But the more I read and thought about the stakes of the movie, the more I got to thinking about all the times while growing up in the States that I didn't see anyone on TV or in movies who looked like me. My childhood hero after I moved to the United States of A was the Yellow Ranger, the girl who didn't wear a skirt when she was fighting. (I always enjoyed a certain smugness knowing that those fight scenes were taken straight from the Japanese version, in which there was only one female Ranger.) It wasn't until I was in high school that Lucy Liu starred in Ally McBeal and Charlie's Angels (as NOT the brainy one, for a change). Lisa Ling was getting recognition for her work on The View, and Keiko Agena would have a main role in the Gilmore Girls. Eventually we would have movies like Better Luck Tomorrow and Charlotte Sometimes, but it would still be a few years before we would get characters by actors like Sandra Oh in Grey's Anatomy or even, for a brief time, Elizabeth Ho in Melissa & Joey. (OK, so that last one is iffy, but I admit I was excited to see an Asian-American character on a show with my favorite teenage witch.)
