Quotes About Stereotypes

People only say I'm angry because I'm black and I'm a woman. But all sorts of people write with strong feeling, the way I do.

Male actors don't get asked about playing strong men; they're just men.

You would never say to a man, 'do you like playing strong men?' You just wouldn't say that.

Especially on television, it's not so much a patriarchy; it always seems that there's a smart, strong woman calling the shots, and her doofus husband. In the sitcom world, it's almost a cliche that the women have the common sense, going back to 'The Honeymooners.'

In 2013, I started playing Fara Sherazi on 'Homeland.' I love playing her, not just because she's a strong woman, but because for the first time, a Muslim woman is being portrayed on television as a regular person, rather than a cliche or collection of stereotypes.

Of course I worry about whitewashing, and I feel very strongly that whitewashing was, is, and continues to be a problem in entertainment.

I am struck by how, walking down the street, I'm rarely made aware of my race, but that among journalists, race is absolutely massive.

There are structural problems within the industry that are preventing us from displaying aspirational black roles.

It always interested me that 'Goodness Gracious Me' and 'The Kumars,' when shown around the world, were referred to as British comedy. It was only here that they were referred to as Asian comedy, even though I always felt it was very British in its humour and structure.

People always told me that nothing would match my face, my structure other than roles of sophisticated, educated women. I felt it was an insult to me.

If I did the structure and had this thing about a straight character, I would never have a sex scene to prove that he's heterosexual. If I have a gay character in a movie, I need to have a sex scene in it - just to prove that he's gay?

High school is all about hierarchies, labels, cliques - we are labeled and structured. Everyone goes through it, more or less.

Usually when you see females in movies, they feel like they have these metallic structures around them, they are caged in by male energy.

For me, I've struggled with that when auditioning. Sometimes I get the feedback that I'm not white enough or I'm not black enough, and that can be really frustrating in that sense.

Normally when we see people of my size, we see them struggling to find confidence to be hot.

I don't want to play everyone's best friend. I don't want to play the role of a girl struggling in the ghetto. It's not that that story isn't important, but I saw patterns, and was like, 'I don't relate to these people.'

There aren't as many roles, and I think there's a lack of openness in casting an Asian character in a leading role or unless they're a stereotype. It's been hard. I've been able to play some non-stereotypical roles, which is great, but I have a lot of Asian actor friends who are struggling.

Even though I try not to overthink and dress the way I want to, I admit that there's way too much pressure on female actors to look good. I'm well aware that I don't have the perfect body type. I'm constantly struggling with myself to achieve the perfect body.

Urbanites may picture farmers as hip heritage-pig breeders returning to the land, or a struggling rural underclass waging a doomed battle to hang on to their patrimony as agribusiness moves in. But these stereotypes are misleading.

On a very basic level, many people think celebrities have too much already, so we shouldn't be entitled to our political opinions.

Stand-up is a weird animal. There are people who really want to know what you think about things, your opinion on life. But then there are people who think you're just that beautician in 'Legally Blonde,' who doesn't have opinions on anything. Or that I'm Stifler's mom and hot for it all the time.

At Swarthmore, the Dean of Women was very opposed to women going into science or engineering - so opposed that if she couldn't talk a girl out of it, she just never had anything more to do with her for the four years she was there.

I think that, as African-Americans, oftentimes we have to put ourselves on pedestals as opposed to really looking at ourselves and trying to understand ourselves and become better people. We always have to be on pedestals.

The corporate woman has been defined as the 'liberated woman' and I see that as the exact opposite. I think she now is more enslaved, maybe even more than the housewife was; because she's so out of her power, and imitating male power is not female power.