To say that Star Wars: The Last Jedi was divisive amongst the fandom is a bit of an understatement.
There were angry fanboys raging over how Luke Skywalker wasn’t some muscular Adonis, and even a group of nerds literally trying to remake the entire movie. Sadly, there was also some horrendous online harassment of one of the movie’s stars, Kelly Marie Tran, and it became so toxic that she wiped her Instagram account clean and steered clear from social media.
Following months of internet silence, the actress has now responded to all her haters with a powerful and thought-provoking essay at The New York Times, and holy hell did she bring the fire.
Pulling no punches from the onset, the actress begins her essay with “It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them” before talking about how the harassment reawakened the shame she felt for being Vietnamese while growing up.
Their words reinforced a narrative I had heard my whole life: that I was “other,” that I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t good enough, simply because I wasn’t like them. And that feeling, I realize now, was, and is, shame, a shame for the things that made me different, a shame for the culture from which I came from. And to me, the most disappointing thing was that I felt it at all.
She then tears down the ingrained stigma that one must conform to a certain type of look, saying how it’s nothing more than one big lie perpetrated by society.
I had been brainwashed into believing that my existence was limited to the boundaries of another person’s approval. I had been tricked into thinking that my body was not my own, that I was beautiful only if someone else believed it, regardless of my own opinion. I had been told and retold this by everyone: by the media, by Hollywood, by companies that profited from my insecurities, manipulating me so that I would buy their clothes, their makeup, their shoes, in order to fill a void that was perpetuated by them in the first place.
Empathising with other bullying victims, she says she is far from the only one who has been harassed based on their race or gender.
I am not the first person to have grown up this way. This is what it is to grow up as a person of color in a white-dominated world. This is what it is to be a woman in a society that has taught its daughters that we are worthy of love only if we are deemed attractive by its sons. This is the world I grew up in, but not the world I want to leave behind.
She ends her essay on a powerful note, saying that the online hate has helped push her through a personal journey of self-realisation and she’s ready to continue pushing forward as an actress and a role model for representation.
You might know me as Kelly.
I am the first woman of color to have a leading role in a “Star Wars” movie.
I am the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair.
My real name is Loan. And I am just getting started.
The whole piece is gutwrenching and amazing in equal measures, and I’m so glad that Kelly is empowered to keep pushing forward in the face of adversity.
Trolls of the internet, you have no power here so please go back to where you came from and stay there forever. Perhaps Kelly’s example may inspire you to undergo a journey of self-reflection.
Check out Kelly’s full essay at The New York Times, it will probably be the most powerful thing you will read all year.