Miss America (behind the backlash)

Yesterday, history was made in my country.

The first woman of Indian descent was crowned Miss America.

As an American who also has Indian blood, I was incredibly proud. But that taste of victory was short-lived. From the moment Nina Davuluri was named the winner, articles started to appear all over the Internet revealing racist tweets against the 24-year-old.

There was no time to smile. No time to feel pride. Nope. It was here's the crown, and then a barrage of hate.

What really pisses me off is that these racist tweets only represent a tiny, pathetic little fraction of the United States (.005 % of the population) but when you put all those tweets together, they seem like the entire country is on a full-blown rampage against brown people. Because the media magnifies it and blows it entirely out of proportion.

What a lot of people don't realize is these articles are meant to shock other Americans by saying "Look! There are still people in this country who are jaw-droppingly ignorant!". That's all.

But, unfortunately, now the entire world is horrified of people in the United States. They don't understand that these tweets represent a tiny percentage of uneducated Americans.

I think it is very important that people all over the world understand that most of these racist people on Twitter do not really hate Indians in particular. It's a general racism which stems from something much more abstract and complex. These people are uneducated. They were raised in a hateful environment. These are people who can't afford to go to college. They are not book smart. They couldn't point out France on a map. And seeing more and more brown people come here and do incredibly well (i.e. become doctors living in huge houses) makes them bitter.

These racist people were not raised to do well in science and math. They were not encouraged to do well in school. The only jobs they could find were menial work (like tele-marketing) and then those jobs got shipped over to India.

Oh, and then the 9/11 terror attacks happened. Brown people all look the same to these racist people. They don't know the difference between Iraq and India. A brown person with a funny name is an Arab to them. A Hindu is a Muslim. Even with the world at their fingertips, they don't bother to educate themselves about these things online because they DON'T CARE. They just want to hate.

What is more ironic is that the way the majority of Americans view these hate-spewing rednecks is the same exact way the majority of Muslims view the terrorists. They're disgusted, horrified, and angry. But, the rest of the world clumps them all together anyway.

Please don't clump all Americans together. These tweets do not reveal reality. They reveal circumstantial stupidity.

What breaks my heart is that these few people who tweeted racist remarks are stealing the spotlight away from the winner.

Our Miss America plans on being a doctor. Did you know that? Probably not.

There are millions of little girls out there, of Indian descent, who watched television last night, mesmerized by a dream coming true. Proud of where their parents and grandparents came from. Excited for the future because another Indian-American girl proved right there on camera that anything is possible.

You can be Miss America. You can be beautiful. You can be a doctor.

That's the real story.

"Where are you from?"

People in the United States are obsessed with color.

Yeah, we're a melting pot. Our pedigrees are like recipes. One-fourth cup of Ireland. One-eighth cup of Puerto Rico. Half cup of Germany.

But that doesn't mean anything.

If you're white, you're American. If you're black, you're American. But if you're not white or black...well, you must be something else then, right?

My father immigrated here from India 43 years ago. My mother's ancestors immigrated here from Sweden more than 100 years ago.

And my entire life, there is one question I have been asked more than any other: "Where are you from?".

Never mind I have an American accent. Never mind I'm living in the Midwest. Never mind my name is JENNIFER.

No, no. I simply must be from somewhere else. Because I'm brown.

Some of you may not really understand why it upsets me so much. After all, people are dumb and it's just a question. But to constantly be asked where I'm from in a country that is my home is insulting, frustrating, and sad. When I was a kid, it almost felt like I didn't really belong here, which was a very scary and lonely feeling.

What hurt even more is that my childhood best friend was a Polish immigrant. She had only been in the country for a few years. Her name was ridiculously foreign. People always fucked it up. But nobody ever asked where she was from. The girl named Jennifer got asked all the time. It was like Katarina was the American and I was the immigrant. Being around her caused a lot of resentment and bitterness for me. Why was she treated like the insider and I was treated like the outsider?

