Actress Michelle Yeoh on Sunday took home the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in the 2022 action/family/drama/fantasy/thriller/comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Yeoh is the first Asian woman to win Best Actress. And her nomination marked the first time an obviously Asian woman had been named in the category. The late actress Merle Oberon, who successfully hid her partial Asian heritage, was nominated in 1935 for The Dark Angel. (She lost.)
For Yeoh, it’s a “historic moment,” according to the press. Speaking of the press, it’s still struggling to explain why, exactly, Yeoh’s achievement is so historic.
Oberon’s nomination 88 years ago has left news and entertainment writers in a bind. No one wants to use the word “obviously” in reference to Yeoh’s ethnicity, as audiences would likely consider it rude and inartful. It’d also open the door to uncomfortable and irate discussions regarding what (and who) “counts” as white or Asian. With the simplest word to describe Yeoh’s situation now off the table, journalists have opted instead to use bizarrely worded phrases and euphemisms. Indeed, the language the news and entertainment industries have adopted to cover Yeoh’s nomination and win makes it sound as if the 60-year-old actress has just come out of the closet.
Enjoy the following headlines and news blurbs. Revel in tortured and exceptionally clumsy attempts to underscore Yeoh’s historic, but caveated, victory (my emphasis added):
Yeoh is the “first person who identifies as Asian to ever be nominated” for Best Actress, the Hollywood Reporter claimed in January.
Said Deadline, “Yeoh is also the first openly Asian woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.”
From InStyle magazine: “Michelle Yeoh Is Officially the First Asian-Presenting Best Actress Oscar Winner.”
Yeoh is the first “self-identified Asian actress” to win Best Actress, said National Public Radio.
For a non-weird example of how to cover Yeoh’s nomination, we turn to People magazine: “Michelle Yeoh Is the Second Asian Woman to Be Nominated for Best Actress.”
There, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?