My identity is a superpower -- not an obstacle

Hollywood needs to stop resisting what the world actually looks like, says actor, director and activist America Ferrera. Tracing the contours of her career, she calls for more authentic representation of different cultures in media -- and a shift in how we tell our stories. "Presence creates possibility," she says. "Who we see thriving in the world teaches us how to see ourselves, how to think about our own value, how to dream about our futures."

On the red tiles in my family's den

I would dance and sing
to the made-for-TV movie "Gypsy,"

starring Bette Midler.

(Singing) "I had a dream.

A wonderful dream, papa."

I would sing it with the urgency
and the burning desire of a nine-year-old

who did, in fact, have a dream.

My dream was to be an actress.

And it's true that I never saw
anyone who looked like me

in television or in films,

and sure, my family and friends
and teachers all constantly warned me

that people like me
didn't make it in Hollywood.

But I was an American.

I had been taught to believe
that anyone could achieve anything,

regardless of the color of their skin,

the fact that my parents
immigrated from Honduras,

the fact that I had no money.

I didn't need my dream to be easy,

I just needed it to be possible.

And when I was 15,

I got my first professional audition.

It was a commercial
for cable subscriptions

or bail bonds, I don't really remember.

(Laughter)

What I do remember
is that the casting director asked me,

"Could you do that again,
but just this time, sound more Latina."

"Um, OK.

So you want me
to do it in Spanish?" I asked.

"No, no, do it in English,
just sound Latina."

"Well, I am a Latina,
so isn't this what a Latina sounds like?"

There was a long and awkward silence,

and then finally,

"OK, sweetie, never mind,
thank you for coming in, bye!"

It took me most of the car ride home
to realize that by "sound more Latina"

she was asking me
to speak in broken English.

And I couldn't figure out why the fact

that I was an actual,
real-life, authentic Latina

didn't really seem to matter.

Anyway, I didn't get the job.

I didn't get a lot of the jobs
people were willing to see me for:

the gang-banger's girlfriend,

the sassy shoplifter,

pregnant chola number two.

(Laughter)

These were the kinds of roles
that existed for someone like me.

Someone they looked at
and saw as too brown, too fat,

too poor, too unsophisticated.

These roles were stereotypes

and couldn't have been further
from my own reality

or from the roles I dreamt of playing.

I wanted to play people
who were complex and multidimensional,

people who existed in the center
of their own lives.

Not cardboard cutouts that stood
in the background of someone else's.

But when I dared to say that
to my manager --

that's the person I pay
to help me find opportunity --

his response was,

"Someone has to tell that girl
she has unrealistic expectations."

And he wasn't wrong.

I mean, I fired him, but he wasn't wrong.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Because whenever I did try to get a role
that wasn't a poorly written stereotype,

I would hear,

"We're not looking
to cast this role diversely."

Or, "We love her,
but she's too specifically ethnic."

Or, "Unfortunately, we already have
one Latino in this movie."

I kept receiving the same message
again and again and again.

That my identity was an obstacle
I had to overcome.

And so I thought,

"Come at me, obstacle.

I'm an American. My name is America.

I trained my whole life for this,
I'll just follow the playbook,

I'll work harder."

And so I did, I worked my hardest

to overcome all the things
that people said were wrong with me.

I stayed out of the sun
so that my skin wouldn't get too brown,

I straightened my curls into submission.

I constantly tried to lose weight,

I bought fancier
and more expensive clothes.

All so that when people looked at me,

they wouldn't see a too fat,
too brown, too poor Latina.

They would see what I was capable of.

And maybe they would give me a chance.

And in an ironic twist of fate,

when I finally did get a role
that would make all my dreams come true,

it was a role that required me
to be exactly who I was.

Ana in "Real Women Have Curves"

was a brown, poor, fat Latina.

I had never seen anyone
like her, anyone like me,

existing in the center
of her own life story.

I traveled throughout the US

and to multiple countries with this film

where people, regardless of their age,
ethnicity, body type,

saw themselves in Ana.

A 17-year-old chubby Mexican American girl

struggling against cultural norms
to fulfill her unlikely dream.

In spite of what
I had been told my whole life,

I saw firsthand that people actually did
want to see stories about people like me.