I hated being a mixed race kid. It was embarrassing always having to explain to everyone that the blonde haired, blue-eyed woman standing next to me was my mom. Always. Nobody ever assumed she was related to me. I was always unsure what to checkmark in that box when we took standardized tests. Was I Caucasian? Or Asian? Seriously, what the fuck was I? (This problem was eventually solved 20 years later when I was arrested and the police officer wrote down 'Caucasian female' in his report. I was thankful to finally know the answer, despite being in handcuffs).

Growing up, the world idolized Heather Locklear and Britney Spears. I so badly wanted to be a beautiful blonde American like my mother. No one ever asked her where she was from. I was determined that one day I was going to marry a white man so my kids and descendants would NEVER be treated like a foreigner in their own country.

(My first serious boyfriend ended up being half-Egyptian and half-Irish. So much for that.)

When I grew up, the world started changing and I started maturing.

There are now Indian immigrants everywhere in this country. There are gorgeous women all around me named Anika and Ridhi and Navya. There are so many that now when people learn my name is "Jennifer" I don't get asked where I'm from as often. I've become less exotic.

And I no longer have the desire to marry a white guy. I simply want to marry someone who makes me happy, whether he's black or Chinese or a global mix.

I love that Rian is a quarter Sioux. The stories that run through his blood are inspiring and heartbreaking. His grandmother, who grew up on a reservation, is one of the most fascinating people I've ever met. And even though I'm not super close to Rian's mom, I feel a bond with her that I don't share with many others. She is also half-Indian (the other kind) and from what Rian tells me, it wasn't easy for her either.

I've learned that to be a part of the melting pot, I need to embrace it. I need to respect it.

But I'm only one person.

The United States as a whole is still obsessed with color. My name could change to Jennifer Smith tomorrow and I would still have people curiously asking me, "where are you from?".

And no matter who knocks me up, my kids will be multi-racial. They will have color in their skin. When I was a child, I hated that fact. Now, I adore it. They'll be just like me!

Except there is one major difference. They will be far removed from India. They will be far removed from Sweden. They will be far removed from the Native American reservation, perhaps.

And when someone asks them, "where are you from?" they will have to just shrug, with a smile, and say

"the world."

Hipster Racism

Most of you, well probably all of you, might not know, but I am dating a member of the Sioux tribe.

Rian is a quarter Sioux and received the official recognition from the tribe a few years ago.

Anyway, Rian and I once joked that if we have children, they're going to be the ultimate hippies.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize it's true.

Both of our Indian ethnicities are considered "new age" and "sexy" in the western world. Our ancestral backgrounds have become a novelty.

Think of how many young people do yoga, consult gurus, and brag about spending a summer in an ashram, only in a desperate attempt to be cool. Or do peyote or go to rainbow gatherings, without respecting the rituals or understanding the meaning.

And then there's the fashion.

For example, just sift through photos of Coachella outfits.

While Rian's sweet little Indian grandmother spends hours carefully crafting bead work for legitimate pow wows on Sioux reservations, these 20-something girls are flaunting the native style like they own it.

And both Gwen Stefani and Lana Del Rey were called out for using Native American style to sex up their appeal in music videos.

When the videos came out, people in the Native American community were outraged. The head dress is not a fashion accessory, they cried out. It's a symbol for an entire culture. They saw the videos as a mockery of their heritage.

Meanwhile, on the other Indian side, we've had everyone from Julia Roberts to Selena Gomez wear a jeweled bindi on their forehead. And everyone from Pamela Anderson to the Pussycat Dolls waltz the red carpet in sarees.

When Selena recently wore a bindi during a seductive VMA performance, the incident received worldwide negative press and tweets from Indians who were offended. In fact, officials at the Universal Society of Hinduism insisted Selena should apologize for making a mockery of the religious symbol.

Now, I'm not saying that fashion trends or style influenced by these cultures is completely tasteless.

