Portrait of Anna May Wong , 1934
Photograph
[2009.300.1507 ]

Anna May Wong (1905-1961), the first well-known Chinese American actress in 1920s Hollywood, was an influential fashion icon for Chinese Canadian women of her time. Wong had relatable lived experiences with many second-generation American/Canadian women with Chinese heritage. Growing up in the exclusion era, she used self-fashioning practices to fight against Western people’s negative perceptions of being Chinese. She adopted fashion as a survival strategy to break stereotypes and reinvent a transnational identity. Wong combined her Chinese makeup, such as thin eyebrows and elongated eyeliners, with a European accent and North American clothing. Her on-screen image inspired Chinese Canadian women of her time to use “strategic hybridity” to fight for more possibilities and self-expressions.

Exhibited by:

Violet Wolfe

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