The Duchess of Sussex has attacked the “toxic stereotyping of women of Asian descent”.
The Duchess of Sussex has attacked the ‘toxic stereotyping of women of Asian descent’
She hit out while talking on the delayed fourth episode of her ‘Archetypes’ podcast on Spotify after the instalment was postponed following the death of Queen Elizabeth.
The mum-of-two, 41, also said while addressing the “Dragon Lady” concept she felt humbled growing up in Los Angeles surrounded by diverse cultures.
She said about going to a Korean spa with her mother as a teenager: “It’s a very humbling experience for a girl going through puberty because you enter a room with women from ages nine to maybe 90, all walking around naked and waiting to get a body scrub on one of these tables that are all lined up in a row.
“All I wanted was a bathing suit. Once I was over that adolescent embarrassment, my mom and I, we would go upstairs we would sit in a room and we would have a steaming bowl of the most delicious noodles.”
She added: “The Dragon Lady – the East Asian temptress whose mysterious foreign allure – is scripted as both tantalising and deadly. This has seeped into a lot of our entertainment. But this toxic stereotyping of women of Asian descent, it doesn’t just end once the credits roll.”
The duchess also criticised films such as Austin Powers and Kill Bill for presenting “caricatures of women of Asian descent as often times over sexualised or aggressive”.
Journalist Lisa Ling told the duchess on the show how she was hit by racism.
She said about being named on a ‘hot reporter list’ in Rolling Stone magazine when she was a broadcaster at Channel One: “Someone at my place of work cut out that article, drew slanted eyes over the eyes and wrote, ‘Yeah, right’ and then put it back in my mailbox,.
“It was like every kernel of excitement that I possessed just withered away. It was so devastating that someone that I would see every day in my place of work where we're supposed to feel comfortable, just harboured those feelings about me and had the nerve to make it racial.”
The duchess also urged her podcast listeners to be their “best and true self”, saying: “You want to be weird or be sponge-like, be silly or fierce, be curious, or even self-doubting or unsure some days and strong and brave on others…
just be yourself no matter what any societal framework or archetype or loud voice coming from a small place tells you that you should be. Be yourself. your full complete whole layered, sometimes weird, sometimes awesome, but always best and true self. Just be you. You’re so much greater than any archetype.”
The duchess has reportedly hired a fact checker for her podcast series, and the latest episode comes after she and husband Harry, Duke of Sussex,
released new portraits of themselves taken by celebrity photographer Misan Harriman.
They put it out days after the release of an official portrait of the “New Fab Four” of King Charles, the Queen Consort and the Prince and Princess of Wales.
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