Casting Bag: Fires of Rome "Set in Stone"

This casting notice caught my eye because of my ethnic ambiguity/miscellaneous princessness. but then i continued reading and figured it would be better suited for the casting bag:

Non-Union Actress: Female, ethnically ambiguous, 18-30 for a stylized slow motion music video. You will be dancing in headdress with Afghan hounds in front of small, low velocity wind machine. Must dance and move well.

International Ambi Princess of Pool and Polar Bears

That is my new title, by the way...I will soon have business cards printed up.

i was at one of my many jobs today, and a fellow came up and placed his order. he was helped by my coworker so i focused my attention on the next pair of customers. i hear him say "are you italian?" and assume he must be talking to me. so i look over at him, confirm that he is, in fact, talking to me, and tell him my ethnicity. then i go back to my customers. all of a sudden, i hear him say "¿como se llamas?" (do you like what i did there with the upside down question mark?)

ok listen, i am not a big fan of people assuming that because i am of hispanic heritage that i speak spanish. i did not grow up speaking the language, it was not spoken in my household, and i get really pissed when people get mad at me for not being fluent and chastise me for not knowing the language of my people. i took some years in high school and college, but i was born in this country, as were my parents, so there's no reason that just because i'm brown, you can talk to me in spanish. this would be like me automatically assuming that my white friends speak polish or russian or whatever. i make an exception if another latino person approaches me speaking it because usually they are just looking for someone to help them in their own language and they ALWAYS ask first if i speak it. this guy...this joker...i may not have mentioned it but he was white as snow. i answered him, told him my name, and went back to my customers. he interjected again, and now i'm getting pissed because i'm clearly with someone else. in spanish, he asked me if my family was mexican. what the fuck do you think? oh, no, they are all french, but i came out mexican! so i answer him IN ENGLISH that i was born in texas, as were both my parents, and we are all mexican.

but like, that's fucked up, right? i mean, a white dude came up to me, started a conversation in english, which i can clearly handle, and then started speaking his white boy spanish to me when he found out my background?? was he trying to impress me? am i going overboard here?

miscellaneous princess

a friend of mine has taken to calling me "miscellaneous princess" because of my ability to pass for a multitude of ethnicities. many people think i'm hawaiian because that's where i hail from, i get all sorts of different hispanic queries, was once asked by an indian lady if i was indian, and someone once thought my brother and i were asian (i don't get that one). surprisingly, several people have also thought i was a whitey. this is just a preface to a question i'll ask after the following story.

i stopped by my local rite aid tonight. i don't normally go there, usually i hit up the walgreens...it's further from my apartment, but it's on the way home from the subway, so i usually just stop in there when i need supplies. tonight, however, i had passed it when i realized i needed something, and it was raining and shitty, and the rite aid was just a block away, so i made one of my rare visits in. i was at the counter, my cashier was a young lady in her 20's, who had this awesome accent i wish i could describe accurately or at least could do a good impression of. She had the low register of one of those chain smoking gamblers at the slot machines, and some indescribable accent on top of that...part thug, part some ethnicity, part something else....aaand i'm pretty sure she was hitting on me. she kept giving me elevator eyes and telling me if the thing i was purchasing didn't work out to bring it back to her with the receipt and she'll give me a better one. as she gave me my change she was all 'you're so cute' and i responded as i do when anyone is hitting on me --- nervous laughter. she then said 'what are you, arabic? no...not arabic' i told her mexican and she goes (i REALLY wish i had an audio file of her saying this) "ooohhh, you a messican?! really? (elevator eyes)." she then said 'bella bella!!' i turned to her coworker, nervously laughed some more, and then made a quick exit.

the point of this story is to pose this question: should i start standardly answering "miscellaneous princess" whenever my ethnicity is questioned?