My identity is a superpower — not an obstacle - America Ferrera

我的身份是超能力，而非障碍——亚美莉卡·费雷拉

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Hollywood needs to stop resisting what the world actually looks like, says actor, director and activist America Ferrera. You might know her from her roles in hits like Ugly Betty and the Barbie movie. In her archive talk from 2019, America uses the contours of her own career to call for more authentic representation of different cultures in media and a shift in how we tell our stories.

欢迎收听TED每日演讲，我们每天为您带来激发好奇的新想法。我是主持人艾丽斯·胡。演员、导演兼活动家亚美莉卡·费雷拉表示，好莱坞需要停止抵制世界的真实面貌。您可能通过《丑女贝蒂》和《芭比》电影中的角色认识她。在她2019年的存档演讲中，亚美莉卡以自身职业生涯为脉络，呼吁媒体更真实地呈现多元文化，并转变我们讲述故事的方式。

On the red tiles in my family's den, I would dance and sing to the made-for-TV movie Gypsy, starring Bette Midler. "I had a dream, a wonderful dream, Papa." I would sing it with the urgency and the burning desire of a nine-year-old who did, in fact, have a dream. My dream was to be an actress, and it's true that I never saw anyone who looked like me in television or in films. And sure, my family and friends and teachers all constantly warned me that people like me didn't make it in Hollywood. But I was an American. I had been taught to believe that anyone could achieve anything, regardless of the color of their skin, the fact that my parents immigrated from Honduras, the fact that I had no money. I didn't need my dream to be easy, I just needed it to be possible.

在家中书房的红色地砖上，我曾随着贝特·米德勒主演的电视电影《吉普赛》又唱又跳。"我做了一个梦，一个美妙的梦，爸爸。"我会以一个九岁孩子那种急迫和炽热的渴望唱出这句歌词，事实上，她确实有一个梦想。我的梦想是成为一名演员，而且我确实从未在电视或电影中看到过任何长得像我的人。当然，我的家人、朋友和老师都不断警告我，像我这样的人在好莱坞无法成功。但我是美国人。我被教导相信，任何人都能取得任何成就，不论他们的肤色、我父母从洪都拉斯移民的事实，还是我没有钱的事实。我不需要梦想轻易实现，我只需要它有可能实现。

And when I was 15, I got my first professional audition. It was a commercial for cable subscriptions or bail bonds, I don't really remember, but what I do remember is that the casting director asked me, "Could you do that again? But just this time, sound more Latina?" "Ah, OK. So you want me to do it in Spanish?" I asked. "No, no, do it in English, just sound Latina." "Well, I am a Latina, so isn't this what a Latina sounds like?" There was a long and awkward silence and then finally, "OK, sweetie, never mind. Thank you for coming in. Bye."

15岁时，我得到了第一次专业试镜机会。那是一个有线电视订阅或保释债券的广告，我记不清了，但我清楚记得的是，选角导演问我："你能再来一次吗？但这次，听起来更'拉丁'一点？""啊，好的。所以你想让我用西班牙语说？"我问。"不，不，用英语说，只是听起来要像拉丁裔。""可是，我就是拉丁裔，这不就是拉丁裔说话的声音吗？"接着是一阵漫长而尴尬的沉默，最后她说："好吧，亲爱的，没关系。谢谢你来。再见。"

It took me most of the car ride home to realize that by "sound more Latina," she was asking me to speak in broken English and I couldn't figure out why. The fact that I was an actual real life, authentic Latina didn't really seem to matter anyway. I didn't get the job. I didn't get a lot of the jobs people were willing to see me for: the gangbangers' girlfriends, the sassy shoplifter, pregnant chola #2. These were the kinds of roles that existed for someone like me, someone they looked at and saw as too brown, too fat, too poor, too unsophisticated.

