The author is pictured in high school, at 15 years old.
I distinctly remember the first time a boy called me beautiful — because it was a joke. I was 12, standing in a Target near my home in Scottsdale, Arizona, and loitering in the book and magazine section. As I waited for my dad to come back, I heard a boy’s voice from the other end of the aisle: “You’re beautiful.”
I burned red, trying to get the massive smile off my face before I turned around. I tucked in my baggy gray Arizona State sweater, silently praising myself for making the right outfit choice. When I finally took a deep breath and turned to face the person who had spoken, I saw a group of boys instead.
“Oh, shit,” said a kid with freckles and a baseball cap. “I think she heard us,” another said, as they began laughing hysterically. “I think she believed it.”
When my dad returned to drive me home, I said nothing. Who wanted to tell their parents that they had an ugly child?
I grew up with a Japanese mother, born and raised near Tokyo, and an American Jewish father. Being a mixed-race teenager in Scottsdale, I had many experiences like the one above. No tales of being shoved in lockers or bashed in the head, but constant, near-daily reminders that I did not look like others in my almost totally white school.
According to the 2000 census , at the time I was growing up, Scottsdale was 92% white, making it one of the least racially diverse cities in the United States. I stood out comically from the endless parade of spray-tanned, blond girls at school. And yet, I seemed to be invisible. No one asked me to prom, no one asked for my number, and I found myself forgotten even in the smallest ways.
When people had conversations, I often stood awkwardly on the outside of the circle, unaddressed. When papers were handed out in class, I was frequently confused with the few other Asian girls in my school. I noticed my small group of white friends never had this problem. When people did acknowledge me, they were confused about why I had a “white” name with an Asian face.
These days, people like me belong to the fastest growing racial category in the U.S. Thirteen percent of Americans, or 42 million people, identify as multiracial. There’s a roughly 50% chance that our next president will be a multiracial woman. But in 2000, when I was growing up, just around 2% of people identified as belonging to more than one race.
When I recently told a Jewish guy that I shared his background (to his surprise — no one ever guesses my other half, based on my more Asian appearance), he smirked.
“Oh, a Jewish guy with an Asian woman? Never seen that before,” he joked.
But for most of American history, that really wasn’t seen. When my parents were born, interracial marriage was still criminalized. My extended family had some skepticism about Japan — as was common for Jews following World War II and the Holocaust.
After high school, I knew I wanted to go to a more ethnically diverse place. When I moved to New York to attend Columbia University in the mid-2010s, I couldn’t believe how many other people like me were out there. On my dorm floor alone, there were six half-Asian kids. Walking around campus and into the rest of Manhattan, I saw more types of Asian people than I had ever seen in my life. Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, mixed Chinese Japanese Koreans — for the first time ever, I was even called not Asian enough, which was a bizarre sensation.
Suddenly boys found me attractive. Rather than Asian girls being seen as ugly or invisible, here, girls like me were perfectly normal — and even fetishized at times. The standards were flipped upside down. I struggled to process how mind-blowingly different the beauty conventions were between Arizona and New York. I had defined myself as undesirable for so long that I assumed everyone who thought otherwise was just deluded.
Despite being in a place where I was finally considered “beautiful” enough, I still could not feel confident in myself. The seeds had already been planted. Thousands of miles away from Arizona, I developed an eating disorder. I may never look like the girls I grew up with , I thought. But at least I can be skinny .
Interestingly enough, my combination of thinness and “exotic” features even helped me become a part-time model. But I was more insecure than ever, starving as I studied for final exams and unable to process the fact that any of the boys asking me out did actually like me. I ended several budding relationships, turned off by the fact that they expressed interest in me. Something’s wrong with them , I kept thinking. They must be mistaken.
In the past decade, things have changed tremendously. Today, multiethnic people are more visible than ever, there are countless half-Asian celebrities — Olivia Rodrigo, Olivia Munn, Henry Golding, Shay Mitchell, Naomi Osaka — who are considered successful and beautiful, and I see another mixed-ethnicity couple almost every time I turn a corner on the street . People like me are no longer considered strange or exotic, even in the places where I grew up.
Nowhere does this change feel more pronounced than in our current political moment. When I see Kamala Harris on the presidential campaign trail and debate stage — politics aside — I feel wonder and awe. A half-Black, half-South Asian woman is now the face of the Democratic Party, and may become the face of the free world. Every time I hear her casually talk about her Indian mother and Jamaican father, I feel like my own background becomes more normal.
But the disconnect between how I grew up and the environments I now live in still fazes me. Even though I have lived in multiethnic cities for over 10 years, have a very diverse group of friends, and have been to countless therapy sessions, I know the pain will never disappear fully. I am still the weird “mixed” girl on the inside, struggling to be seen.
The author is pictured in a recent photo.
Miraculously, my fiance gets it — completely. He is also half-Asian and half-Jewish ... and he’s from Arizona. I met him in New York , and when we talked about our experiences, he understood mine instantly. He even had his own story of someone accusing him of not really being his father’s kid, because he looked Asian and his father didn’t. But when he stands with my parents — my Japanese mom and Caucasian dad — people often assume he is their kid too (which is mostly endearing, if slightly cringeworthy).
My partner makes me feel accepted — and celebrated — for being exactly who I am. Being around him and his fellow Asian-Jewish family, I feel the calmest I have since I was 12 years old, before I became conscious of what my racial identity was supposed to mean. After years of feeling like I didn’t fit in anywhere, I feel grateful to have found my niche.
Though we’ve made serious strides, I don’t believe we’ve solved the problem of representation. T he U.S. population may be more multicultural than before , but the entire Fortune 500 CEO list still features barely any women of color. In 2022, Asians accounted for only 2.3% of lead roles in Hollywood. But I have hope that social changes I never thought possible might come much sooner than we realize. If the last 20 years have yielded this much progress, what might happen in the next 20?
If I could go back to the early 2000s, I would tell my younger self that her experience is temporary. Change is coming. And as the world continues to change, and I think about parenting my future children, I hope the experience of being multiracial won’t be so difficult for them, a prospect that makes me feel both jealous and optimistic.
Anna Raskind is a writer and works in tech in New York City. She is the author of the newsletter “ Celebrating Setbacks ,” an interview series with inspiring people who have gone through tough times. She is currently working on a book of essays about multiculturalism.
If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org for support.
Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.
Local News
