Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite's previous work for The Toast can be found here.

I don’t remember when I first learned about the idea of “model minorities,” but when I was younger, it seemed like a good thing that people would assume I was smart, high achieving, and loyal to my family. My first thought was always “Look, there we are!” when I saw brown people on TV, even if it was another nerdy

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Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite's past work for The Toast can be found here.

It’s been well-documented (here, here, and here) that on-screen female friendships are sorely lacking in almost all respects. A few scenarios are common: women hate each other but pretend to be friends, they only meet to discuss men and then don’t seem to talk until the next dramatic event, one serves as a sidekick or sounding board to the

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Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite last wrote for The Toast about Bend it Like Beckham. Despite liking both books and Canada, I’m not really a CanLit fan. I was never drawn to the genre outside of required reading for school, and I can’t pinpoint where exactly my immersion in my national literary culture went awry. But even though I have fallen down on my CanLit reading as an adult, it was one of my favourites as a…

In 2003, things were changing for me. I started high school, bought my first pair of jeans that actually fit (flared, with the lowest rise possible), picked my favourite Beatle (John, but also George), and saw Bend it Like Beckham for the first time. All of these events were major milestones, but the last one has probably been the most influential to my life trajectory. As a teenager, I was obviously obsessed with being conventional…