在开车回家的路上，我花了很长时间才明白，她说的"听起来更拉丁"，是要求我说一口蹩脚的英语，我无法理解为什么。我是一个真实的、地道的拉丁裔这个事实，似乎根本无关紧要。我没有得到那份工作。很多别人愿意让我试镜的角色我都没得到：黑帮成员的女友、嚣张的商店扒手、怀孕的拉丁帮派女孩二号。这些就是为像我这样的人存在的角色——在他们眼中，我皮肤太黑、太胖、太穷、太土气。

These roles were stereotypes and couldn't have been further from my own reality or from the roles I dreamt of playing. I wanted to play people who were complex and multidimensional, people who existed in the center of their own lives, not cardboard cutouts that stood in the background of someone else's. But when I dared to say that to my manager — that's the person I pay to help me find opportunity — his response was, "Someone has to tell that girl she has unrealistic expectations." And he wasn't wrong. I mean, I fired him, but he wasn't wrong, because whenever I did try to get a role that wasn't a poorly written stereotype, I would hear, "We're not looking to cast this role diversely," or "We love her, but she's too specifically Ethnic," or "Unfortunately, we already have one Latino in this movie."

这些角色都是刻板印象，与我的现实或我梦想扮演的角色相去甚远。我想扮演复杂、多维的人，那些活在自己生活中心的人，而不是站在别人背景里的纸板人。但当我斗胆向我的经纪人——我付钱请他帮我寻找机会的人——说出这个想法时，他的回应是："总得有人告诉那女孩，她的期望不切实际。"他没错。我的意思是，我解雇了他，但他没错，因为每当我试图争取一个并非拙劣刻板印象的角色时，我总会听到："我们没打算让这个角色多元化选角，"或者"我们很喜欢她，但她种族特征太鲜明了，"或者"不幸的是，我们这部电影里已经有一个拉丁裔了。"

I kept receiving the same message again and again and again: that my identity was an obstacle I had to overcome. And so I thought, come at me obstacle. I'm an American. My name is America. I trained my whole life for this. I'll just follow the playbook. I'll work harder, and so I did. I worked my hardest to overcome all the things that people said were wrong with me. I stayed out of the sun so that my skin wouldn't get too brown. I straightened my curls into submission. I constantly tried to lose weight. I bought fancier and more expensive clothes so that when people looked at me, they wouldn't see a too fat, too brown, too poor Latina. They would see what I was capable of. And maybe they would give me a chance.

我一次又一次地收到同样的信息：我的身份是我必须克服的障碍。于是我想，障碍，放马过来吧。我是美国人。我的名字叫亚美莉卡（America）。我为此训练了一生。我会按规则行事。我会更加努力，我也确实这么做了。我竭尽全力去克服人们说我有问题的所有方面。我避免晒太阳，以免皮肤变得太黑。我把卷发拉直驯服。我不断尝试减肥。我买了更时尚、更昂贵的衣服，这样当人们看我时，他们看到的不会是一个太胖、太黑、太穷的拉丁裔。他们会看到我的能力。也许他们会给我一个机会。

And in an ironic twist of fate, when I finally did get a role that would make all my dreams come true, it was a role that required me to be exactly who I was. Ana in Real Women Have Curves, was a brown, poor, fat Latina. I had never seen anyone like her, anyone like me, existing in the center of her own life story.

命运的一个讽刺转折是，当我终于得到一个能让我所有梦想成真的角色时，那恰恰是一个需要我完全做我自己的角色。《曲线美女》中的安娜，就是一个皮肤黝黑、贫穷、肥胖的拉丁裔。我从未见过像她这样的人，像我这样的人，存在于她自己生活故事的中心。

I traveled throughout the US and to multiple countries with this film where people, regardless of their age, ethnicity, body type, saw themselves in Ana — a 17-year-old chubby Mexican-American girl struggling against cultural norms to fulfill her unlikely dream. In spite of what I had been told my whole life, I saw firsthand that people actually did want to see stories about people like me, and that my unrealistic expectations to see myself authentically represented in the culture were other people's expectations too.

