SeeHer, Gold House Release #WriteHerRight API Women’s Guide – The Hollywood Reporter

SeeHer, an organization focused on accurately portraying women and girls in media and advertising, has released a new guide to authentic writing about Asia Pacific Islander women. .

First announced in May at the Gold Gala, the lavish festival hosted by Gold House, in partnership with SeeHer to develop an API resource, the guide provides a detailed list of questions and points for review. . telecommunications), covers subject areas including language, family, religion, career paths, skin color, and intermarriage.

Michelle Yeoh, recipient of the SeeHer award at the Gold Gala, said: “I work to make sure that the women I play are not just stereotyped.

For example, the guide notes that colorism and over-sexism or alienation are both issues that API women face on screen and in real life. The guide also notes that an accurate description of the language includes not only regionally appropriate accents and idioms, but also fluency based on character history and the existence of bilingualism and transcoding.

“Be sensitive to the nuances among Asian Americans and don’t paint them with too broad a brushstroke,” Padma Lakshmi said in October during SeeHer and Gold House’s Advertising Week NY’s panel on women’s representation. female API. “I know it takes a lot of work. For example, if you are from North India, you will speak Hindi or Punjabi, while if you are from South India, you will speak Tamil. I would love to be a little more thoughtful and precise.

The guide also cautions against flattening the entire diaspora into an artificial monolith — such as using K-pop to denote any East Asian culture and also asking creators to see consider many aspects of the API identity. “As a multiracial person, I often feel that I do not belong entirely to one culture or another, rather, I am somewhere in the midst of the glorious spectrum of identity we all share. belong to,” Zombie actor Eleanor Matsuura said in a statement supporting the guidance. “The only thing we can do is share our unique stories, nuances, and experiences in hopes that the industry really listens.”

The guide also includes the results of a survey of more than 1,600 API women conducted by SeeHer and Gold House in August, who shared that the multiracial identity, pronunciation, and accuracy of API names, are Southeast Asians. Asia and diversity in skin color, hair texture, sexual orientation and gender identity are not clearly represented in the media, advertising and entertainment.

During the October panel, producer, writer and director Geena Rocero explained how everyone is represented – not just that they are – are important. She said: “As transgender people, when we come out, we become targets. “In the Philippines, transgender people are culturally obvious. We are part of mainstream society. We have transgender competitions on national television, but we are not politically recognized. So mainstream visibility doesn’t equal progress. Vision is a step, but it’s also the story of how [is told] and how that visibility is perceived and how it is created.”

SeeHer, launched in 2016 by the National Association of Advertisers in partnership with The Female Quotient, previously released three tutorials #WriteHerRight: A Generic Resource for Writing Female Characters in 2018, following up in 2018. are guidelines specifically for Black women (in partnership with OWN) and Latinas (with NBCUniversal and Telemundo) in 2021. “The Women API represents a wide range of histories, cultures, and life experiences, but from long ago. have been represented or stereotyped in the media,” SeeHer president Christine Guilfoyle said in a statement. “SeeHer is committed to helping storytellers showcase diverse, multi-faceted API women that reflect all of these cultures.”

Many SeeHer members including AMC, Meta and Paramount collaborated on the API tutorial. “We are proud to continue our work with SeeHer to celebrate API women and girls on and off screen,” said Paramount Advertising President Jo Ann Ross. “As an industry, the tenets of storytelling and presentation guide will give us the tools to tell even more powerful stories rooted in intention and thoughtfulness, and I look forward to would love to see this important work come to life in the Paramount portfolio.”