The “Bachelorette” star opens up about why the “Bachelorette” star experienced from an early age in the context in which the slur was used, which removed the “Love Island USA” contestants.
“Bachelorette” Gentran looking for identity, family and love
Jenn Tran, the first Asian American lead in the reality series The Bachelorette, talks about finding her identity and relationships.
It resumed Gentran’s old wounds when evidence of cast members of “Love Island USA” that used racist slur against Asian people began to circulate on social media.
Tran, a 27-year-old doctor assistant student who is also the latest “bachelorette,” quickly went to Tiktok to explain why the word is “despicable and disgusting.” Tran’s video has since accumulated 1.8 million views.
Cierra Ortega, 25, a frontrunner removed from the show, recently used an episode in 2024 to explain her eye shape.
“For me, it was even more upsetting. It was using context (words),” Tran told USA Today in a conversation about her reaction to Ortega’s post.
“Someone used the word and used it, “I see this because I don’t like the way it looks,” she used (see Asian people) – the word that nerves were hit with me, growing up, is really difficult to learn to love my traits.”
“Many People Have Fun” by Jen Tran, because of “The Way of My Eyes.”
Tran, a Vietnamese-American, is frank about how the lack of representation among Asian Americans influenced her childhood.
“A lot of people made fun of me, the way I saw it, the way I looked, the way I brought a stinky lunch to school, the way I spoke another language.
She internalized this messaging and temporarily considered orbitoplasty, one of the most common cosmetic surgery procedures in the United States. Among East Asian people, “double eyelid surgery” creates wrinkles in the top lid, achieving a wider eye appearance.
“I definitely got that eye surgery. I definitely buy double-sided tape and give myself a more double eyelid,” Tran says.
“When you grow up…and everyone who says it has different eyes than you, so you start to think, ‘Oh, I’m not beautiful. My eyes aren’t beautiful,'” she explains.
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Jen Tran: “I don’t need to fix it (my eyes)”
To see this message perpetuated the appalling tran several decades later.
“I mean, these are my eyes. And I was born with them. I don’t need to fix them. I have nothing to fix,” she says.
“That’s not the message we should convey to people, but to fix ourselves.”
USA Today reached out to Ortega for comment.
“I’m very familiar,” says Jen Tran.
Most of the comments on Tran’s videos are supportive.
However, the scroll of the remarks reveals that many people were not familiar with the Slur before the controversy. Ortega himself said in an apology for the video at the time, “I didn’t know it was a slur.”
The slur appears to have been born about 150 years ago, and is believed to have been originally used in connection with Chinese immigration in the 1800s.
Tran is “very familiar with” the offensive words. “I was recently called it on social media, so yeah, it’s still there,” she says.
Dealing with people who say “not that serious”
Many Tiktok videos on Ortega’s controversy have commented from users that the protest was an overreaction by people “too sensitive.”
Whenever Tran talks about racism he encounters online, the commenter dismisses her with statements such as, “Why are you making everything about race? That’s not so serious. I’m not silent.” She believes the solution is a willingness to learn to “open your heart” to other people’s experiences “about our culture.”
She also makes it clear that her video is intended to raise awareness of the harm that slur can bring, rather than “perpetuate this cyberbullying” Ortega’s “like this cyberbullying.”
“I love all my features now.”
In Tran’s case, this conversation about anti-Asian racism has arrived in an age of self-acceptance.
“I’ve definitely been through that journey, but I’m grateful to be on the other side,” she says. “I love all my features right now.”
She does not attribute her way of thinking to a singular reason. But “I grew up and I decided to accept myself rather than having surgery to change myself,” Tran says.
“And even now there are more Asian representatives and people who look like me, like me, are saying, “No, They are It’s beautiful, and so is me. “
