Toronto Life – Where the minorities aren’t

My boyfriend got me a subscription to Toronto Life for Valentine’s Day. He had noticed me picking up random copies of the magazine and thought that it would be an excellent gift. At the time, I was impressed with the magazine but as I got them in sequential order, I began to notice that, for a magazine about a city that has 42.9% visible minorities, Toronto Life sure doesn’t have a heck of a lot minorities in it. And I’m not talking about minorities in the magazine as an exotic ornament or performing the unwanted domestic tasks (essentially taking on the traditional immigrant role of being the women in the society) or in the We-have-a-whole-lot-of-fucking-different-types-of-food!!! section, I’m talking about the representation of minorities that are well-regarded powerful people contributing to the cultural and political dynamics of the city.

In the latest issue, there were no such minorities. Page 23 featured a sloth-like South Asian hipster in a Blackberry jab-icle, pages 76-81 featured a group of beautifully-but-foreignly-clothed Tibetans, page 93, another Asian hipster – this time an interior decorator-, page 111 features a cartoon of a visible minority (I don’t know if you can count that), and page 166, maybe as a last hurrah, features four visible minorities giving their opinion on the economy. With the exception of the last page, none of these images suggest a sense of a non-foreign “one of us”, much less “one of the great Torontonians”.

I don’t know if the issue is whether that minorities aren’t becoming the Great Torontonian or if Toronto Life is not representing the Great Torontonian Visible Minority in their magazine. This really is an issue that has bothered me since high school when I went to an art school that you had to audtion to get in. There were many minorities in visual art (where I was enrolled) and music but only one or (grasp!) two in the dance and drama classes. I’ve always wondered if this was a matter of self-selection or lack of talent or the filtering of the school. I tend to not think that it is due to lack of talent, at least in terms of the drama department as there are thousands of wonderfully talented Asian and South Asian actors in their home countries. So why not here?

Who aren’t we developing?
Who aren’t we representing?

I would like all the minorities in Toronto to step up their game. I want to make us noticeable.

I don’t fucking care whether Toronto Life covers it. I won’t be buying it anyways.

On another note, my boyfriend was in a picture in this month’s issue… we knew the photorgrapher.

So the question of the day is: whose blur is best?

Left: My bf in Toronto Life June 08, p31
Right: me