My Claim to (Limited) Fame -- Photo of the Week 1 Sep 2008

Title: "Do I Really Look Like That?"
Location: Provo, UT
Year: Aug 2006

I know, posting a picture of myself is only encouraging my Napoleanic megalomania, but at the insistence of Jason Tanner, it's time for clarification on this picture of myself that anybody who gets the BYU alumni magazine might have already seen.

(for Jason Tanner's take on it, click here).

My campus job at BYU was working for BYU Independent Study (IS). IS usually has an annual photoshoot for their advertisements. Normal enough, right?

But here's the deal when you go to BYU: If you're not white, you are esteemed as a symbol of the University's diversity, something the school covets more than a lot of things. Enter my Japanese half. The Director of IS approached me one day at work before the photoshoot, and very delicately and gingerly asked me: "I, uh...don't mean to be offensive or insensitive...but Independent Study is having its photoshoot...and uh...we are looking for some...uh...cultural diversity--"

"Sure, I'll do it." The motivations were simple: I would get two movie passes and a gift certificate to Red Robin. For a poor college kid, that's a paid-for date right there. All I had to do was sign a waiver form granting permission to use my image any way they want. In retrospect, I should have asked for a royalty check each time they used my picture.

Regardless, my "diversity" got me the gig.

Think that's an oversimplification on my part? Perhaps.

But you didn't see the marketing people freaking out on the morning of the photoshoot when the black girl that was scheduled to model hadn't shown up yet. The closest comparison I have is what the White House must have been like the day the Kennedy administration discovered the Soviets were putting nukes in Cuba. People running everywhere and yelling. Pure, unbridled chaos.

Another comparison would be the scene in Ocean's 11 after they throw the Pinch and the casino breaks out into complete bedlam (that waitress getting clothes-lined is still priceless). Whichever comparison works for you. I'm sticking with the Missile Crisis.

Endnote: To be honest, I think they doctored my Asianness here. If you go into Photoshop, click on the Edit > Ethnic Doctoring, there should be options that say "Exclude Whiteness" and "Enhance Minority-ness." They might have used both here.