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Drunk off of Tila Tequila
by Nathaniel Jue

I hate tequila. It is the one liquor I find to be disgusting. The odor, the taste...the odor! It never sits well with me. Most of the times I consume tequila, I end up barfing. A lot. And I end up not remembering that the night even occurred.

That is what I expected to happen when I first came upon the guilty pleasure, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, last season. A Shot at Love - now in its second season - is the latest version of the Bachelor(ette), where the unattached main character has the envious position of choosing from dozens of suitors, who also happen to be looking for true love via reality television. However, the twist added to this tequila isn't a lime. It's that Tila Tequila is bi-sexual! So she gets to choose her companion from both men AND women. How wonderful is that?

On paper, it's close to the most brilliant premise ever created. A young, hot female picks one partner from a combination of both males and females. So one day she's kissing a guy, the next day she's making out with a girl - or that same night she might even hook up with both! At the same time! You can't go wrong with that. The originality of the show is simply ground breaking. But what puts A Shot at Love at the top of the awesome list is that the star of the show is Asian American. An Asian as the unprecedented centerpiece of a reality dating show? Easily, this status puts Tila Tequila on the top shelf.

Unfortunately, the Asian American community doesn't really want to drink Tila Tequila. As with most alcohol, our tolerance for Tila just isn't that high. As pioneering as she is, the outlandishness and, well, idiocy of the show isn't something Asian Americans would be proud of. During the first season, I couldn't get past the fact that her over sexuality was not necessarily a good thing in the eyes of Asian America. As opposed to other past reality contestants such as Jasmine Trias on American Idol, Dat Phan from Last Comic Standing, or the ultimate Survivor, Yul Kwon. Those are Asians we can root for. The Asians we want to relate to. The Asians we want the rest of America to know about. The Asians we want to represent us in the real world.

Tila, with her partying, her promiscuity, her excessiveness, more appropriately should headline Girls Gone Wild DVDs. We reserve that sort of behavior for the Lindsay Lohans, Tara Reids, and Hilton sisters of America. The outrageous and blatant exploitation of her sexiness for attention is the polar opposite of the typical Asian celebrity we have grown to admire and respect. Like the elegance and grace of Kristi Yamaguchi's success on Dancing with the Stars. Or the steely performances of Lost's Daniel Dae Kim. We are proud of their perseverance and the hard work they put in to be a successful Asian American celebrity. Those are people we want to relate and look up to.

At the other end of the bar we have a shot of Tila Tequila - 50% lesbian, 50% straight, equals 100% sexual, and infinite partying proof. Sounds like a recipe for slobbering drunken ridiculousness. I mean if we've learned anything from celebrity dating shows on music television networks, we know that these realities are rather dumb and also kind of repulsive. With standard programs such as Flavor of Love and Rock of Love, we know that A Shot at Love is not brimming with class or aptitude. As you might expect, Tila doesn't exactly test the contestants on what graduate school they attended, what foreign languages they speak, or their career ambitions. Most of the acts of potential love performed by the suitors involve some sort of dare related to bizarre physical feats of strength, dancing, hot tubs, making out, and of course, liquor. After all, who of us hasn't had alcohol help us fall in love at one time or another?

And yet, each time I watched, I needed at least ten tequila shots to hopefully make myself blackout so that I could forget that I ever tuned in. Tequila, the show, like tequila the liquor, is quite wincing and sickly nauseating. And it actually seemed worse that Tila's Asian, as she perpetuates the exotic, erotic Asian dragon lady we have grown to know in America. It kind of debased her and showed that she sunk to the lowest form of celebrity: exaggerated sexual partying to achieve pop culture notoriety. Not many Asians are accustomed to this sort of path to fame. We're used to the achievement based on copious amounts of talent, diligence, and intellect - not copious shots of tequila. Why should the Asian American community embrace Tila Tequila as our drink of choice?

Well no one ever said A Shot at Love was going to win any Asian Excellence Awards. While Tila may be perceived as trampy and attention-driven - like a yellow version of another reality star, Paris Hilton, - you can't blame her for her popularity and publicity. She's a good businesswoman - using the media to launch the hottest and sexiest brand of tequila on the market: herself. You don't become the most popular Myspace account without doing something right. It may not sound like an achievement, but when you think about it, for an Asian American, that's pretty remarkable. And then you consider that becoming so, she probably did put in a good amount of hard work and smarts. I know, it's not law school; but you can't discredit her determination to be where she is today. I mean, she has her own show! No other Asian American is the featured star of a television series. That's got to be somewhat impressive.

Is she going to be an Asian Emmy-award winner? No. Is she going to drink her way from A Shot at Love into the exclusively respected club of Asian American Celebrities with Lucy Liu and John Cho? Probably not. But who cares if she's a 26-year female who holds frat parties as a career? She is going places that no Asian has been before. Asians deserve to be recognized as sex symbols, too. And Asians are allowed to use their sexiness to promote themselves, just like everyone else in this country. It's about time we show America that Asians are open with our sexuality, and we have fun when it comes to dating and our love lives. It also gives us a chance to prove that Asians like to party and, occasionally, can hold our liquor (at least some of us).

True, Tila Tequila might make me gag, and I may not get through an entire night of consumption. But I think the best way to watch the show is to just binge. Hopefully the buzz and the beer goggles will make it more tolerable. Grab a salt shaker and a bag of limes, sit down and watch A Shot at Love marathon, and just get drunk off of her. So pour me a double shot of Tila Tequila...and keep 'em coming!

Nathaniel Jue has been writing ever since he won first place in his fourth grade essay contest. However, he has been ranting for the past 28 years.