Tan France says the Asian community aren’t seen as ‘desirable’ due to lack of representation in the media
The 'Queer Eye' fashion expert will be back on our screens this week
By Steve Brown
Tan France says the Asian community are ‘never seen in a desirable light’ due to being ‘under-represented’ in the media.
The resident fashion expert on Queer Eye is set to return to our (small) screens this week when the show returns for its third season – and we cannot wait.
However, in an interview with the Evening Standard, France admitted when he was growing up in England, there were no gay Asian characters on TV and said it had a huge influence over him.
He said: “We had EastEnders and Coronation Street and every now and then you’d see an Asian person on one of them.
“Were they ever the love interest? No. Were they ever desirable? No. I don’t remember a gay Asian character, and if there was, I didn’t see that show.
“It had a huge influence on me. I wish I’d seen a version of me on TV. It felt like our stories weren’t needed.
“Nobody wanted to hear our stories. And it just set in my mind that we’re not seen as desirable. White people are desirable, or black people are desirable. Brown people are just… there. And so, I’ve been fighting that for many, many years.
“As a kid, I always thought, ‘Well, of course that hot dude isn’t gonna got for me; I’m the brown guy. He’s gonna go for my white friend, who might not be very attractive, quite honestly, but he’s white, so he is, therefore, more attractive than me’.
“Even now, on the show, the media is the media, and people are people, and they will always compare me and my boys.
“I just think, ‘Well, I know that you’re gonna put me at the end, because I’m the brown one’. And that is how I feel, because we are so massively under-represented, and we are never seen in a desirable light.
“We are never portrayed as the hero.”