Image Source: Vulture
Synopsis:
Maya gets a questionable nickname during a school project; Anna goes along with it, resulting in a test of their friendship and identities.
Yet again, I felt so bad for Maya during this episode. She’s dealt with a lot this season; I think more than Anna, but thankfully, she overcame it. As shown from the title of the episode, Maya and Anna have a school project to work on, and surprise, surprise, they’re paired up with the popular girls again. Their topic is about osteoporosis, and their skit is about the old Spice Girls, and them having to drink milk, in order to dance again. The girls pick who they want to be, and Maya had wanted to be Posh Spice, but one of the other girls, decides she would be better as Posh. Of course Becca, tells Maya that she needs to be Scary Spice, because I guess she looks scary, and then things just get out of control. But side note, I know back then, many people didn’t want to be Scary Spice, but she was actually my favorite. She was probably the one that was most out there with her clothes and hair, but that’s why I loved her. She was different and she owned it. But during the girls skit, the popular girls decide that Maya should be the servant, and hand them the milk, because she looks different. Specifically, because she’s tan. They make things a lot worse, by saying that she needs to act like a Mexican, or a guido. Later that day, Maya and Anna tell Maya’s family and her brother’s friend, and they can’t believe what they’ve heard. That’s when Anna gets told that she might be racist.
Anna realizing that she might be racist, she goes to Ask Jeeves, and dives deep into what racism is. This sets a fire within her and let’s say, that she also takes the issue way too far. She wants her school to know, that racism is wrong and that she will go on a hunger strike, till racism is gone forever. Sadly, this leads to a lot of bad decisions, such as trying to demonstrate racism in the halls of the school and getting detention for it. It also made things worse for Maya, because she got made fun of even more. She was made fun of for being Japanese. Just seeing these issues portrayed in this episode, kind of made me reevaluate what happened in my school. I don’t think we had an severe racism in my school, but there were some hints of it, that I remember. It was definitely the obvious signs, such as associating stereotypes with different races, but I don’t remember people being bullied for what they looked like. Maybe I was lucky, and didn’t witness this nonsense, but it puts things into perspective, that racism or stereotyping has been going on for a very long time. And sadly, it all starts very early in life.
To end the episode, Maya’s brother and his friends, tell her, that she needs to beat Anna up for what she did, and they think about it for a second, but in the end, they fake fight and just hug it out. I’m glad that after all the chaos, Anna realized that she should have stood up for Maya earlier on. She accepts Maya for who she is, and I think that sends out a great message.