我带着这部电影走遍美国和多个国家，在那里，人们无论年龄、种族、体型，都在安娜身上看到了自己——一个17岁胖乎乎的墨西哥裔美国女孩，为了追求她那看似不可能的梦想，与文化规范抗争。尽管我一生都被告知不可能，但我亲眼目睹了人们实际上确实想看到关于像我这样的人的故事，而我那不切实际的、希望看到自己在文化中被真实呈现的期望，也是其他人的期望。

Real Women Have Curves was a critical, cultural, and financial success. Great, I thought we did it. We proved our stories have value. Things are going to change now. But I watched as very little happened. There was no watershed. No one in the industry was rushing to tell more stories about the audience that was hungry and willing to pay to see them.

《曲线美女》在评论界、文化界和商业上都取得了成功。太好了，我想我们做到了。我们证明了我们的故事有价值。现在情况会改变了。但我看到几乎没有发生什么变化。没有分水岭。业内没有人急于为那些渴望并愿意付费观看的观众讲述更多关于他们的故事。

Four years later when I got to play Ugly Betty, I saw the same phenomenon play out. Ugly Betty premiered in the US to 16 million viewers and was nominated for 11 Emmys in its first year. But in spite of Ugly Betty's success, there would not be another television show led by a Latina actress on American television for eight years. It's been 12 years since I became the first and only Latina to ever win an Emmy in a lead category. That is not a point of pride. That is a point of deep frustration.

四年后，当我得以扮演丑女贝蒂时，我看到了同样的现象上演。《丑女贝蒂》在美国首映时有1600万观众，第一年就获得了11项艾美奖提名。但尽管《丑女贝蒂》大获成功，此后八年里，美国电视上再也没有出现由拉丁裔女演员主演的电视剧。自从我成为第一个也是唯一一个在主演类别中获得艾美奖的拉丁裔以来，已经过去了12年。这并非骄傲的资本，而是深感沮丧之处。

Not because awards prove our worth, but because who we see thriving in the world teaches us how to see ourselves, how to think about our own value, how to dream about our futures. And anytime I begin to doubt that, I remember that there was a little girl living in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, and somehow she got her hands on some DVDs of an American television show in which she saw her own dream of becoming a writer reflected. In her autobiography, Malala wrote, "I'd become interested in journalism after seeing how my own words could make a difference, and also from watching the Ugly Betty DVDs about life at an American magazine." For 17 years of my career, I have witnessed the power our voices have when they can access presence in the culture. I've seen it. I've lived it. We've all seen it. In entertainment, in politics, in business, in social change. We cannot deny it. Presence creates possibility.

不是因为奖项证明了我们的价值，而是因为我们在世界上看到的成功者，教会我们如何看待自己、如何思考自身价值、如何梦想未来。每当我开始怀疑这一点时，我都会想起那个住在巴基斯坦斯瓦特山谷的小女孩，她不知怎么弄到了一些美国电视剧的DVD，在其中看到了她自己想成为作家的梦想的映射。马拉拉在她的自传中写道："在看到自己的文字能产生影响，以及观看了关于美国杂志社生活的《丑女贝蒂》DVD后，我对新闻业产生了兴趣。"在我17年的职业生涯中，我见证了当我们的声音能够在文化中获得一席之地时所拥有的力量。我见过它。我经历过它。我们都见过它。在娱乐界、政界、商界、社会变革中。我们无法否认。存在感创造可能性。

But for the last 17 years, I've also heard the same excuses for why some of us can access presence in the culture and some of us can't. "Our stories don't have an audience." "Our experiences won't resonate in the mainstream." "Our voices are too big a financial risk." Just a few years ago, my agent called to explain to me why I wasn't getting a role in a movie. He said, "They love you and they really, really do want to cast diversely, but the movie isn't financeable until they cast the white role first." He delivered the message with a broken heart and with a tone that communicated, "I understand how messed up this is."

但在过去17年里，我也一直听到同样的借口，解释为什么我们中的一些人能在文化中获得存在感，而另一些人却不能。"我们的故事没有观众。""我们的经历无法引起主流共鸣。""我们的声音财务风险太大。"就在几年前，我的经纪人打电话向我解释为什么我没能得到一个电影角色。他说："他们很爱你，他们真的、真的希望选角多元化，但这部电影必须先把白人角色定下来，才能拉到投资。"他带着一颗破碎的心传达了这个信息，语气中透露着"我明白这有多糟糕"。

But nonetheless, just like hundreds of times before, I felt the tears roll down my face and the pang of rejection rise up in me, and then the voice of shame scolding me: "You are a grown woman. Stop crying over a job." I went through this process for years of accepting the failure as my own and then feeling deep shame that I couldn't overcome the obstacles. But this time I heard a new voice. A voice that said, "I'm tired. I've had enough." A voice that understood my tears and my pain were not about losing a job. They were about what was actually being said about me, what had been said about me my whole life by executives and producers and directors and writers and agents and managers and teachers and friends and family: that I was a person of less value.

