When I Grow Up I Want To Be The Pink Power Ranger
Everyone had their favorite Power Ranger as a kid. For me, it was Kimberly Hart. She was cute, happy and kicked so much ass. And for what it’s worth, her outfit was pink and I was very shallow 5-year-old. When I played pretend with the kids at school or in my neighborhood, everyone would call dibs on playing their favorite. I would always scream out to be Kimberly, which would automatically be followed by many confused gazes and the response, “No, you have to be Trini. You’re Asian.” That was my first experience with racial profiling and my dreams were completely shattered.
As a kid, I didn’t look at Kimberly as a white girl and I didn’t look at Trini as an Asian girl. While I identified more with Trini, who was quiet and polite and tended to blend more into the background, I wanted to be more like Kimberly. She was active, had hobbies and seemed to attract the ~cutest~ boys. (Again, I was a very shallow 5-year-old.) So of course in a world of make-believe, I wanted to be someone I wasn’t rather than someone I already was.
Being told I couldn’t be someone, even in the realm of imagination, was incredibly disheartening. It forever ingrained in my head that I couldn’t aspire to be something I wasn’t, and it was directly related to my skin color. The white kids didn’t understand I wanted to be Kimberly due to her outgoing nature and ability to be girly and fierce simultaneously. The Asian kids didn’t understand why I wanted to be the white girl when there was a strong Asian for me to look up to.
When you look back on it, that was actually the wonderful thing about the Power Rangers. It was a group of kids who were male, female, black, white, Asian, popular, unpopular, all coming together to fight a real enemy. An enemy that truly mattered. Because it wasn’t about race or social status for them, it was their abilities, contributions and good hearts that made them a solid team. Learning those fundamental core values is what I took away from the Power Rangers. It was great to see Kimberly and Trini bond together and kick more ass than the boys and do so while supporting each other. They never let the color of their skin define who they were and what they were capable of doing, so I decided to follow their lead.
Now as an adult, I am grateful for a role model like Trini Kwan as an Asian woman. She was soft-spoken and vulnerable, but she was never weak. She taught me that being myself wasn’t so bad. I’m also grateful for Kimberly Hart, who broke through stereotypes of being feminine and athletic and to not mistake openness for naïveté. It wasn’t so bad that I was always defaulted to play Trini in our land of make-believe, but I’ll be damned if anyone stops me from being whoever I want to be when I grow up.