And that my unrealistic expectations

to see myself authentically
represented in the culture

were other people’s expectations, too.

"Real Women Have Curves"

was a critical, cultural
and financial success.

"Great," I thought, "We did it!

We proved our stories have value.

Things are going to change now."

But I watched as very little happened.

There was no watershed.

No one in the industry
was rushing to tell more stories

about the audience that was hungry
and willing to pay to see them.

Four years later,
when I got to play Ugly Betty,

I saw the same phenomenon play out.

"Ugly Betty" premiered in the US
to 16 million viewers

and was nominated
for 11 Emmys in its first year.

(Applause)

But in spite of "Ugly Betty's" success,

there would not be another television show

led by a Latina actress

on American television for eight years.

It's been 12 years

since I became the first and only Latina

to ever win an Emmy in a lead category.

That is not a point of pride.

That is a point of deep frustration.

Not because awards prove our worth,

but because who we see
thriving in the world

teaches us how to see ourselves,

how to think about our own value,

how to dream about our futures.

And anytime I begin to doubt that,

I remember that there was a little girl,
living in the Swat Valley of Pakistan.

And somehow, she got
her hands on some DVDs

of an American television show

in which she saw her own dream
of becoming a writer reflected.

In her autobiography, Malala wrote,

"I had become interested in journalism

after seeing how my own words
could make a difference

and also from watching
the "Ugly Betty" DVDs

about life at an American magazine."

(Applause)

For 17 years of my career,

I have witnessed the power our voices have

when they can access
presence in the culture.

I've seen it.

I've lived it, we've all seen it.

In entertainment, in politics,

in business, in social change.

We cannot deny it --
presence creates possibility.

But for the last 17 years,

I've also heard the same excuses

for why some of us can access
presence in the culture

and some of us can't.

Our stories don't have an audience,

our experiences won't resonate
in the mainstream,

our voices are too big a financial risk.

Just a few years ago, my agent called

to explain to me why
I wasn't getting a role in a movie.

He said, "They loved you

and they really, really do want
to cast diversely,

but the movie isn't financeable
until they cast the white role first."

He delivered the message
with a broken heart

and with a tone that communicated,
"I understand how messed up this is."

But nonetheless, just like
hundreds of times before,

I felt the tears roll down my face.

And the pang of rejection rise up in me

and then the voice of shame scolding me,

"You are a grown woman,
stop crying over a job."

I went through this process for years
of accepting the failure as my own

and then feeling deep shame
that I couldn't overcome the obstacles.

But this time, I heard a new voice.

A voice that said, "I'm tired.

I've had enough."

A voice that understood

my tears and my pain
were not about losing a job.

They were about what
was actually being said about me.

What had been said about me my whole life

by executives and producers

and directors and writers
and agents and managers

and teachers and friends and family.

That I was a person of less value.

I thought sunscreen
and straightening irons

would bring about change
in this deeply entrenched value system.

But what I realized in that moment

was that I was never actually asking
the system to change.

I was asking it to let me in,
and those aren't the same thing.

I couldn't change
what a system believed about me,

while I believed what
the system believed about me.

And I did.

I, like everyone around me,

believed that it wasn't possible
for me to exist in my dream as I was.

And I went about
trying to make myself invisible.

What this revealed to me
was that it is possible

to be the person
who genuinely wants to see change

while also being the person whose actions
keep things the way they are.

And what it's led me to believe
is that change isn't going to come

by identifying the good guys
and the bad guys.

That conversation
lets us all off the hook.

Because most of us
are neither one of those.

Change will come

when each of us has the courage

to question our own fundamental
values and beliefs.

And then see to it that our actions
lead to our best intentions.

I am just one of millions of people

who have been told
that in order to fulfill my dreams,

in order to contribute
my talents to the world

I have to resist the truth of who I am.

I for one, am ready to stop resisting

and to start existing
as my full and authentic self.

If I could go back and say anything

to that nine-year-old,
dancing in the den, dreaming her dreams,

I would say,

my identity is not my obstacle.

My identity is my superpower.

Because the truth is,

I am what the world looks like.

You are what the world looks like.

Collectively, we are
what the world actually looks like.

And in order for our systems
to reflect that,

they don't have to create a new reality.

They just have to stop
resisting the one we already live in.

Thank you.

(Applause)