But I do think there's a fine line between borrowing customs for style and creating costumes as style.

I own a pair of Minnetonka moccasins. They're adorable. And I love wearing feathers in my hair.

But you wouldn't catch me going to a music festival in full headdress. I think that's disrespectful.

The same goes with the other Indian culture. I love wearing mehndi in the summer. I own a stash of decorative bindis.

But then again, I kind of cringe when I think of pop tarts using a religious symbol, such as a bindi, as a form of sexualization. Maybe I'm too critical, but that does seem culturally insensitive to me. There's a difference between making a fashion statement with respect and making a mockery of it with sex.

The same goes for any other culture.

But the line is really up to us. And unfortunately, it's located in different places for different people. What I don't find offensive might enrage a devout Hindu.

After all, nothing is black and white.

There are millions of people all over the world who genuinely adore the Native American culture and find it an inspiring influence. Just like there are millions of people all over the world who do yoga for the health benefits and pursue Hinduism because it genuinely speaks to them.

But when it comes to fashion, the line is there.

What are your thoughts on hipster racism? Is your style inspired by other cultures? Have you ever been unsure where to draw the line?

"I'm from the moon, darling."

I can't imagine being a teenage girl in a world where millions of people think you're ugly and they hate you, even though they've never even seen you.

No matter who you are or what you look like, you're trash. And it feels like there is nothing you can do about it. You fall asleep crying. It seems like the world can truly offer you no hope.

You stare into space while you're in class, dreaming of a way to be happy, fantasizing about a world where you are special, and wishing with every ounce of your heart that maybe one day you will feel beautiful.

This is a story about one of those girls.

Donyale Luna was born to a poor black family in Detroit. Her father was cruel and abusive. The gangly, somewhat awkward beauty was quiet, but inside her head raged an elaborate fantasy world. She daydreamed constantly. Her relatives thought she was odd. Her schoolmates made fun of her.

Desperate to leave behind her miserable life, she moved to New York City in 1965 to pursue a modeling career and changed her name to be racially ambiguous.

Her stunningly gorgeous face and long, never-ending limbs shocked the fashion scene. She was immediately signed to an exclusive contract with a famous photographer and a sketch of her appeared on a now-historic cover of Harper's Bazaar. She became famous, fast.

Modeling jobs were overwhelming her schedule. Everyone wanted to be her friend. She started hanging out with Andy Warhol, Mia Farrow, and Mick Jagger. She was the guest of honor at the wildest Hollywood parties.

But only a few months after she found fame and fortune, she received devastating news. Her mother had murdered her father, out of self-defense one night, when he came home drunk and violent.

Unable to cope with the tragedy, Donyale turned to drugs and alcohol for the first time in her life.

Plus, her photo shoots in Harper's Bazaar were having a negative impact on a nation being ripped apart by the civil rights movement. Advertisers in southern states were pulling their advertising and the magazine lost hundreds of subscriptions over it.

Horrified and betrayed by the reaction, she fled to Europe to model over there.

Fueled with self-hatred towards her own race and desperate to be somebody, anybody, other than herself, the supermodel turned her fantasy life into her real life.

She wore blonde wigs. She sported green contact lenses. She made up an elaborate tale to the media, and her new famous friends, about how she really wasn't black, but actually an exotic mix of Irish, Native American, and Indonesian. But her birth certificate and relatives back home knew the truth.

In 1966, she became the first African-American to appear on the cover of Vogue (the British version) but posed in a concealed way that wouldn't offend the magazine's white readers.

She also pioneered the way for non-white models by appearing on the cover of several other major fashion publications.

Time Magazine declared 1966 the Luna Year in her honor.

But while the white public was adoring her, the black community was starting to hate her.

Donyale made it clear in interviews that she couldn't care less about paving the way for non-white models. She distanced herself heavily from the much-publicized civil rights movement occurring in her homeland. She only married and dated white men. She refused to even call herself black, insisting she was that ridiculous global mixture. It was insulting to the black community around the world, to say the least.

