SeeHer, an organization focused on accurate portrayals of women and girls in media and advertising, has released a new guide on how to write Asian Pacific Islander women authentically.

First announced in May at the Gold Gala, the lavish fete thrown by Gold House, which partnered with SeeHer to develop the API resource, the guide offers detailed lists of questions and points to consider, designed to get creatives to consider the diversity within API womanhood as well as overplayed tropes (i.e. model minorities, tiger moms, dragon ladies, perpetual foreigners), covering subject areas including language, family, religion, career paths, skin tone and intersectionality.

“I work to ensure that the women I play are not just relegated to stereotypes,” said Michelle Yeoh, who received the SeeHer Award at the Gold Gala.

For example, the guide notes that colorism and oversexualization or exoticization are both issues that API women face onscreen and in real life. The guide also notes that an accurate depiction of language should include not just regionally appropriate accents and idioms but also fluency based on character history and the existence of bilingualism and code-switching.

“Be sensitive to the nuances between Asian Americans and don’t paint them with a broad brush,” Padma Lakshmi said in October during SeeHer and Gold House’s Advertising Week NY panel about API female representation. “I know that requires a lot of work. For example, if you’re from North India, you speak Hindi or Punjabi, while if you’re from South India, you speak Tamil. I would love for there to be a little more thoughtfulness and accuracy.”

The guide also cautions against flattening the entire diaspora into a false monolith — such as using K-pop to signify any East Asian culture and also asks creators to consider the many facets of API identity. “Being mixed race has often felt I do not fully belong to one culture or another, rather I am somewhere in the middle of the glorious spectrum of identity that we all belong to,” The Walking Dead actor Eleanor Matsuura said in a statement supporting the guide. “The only thing we can do is share our stories, nuances and unique experiences in the hope that the industry truly listens.”

The guide also includes results of a survey of more than 1,600 API women conducted by SeeHer and Gold House in August, who shared that multiracial identity, pronunciation and accuracy of API names, Southeast Asians and diversity of skin tone, hair texture, sexual orientation and gender identity were not well represented in media, advertising and entertainment.

On the October panel, producer, writer and director Geena Rocero explained how people are represented – not just that they are – is important. “As trans people, when we become visible, we become the target,” she said. “In the Phillippines, trans people are culturally visible. We’re a part of mainstream society. We have trans pageants on national television, but we’re not politically recognized. So mainstream visibility does not equal progress. Visibility is one step, but it’s also how that story [is told] and how that visibility is perceived and how it’s created.”

SeeHer, which was launched in 2016 by the Association of National Advertisers in partnership with The Female Quotient, has previously released three #WriteHerRight guides: A general resource for writing female characters in 2018, followed by specific guides on Black women (in partnership with OWN) and Latinas (with NBCUniversal and Telemundo) in 2021. “API women represent a broad range of histories, cultures and lived experiences yet have long been underrepresented or stereotyped in media,” SeeHer president Christine Guilfoyle said in a statement. “SeeHer is committed to helping storytellers showcase diverse, multidimensional API women that reflect the fullness of these cultures.”

Multiple SeeHer members including AMC, Meta and Paramount partnered on the API guide. “We are proud to continue our work alongside SeeHer to celebrate API women and girls on and offscreen,” Paramount Advertising chair Jo Ann Ross said in a statement. “As an industry, the tenets of the representation and storytelling guide will give us the tools to tell even stronger stories that are rooted in intentionality and thoughtfulness, and I look forward to seeing this important work come to life across the Paramount portfolio.”