Queer Eye: Stories Behind the Stories, Ep. 9
Some stories will resonate with QE viewers more than others. Some viewers connect based on shared social identities, some on shared struggles. This is part of what makes the individual stories so powerful. (If you’re curious about why I am not focused on individual stories, click here.) This episode resonated with me for a number of reasons. I’ll explain why.
Episode 9 features Dr. Lilly Yi a medical doctor whose look results in her being underaged and misrecognized as a doctor. Lilly will be making a transition in her career from resident to practicing on her own. Many people believe that residents are not really physicians. They have their MD once they graduate medical school, the degree that qualifies them, but they do not operate independently. They usually go through residency (terminology and rules vary by state) in order to get ready to sit for board examinations, what we refer to as “board-certified.” Without a residency, it is not likely that an MD would receive malpractice insurance, which they need to practice on their own. During a residency, doctors report to a supervising physician (Sometimes called an attending physician). After the Fab 5 leave, Lilly will begin to treat patients on her own as a pediatrician. Transition in one’s career often requires a shift in professional and personal identity. It is no small event that Lilly has moved from being a resident to being a solo act. She is transitioning from being a student (even an advanced student) to being independent, which requires that she think anew about who she is and who she wants to be. By the way, that’s free advice for anyone making a professional transition.
Lilly’s particular concerns are about her look and her self-confidence. Really all in a day’s work for the Fivers. Lilly feels left out of the trio of her family — her, her husband, Jon, her daughter, Annabelle — because long hours of residency (physician training mentioned above) have required she spend a lot of time away from home. Jon is the primary caretaker and, as such, knows their daughter’s moods, communication style, and desires very well. Lilly often feels as though she cannot connect because they operate in their own world. I hasten to add this is not because Jon is angling to be understood as the sole parent or because Annabelle is not interested in communicating with her. Instead, Lilly worries that her long hours as a resident MD forced her to sacrifice her relationship with her daughter. Lilly compares herself to her immigrant mother who got up at 4 or 5 am to help run a business, and also had a clean house and food on the table. It makes perfect sense that Lilly’s story follows Marcos’s, especially given his relationship with his daughter Jennifer. It is significant to note that Lilly as a first-generation Korean American has a different set of immigrant realities to contend with.
You’re up, Karamo! Karamo helps her understand that sacrifice was not permanent. She has a place in their trio, soon to be a quartet (she’s pregnant). Antoni back-up sings this message by showing Lilly how to prepare pizza so that they can enjoy a homemade meal together with a food that has special significance to them. (Lilly and Jon met at her parents’ pizza spot.) Bobby helps the entire family transition into this new life with a newly designed apartment.
Jonathan and Tan help Lilly have hair and style options, respectively. Tan’s concern is similar to those he had for Abby in Episode 5: namely, that Lilly contributes to people under-aging her by dressing young. Jonathan lets Lilly know that if her jaunty high ponytail with a bow is how she expresses her creativity, that’s fantastic. However, she may want options if she has to explain concepts like vaccines. Jonathan’s sly dig about the seriousness of vaccines is charming and deft. Really, a day in the life of Jonathan Van Ness.
Here’s where it gets difficult. Tan asks Lilly what she likes about her body and she looks at it as though it were a foreign object. She repeats “um.” Ultimately, she settles on silence. Tan says to the camera that anyone can be convinced of their ugliness if told about it enough times. When telling the story of how Lilly and Jon met (he used to buy up all the unsold pizza at the end of the night from her parents’ pizza spot), she tells Antoni that they were dating before she knew they were dating apparently. My first thought was “Was Jon just not up on game? Like, how did she not know?” Then, she says that she could not imagine anyone wanting to date her. “I was, like, I was the smart one,” she tilts her head, “not the pretty one, not the hot one.” Antoni asks whether she still feels that way. She repeats: “I was the smart one.”
When you connect with one of the viewers, you pretty much remain in your bag, in your feelings for the entire episode. Up until that point, I was watching along as though it were any other episode. When Lilly repeated “I was the smart one,” it took me out. It was as if a tether appeared at my ascending aorta (major artery from the heart that distributes oxygen) and reached outward like an external artery to her trembling carotid (blood vessels that carry oxygen to the head, brain, and face, located on either side of the windpipe). I felt connected.
