon.