audrey keiko azuma
When extreme makeovers aren’t extreme enough.

comedy, DV, 8 minutes
Directed by Stann Nakazono
Produced by Deborah Twiss

SYNOPSIS

Audrey does not like how she looks.  Her Asian eyes. Her small breasts. Her short stocky legs. So she does something so radical that puts all those makeover TV shows to shame, much to the chagrin of her Caucasian boyfriend. 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

For many people of color, you are a minority because you do not look like the majority, i.e. white. There's extra pressure on the Asian Pacific American (APA) women, especially those who grow up perusing through such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Elle, Vogue and watching television and movies, where they unfortunately set the (Western) standard of beauty. (I call it the three "B"s: Blonde, Blue-eyed, Buxom.)

This is why APA women subject themselves to various torturous procedures: they "highlight" their hair to a lighter color than black, they have the breast implants, they even double their eye-lids, to get rid of the "slant' in their Asian eyes. They do whatever it takes to make them more like "everyone else," to blend in and assimilate with the Anglo-Saxon majority.

With the current onslaught of extreme makeover shows on TV, I wanted to take this step even further. This was the basis for my film, “audrey keiko azuma." But unlike those reality shows, we see how Audrey deals with the consequences afterwards, and how she finally comes to terms with her identity.

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