-
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 am 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 faith,
-
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 wee 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)