There may be some structural reasons why Lilly is legible as the smart one. Specifically, she is Korean American and the daughter of immigrants. As I described, the immigrant experience does not stop at those who move across borders, but their descendants. For Asian Americans in particular, their immigrant experience is shaped by the Chinese Exclusion Act which forbid not just the Chinese but other people of Asian descent from entering the country. When the borders did open, Asians continued to be considered perpetually foreign despite their major contributions to America. As Cathy Park Hong points out in her biography Minor Feelings, the border only opened for educated people, and the United States took credit for their success. Such a cultural conundrum contributes to the myth of the model minority — the idea that Asian Americans writ larger are smarter, more well-behaved, and less troublesome than other people of color.
The mythology of the model minority is not a boon to Asian Americans; as a matter of fact, it contributes to the idea that they are perpetually foreign, uses them for anti-Black purposes, and warps their history vis-à-vis the United States. Ellen Wu, Associate Professor of History, in her book The Color of Success traces how the Asian American success story became the ultimate success story. That is, how and why did the histories of Asian American consolidate into the history of a seemingly monolithic group? How and why did the histories of those who were leftists, Communists, rabble-rousers, working class, artists, and dreamers, among others get erased? Wu’s answer: it was politically expedient for the US to create a cultural narrative about Asians writ large that supported the United States’ imperial aggression abroad. Cathy Park Hong pointedly writes that the US needed to reboot its so-called democratic image to justify interference in non-democratic foreign governments. This dynamic is still at work: China pointed to recent Black Lives Matter protests when the US threatened to interfere in China’s recent crackdown on Hong Kong’s protests. The Chinese government basically said, “Clean up your own house first.”
Lilly’s experience of being “the smart one” seems like it dovetails with Asian American stereotypes and perhaps caused her less trouble. Her being “the smart one” is culturally legible to herself and others. Yet, it is harmful in the ways that many stereotypes are harmful and often violent: it forced her a part from herself. It is a break. Without wholesale mapping Gloria Andalzúa’s theory onto Korean American experience: it is una herida abierta, an open wound. Moreover, her being the smart one assumes that she adheres to common conceptions about model minority Asian American women as docile, unable to think independently, either dutifully sexual or voraciously sexual, having delicate hands, et cetera. It gives no room for her to be a doctor, wife, or mother of two as she sees fit.
This constraint hit me given the way being “the smart one” easily repeats the respectability politics that accompanies being a person of color in the United States. For those unfamiliar, respectability politics are a series of behaviors and beliefs that align with the idea that if people of color adhered to specific set of guidelines, they would not experience racism. Respectability politics tend to be heavily classed, gendered, sexualized, and abled. They tend to surface when someone’s response to white supremacy is “if only so-and-so had done X, Y, or Z…” Respectability politics and the myth of the model minority bank on the same erasure of history, and violent erasure of personhood.
Lilly’s insistent but hesitant “I was the smart one” resonated because it reminded me of how close those cultural narratives are to one another. The initial success of being “the smart one” can secure a great deal of cultural capital. But, it relies on the erasure of others: usually people who are similarly situated to you. It relies on the erasure of history: usually that of people similarly situated to you. It relies on the erasure of yourself. It relies on the silence of individuals, sometimes seduced by that already mentioned cultural capital.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that Lilly is silent or an adherent. To the contrary, she knows that narrative does not define or confine her. There are multiple examples in the episode of how Lilly understands herself as strong and capable. Even when she recounts the story to Antoni, she understands its power and its falsity. This may explain why her statement is past tense. Her struggling with the narrative’s power does not mean she buys into it. Further, when the final scenes show her taking care of a patient, she fully inhabits her competent, compassionate self. She teaches the child about consent, that he has to let her touch his body. And, when she instructs him to do jumping jacks, she does them with him to create trust. All of these are the marks of a good pediatrician, one who isn’t just “the smart one.” Trust me, I’ve had the smart ones (as an adult and as a child) and they don’t demonstrate that kind of compassion in their care.
That heart connection I felt? That is because I have always been “the smart one.” On paper, I have a record that speaks to others’ ideas about respectability politics, excepting (and this is a big exception) my disability. In person, I am deeply skeptical of being the smart one or the only one or the special one.
Ask working class Asian Americans how crushing it is to be balked at when you don’t live up to the stereotype. Ask folks interested in coalition-building how that false cultural capital destroys opportunities for real change. Ask about internment camps, signs that read “no Chinese or dogs allowed.”
That so-called pedestal doesn’t protect anyone. It gets hacked at. It crumbles.
We who believe in freedom will not be singular. We who believe in freedom will not rest.
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