Quotes About Representation

I've been trying to be the model that I wanted to see when I was a teenager, looking through magazines and not seeing myself, looking at pictures that were so edited.

The guys love us - they think we're sexy - but the girls take us seriously... I've always said that when I was a teenager growing up, I wish I had girls like Salt-n-Pepa to look up to. If I'd had someone I could relate to, a lot of things would probably be different.

Issues to do with disability, mental health and not being neurotypical often affect many genuine teenagers but are rarely reflected in the fiction they read.

I wish I could be on 'Politically Incorrect.' Because Bill Maher basically dismisses teenagers, and I think I could give my generation a good name.

Teenagers have no advocate. I think any other minority so maligned by Hollywood would have pickets around the theater saying, 'We are not just idiots.'

I feel like a lot of teenagers have typically been played by 25 year olds, and even 30 year olds. It's nice that I'm playing a little bit more to my age, although from 15 to 19 are pretty progressive years.

I had - in my early 20s and late teens, I had adopted this idea that I was the future face. And that was in large part due to this Time Magazine cover from 1993 that proclaimed the future face of America.

There aren't plus-sized teens represented in film who aren't made the butt of a joke.

Teens are being portrayed with depth because they are multidimensional, and they deserve to be portrayed as such.

I'd like to create a lovable character for schizophrenia; it doesn't have a celebrity spokesperson because by the time somebody's schizophrenic they've lost all their teeth.

It's nice to get my teeth into something that isn't a stereotypical female role.

You're talking to a guy that graduated from business school by the skin of his teeth, only to crash and burn at his first consulting job. What about that C.V. makes me a good representative of Asian Americans and Canadians?

We create constructs to understand ourselves, the way we look, how we feel, what we believe - and we telegraph that 'branding' to the world.

I look at television as a giant commercial for promoting this mission that I'm on. It's the best way for me to show that girls can be anything they set their minds to. I don't do it for the fame, and I most certainly don't do it for the money. It's sad that a lot of people want to get into television specifically for that reason.

When depicting Asian people in movies, books, and television or as historical figures, it's more important to humanize them and give them all of the dimensions of humanity, and that includes sexuality. Ascribe the human the full range of human qualities.

The problem is that television executives have got it into their heads that if one presenter on a show is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed heterosexual boy, the other must be a black Muslim lesbian.

People want to be represented on television.

It's very hard, you know, for an Asian actor to be in a prime-time television series.

For so many people, television and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren't like them.

When I grew up, I never saw anyone looking like me on TV, you know? I'm so glad to see a lot more of us on television, whether it's Mindy Kaling or it's Irrfan Khan or Freida Pinto. You know, I hope, like, little girls across the world can just look at me and say, 'Ah, I want to be that!' Indian or not, it shouldn't matter.

It's my job, with the position of power that I'm in and being able to be on television, I'm supposed to stand up for the people who can't stand up for themselves.

Growing up, there was this explosion of B television. 'Fresh Prince of Bel Air,' you have 'Family Matters,' 'A Different World.' I had examples - of black children, black families, black women, black men - that represented who I was.

I'm not a straight man, but I play one on television.

I want to make something that's respectful and respected. And I think you can make something for women that is respected on television.