但尽管如此，就像之前几百次一样，我感到泪水滑落脸庞，被拒绝的痛苦涌上心头，接着是羞愧的声音斥责我："你是个成年女人了。别为了一份工作哭。"多年来，我一直经历着这个过程：把失败归咎于自己，然后为自己无法克服障碍而感到深深的羞愧。但这一次，我听到了一个新的声音。一个声音说："我累了。我受够了。"一个理解我的眼泪和痛苦并非因为失去工作的声音。它们关乎人们对我真实的评价，那些高管、制片人、导演、编剧、经纪人、经理、老师、朋友和家人一生中对我说的话：我是一个价值较低的人。

I thought sunscreen and straightening irons would bring about change in this deeply entrenched value system. But what I realized in that moment was that I was never actually asking the system to change. I was asking it to let me in, and those aren't the same thing. I couldn't change what a system believed about me while I believed what the system believed about me. And I did. I, like everyone around me, believed that it wasn't possible for me to exist in my dream as I was. And I went about trying to make myself invisible. What this revealed to me was that it is possible to be the person who genuinely wants to see change while also being the person whose actions keep things the way they are.

我曾以为防晒霜和直发器能改变这个根深蒂固的价值体系。但在那一刻我意识到，我从未真正要求这个体系改变。我只是要求它让我进入，而这两者不是一回事。当我相信这个体系对我的看法时，我无法改变这个体系对我的看法。而我确实相信了。我和周围的每个人一样，相信我不可能以真实的自我存在于我的梦想中。于是我开始尝试让自己隐形。这向我揭示的是，一个人完全有可能真心希望看到改变，同时他的行动却又维持现状。

And what it's led me to believe is that change isn't going to come by identifying the good guys and the bad guys. That conversation lets us all off the hook, because most of us are neither one of those. Change will come when each of us has the courage to question our own fundamental values and beliefs, and then see to it that our actions lead to our best intentions.

这让我相信，改变不会通过区分好人和坏人而到来。那种讨论让我们所有人都得以脱身，因为我们大多数人既不是前者也不是后者。当我们每个人都有勇气质疑自己基本的价值观和信念，并确保我们的行动符合我们最善的意图时，改变才会到来。

I am just one of millions of people who have been told that in order to fulfill my dreams, in order to contribute my talents to the world, I have to resist the truth of who I am. I, for one, am ready to stop resisting and to start existing as my full and authentic self. If I could go back and say anything to that nine-year-old dancing in the den, dreaming her dreams, I would say: "My identity is not my obstacle. My identity is my superpower."

我只是数百万被告知者中的一员：为了实现梦想，为了向世界贡献才华，我必须抵制真实的自我。就我而言，我准备好停止抵抗，开始以完整而真实的自我存在。如果我能回到过去，对那个在书房里跳舞、做着梦的九岁女孩说些什么，我会说："我的身份不是我的障碍。我的身份是我的超能力。"

Because the truth is, I am what the world looks like. You are what the world looks like. Collectively, we are what the world actually looks like. And in order for our systems to reflect that, they don't have to create a new reality. They just have to stop resisting the one we already live in. Thank you.

因为事实是，我就是世界的样子。你就是世界的样子。总的来说，我们就是世界真实的样子。为了让我们的体系反映这一点，它们不必创造一个新现实。它们只需要停止抵制我们已经生活的这个现实。谢谢。

That was America Ferrera speaking at TED2019. This talk was originally published in May 2019.

以上是亚美莉卡·费雷拉在TED2019上的演讲。此演讲最初发布于2019年5月。