(Although, it could be argued that by denying her full-black heritage and pretending to be multi-racial, Donyale was actually breaking barriers by forcing people to view the human race as a global, interlaced species).

As the years went by, her loopy tales and drug use were spinning out of control. She crawled on runways. She showed up late for bookings. Sometimes she wouldn't even show up for photo sessions at all.

In a time where non-white models had to work extra hard to prove themselves, Donyale was unraveling her own career with her own self-destruction. Younger black models, who were hungrier and more professional, such as Beverly Johnson and Pat Cleveland, trampled over her lifeless career.

In the 1970s, she barely made waves, except for appearing nude in Playboy in 1975. She also had a daughter with her Italian lover around that same time.

In 1979, at 32, Donyale accidentally died of a heroin overdose, leaving behind an 18-month-old daughter, Dream.

And while her climb to the top in the modeling industry is epic, her tale is mostly forgotten.

The girl who dreamed of being beautiful and being special and being recognized for who she was, rather than her race, erased her own footprints in the sand because she couldn't even acknowledge her own reflection in the mirror.

She couldn't accept herself.

Chanel...the Nazi?

Coco Chanel hated Jews.



That is a fact.

I have read four biographies on Coco Chanel. In every book, it is pretty much accepted that she was an anti-semite.

Coco herself openly admitted that the main reason she never designed costumes for Hollywood was because it was an industry mostly run by Jews.

I have never held this knowledge against her.

Everyone has a right to their own opinions. And almost every single influential person in history has held prejudiced beliefs against something, whether it be former U.S. presidents who owned black slaves or Walt Disney, who was also a Nazi-sympathizer.

After all, people were subjected to incredible ignorance in the past. They were frightened of the unknown. They allowed their minds to be molded by false beliefs. They were products of their generation and the social climate which existed at the time.

As much as I despise Chanel's opinions on Jews, it didn't make me stop loving the Chanel brand. I still dabbed Chanel No. 5 on my wrist once in a while. I still lusted after the quilted handbags.

What girl hasn't?



But my friend Jonny recently sent me a link about a book which horrifies me.



The book, Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War, reveals that Chanel actually collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. The book looks into wartime records which show her membership and activities for the Abwehr Nazi military intelligence.

If this information is true, then it drastically changes my opinion on Coco Chanel.



It is one thing to be a racist bigot. It is another to actively aid in the murder of millions of innocent people.

I'm going to be honest. I don't want to read this book. I'm too scared to read all the gory details.

Does that make me a bad person? Is it wrong to turn a blind eye to the past because you simply...don't want to know? Perhaps it makes me a bad journalist too.

I guess I just admire Coco Chanel so much as a businesswoman and as a designer, that it makes me sick to my stomach to think that the woman herself was...well, cruel and ugly inside.



What are your thoughts on this subject? Does this change your perception of Chanel?

My Dating Disasters (Part I)

There is a part of my life I would rather not remember.

But we can't forget everything, can we?

You see, up until four years ago, I managed to date every single douchebag within a 25 mile radius.

I'm not sure if I gravitated towards them, or if I attracted them like flies. Probably both.



Obviously, that portion of my life is over. So I guess there is no harm in sharing them now.

Here are a couple of my stories:


The Pseudo Scot



My sophomore year of college, I was struggling with a heavy bout of depression. I didn't like myself or anyone else. But for some reason, I started hanging out with a guy named David. This guy was tall, thin, and had a red goatee. We met at an open mic poetry reading at a coffee shop right off campus. He was wearing a tight black turtleneck and a black beret and black plastic glasses (which I later found out were merely a fashion accessory, since he had perfect vision).

