Here is the full transcript of America Ferrera’s talk titled “My identity Is A Superpower – Not An Obstacle” at TED conference.
In this talk, America Ferrera discusses the challenges she faced as a Latina actress in Hollywood, where she often encountered stereotypical roles and systemic barriers. Despite her American upbringing and belief in equal opportunities, she found her identity repeatedly viewed as a hurdle in her career. Ferrera recalls a defining moment in an audition where she was asked to sound “more Latina,” highlighting the industry’s narrow perceptions.
Her struggles included changing her appearance and conforming to expectations, only to realize that authenticity was her greatest asset. She experienced a breakthrough with her role in “Real Women Have Curves,” where her true identity was an asset, challenging industry norms. Ferrera emphasizes the importance of representation in media, citing the impact of her character in “Ugly Betty” on global audiences, including Malala Yousafzai.
Ultimately, she advocates for embracing one’s identity as a strength and calls for systemic change in how diverse stories and voices are valued and represented.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
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. 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. What I do remember is that the casting director asked me, “Could you do that again, but just this time, sound more Latina.”
“Um, 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!” 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 gang-banger’s girlfriend, the sassy shoplifter, pregnant chola number two. 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. 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.” 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. All 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. 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. 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. “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.