APA Month – Celebrate APIA Women of the gay community

In 1993, Kelly and Calvin Klein famously discovered motorcycle-riding Jenny Shimizu, who would soon be the androgynous new face of the fragrance CK One. Following her quick rise to fame with the CK One ads, the versatile model of Japanese-American descent worked with the likes of Donna Karan, Versace, Yohji Yamamoto, Prada and Jean Paul Gaultier, dominating both runways and editorials. Shimizu also brought queerness and androgyny to the fashion industry and mainstream media.

Born in Vancouver, Canada and raised in California, Nisha Ganatra is an out director, producer, and actress of South Asian descent. She attended NYU’s Graduate Film School where she won the Tisch fellowship, PBS Grand Prize for Most Outstanding Short Film, and studied with Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese and Barbara Kopple.

Among her award-winning body of work includes the 1999 critically acclaimed film Chutney Popcorn, which she directed, wrote, and produced, and in which she starred as Reena, a second generation Indian American lesbian dating Lisa (Jill Hennessy). In the film, Ganatra explores the nuances of being out in a seemingly traditional Indian family, interracial relationships, and the frustrations with family members trying to find Reena a damn man. Upon release of the film, Ganatra insisted that she made the film specifically for South Asians, and the fate of the representation of South Asians rested in their collective “economic force” to assert that there is indeed an audience for South Asian films.

Though Shelley Conn is not American, her roles as lesbian Nina in Nina’s Heavenly Delights and bi-curious Jessica in the BBC series Mistresses deserve praise and acknowledgment during APIA month and beyond for their honest portrayals of South Asian queer women. The actress of English and Sri Lankan descent has worked hard to create genuine characters and one can only hope that she plays more queer female characters in the future.

via afterellen.com