David wooed me with his emo-angst rantings about how the world was filled with emptiness and the human race was devoid of love. He took me to every single poetry reading on campus and he would get so into them, he would start rocking back and forth, his eyes glassy. After each reading, he would discuss in minute detail the symbolism behind every poem, without ever asking my opinion. When I offered my thoughts on the poems, he would get really mad and tell me I didn't know what I was talking about. It hurt my feelings. But I didn't care that I didn't like him very much, because I was so lonely.

A couple months after we we started dating, David spontaneously decided to quit school and move to Scotland to become a poet. I dropped him off at the airport and never saw or heard from him again.


Angry Brown Man



My ex's best friend had been obsessed with me for a long time. So, out of spite to my ex, I went out with him a few times. His name was Amir and he was the love child of an Afghanistan soldier and a German actress. But he identified mostly with his Afghanistan roots, even though his father abandoned him as a baby.

He was always mad because he thought everyone who interacted with him was racist. For example, we would go to a restaurant and as we were leaving, he would mutter, "those people were staring at me because I'm brown." As a deliciously coffee-colored person myself, I was very perplexed by his perception. I never saw anyone look at him rudely.

The last straw was when we were sitting outside at a cafe and an elderly couple approached him for directions to Radio Shack. Amir lost it. He screamed at the old couple, "Why the fuck would I know where the fucking Radio Shack is? Is it because I'm brown? You thought the brown man would know? Do you think I work there? WHAT THE FUCK, MAN?!" The poor elderly couple was confused and shaken and a bystander called the police.

When the police arrived, Amir started yelling at them and then he pushed an officer and then he got handcuffed. I watched him get escorted into the police car. He never even said goodbye. I had to pay for our expensive meal myself. We never spoke again.

Three years later, I discovered on Facebook that Amir had moved to Yemen for graduate school.


So, was I lucky to escape those guys or what?

What douchebags have you dated?

(In my next post, I will discuss two more douchebags! Yay!)

Why do you hate me?

I debated about sharing this on my blog, but eventually realized that it needed to be addressed.

A couple days ago, I was walking in my neighborhood when a school bus drove past me. A teenage boy rolled down his window and shouted at me, "Go back to India, c-nt!"

Already feeling crappy, my hurt feelings and shock took a back seat to my anger. I chased the school bus down and jumped on board. I got the name of the kid from the bus driver and found out what school he attended. When I got home, I called the school bus company and the high school principal.

Yesterday, I met with the assistant principal of the high school. They are going to review the bus video and then suspend the student.

I'm glad I nailed the punk, but I'm still bothered by the incident.

I'm pretending not to be. I brushed it off to Rian (who was there when it happened). I never even told my parents because I didn't think it was worth it.

But it does bother me a lot. This kid, without knowing anything about me, felt hatred towards me because of the color of my skin. It is the first time in my life I have been the victim of a racist attack of any kind.

He has no idea that I can't "move back" to a country I have never been to. He has no idea that I've never even been outside the United States at all. He has no idea I'm not even fully Indian. He has no idea I don't know any language other than English. He doesn't care either. He sees a brown person and believes what he wants.

But the attack wasn't personal. It wasn't against one person. It was against an entire nation. It makes me wonder why this kid hates Indians so much. Did his dad lose his job to an Indian? Did an Indian kid make fun of him earlier in life? Does he hate Indian food? Or maybe he simply hates immigrants in general and assumed I was one of them?

If it's the immigrant card, then he's an idiot. The United States is a country that is built on immigrants. So unless that kid is a full-blooded Native American, he hates his own kind. He hates his great-great-whatever grandparents who came over on the Mayflower (or, most likely, jumped ship here from various European countries less than 200 years ago). Way to be a traitor to your ancestors, dipshit.

But, of course, that is a theory and I will most likely never know the reason behind the attack. Who knows why people are racist? Who knows why they are sexist? Who knows why they are homophobes? We've come a long way in this world, regarding those areas, but we still have a long way to go.

Let's hope every new generation gets a little more tolerant, and a lot less ignorant.