Category Archive

I stumbled across this today, a new show on CW Tv called “Crowned: the Mother of all Pageants” - I’m going to side-step the obvious annoyances I have with a mother-daughter pageant reality show (not even because they are obvious to me, more like it’s one in the morning, I should be writing a paper, so this post has to be short) and get straight to pointing out some things I noticed about the cast descriptions on the website. Get ready, because this is just amazing - and by amazing I mean I want to laugh and cry and scream at the same time.

1. Ada and Christian: white mother who has a daughter of color; the tagline under their names is “Hot & Not.” There is simply no way to justify this title.

2. Angela and Tenia: black mother and daughter team whose tag is “Skin Deep” even though neither of them mentions the relationship they have with one another, or their race or ethnic identity of any kind. What does “skin deep” even mean here?

3. Annette and Alana: another mother/daughter of color pair and lo and behold their title is “Silent but Deadly.” I like to refrain from cursing in blog posts but seriously: what the —-.

What I really don’t need right now is another reality show that is telling me that women of color cannot be “dream gals” or “sassy sisters” or “tomboy queens” (these are some of the other taglines of castmembers - not without their problems, but that isn’t my point here) - instead the threat they place on their competitors has to be indirectly or directly refer to their category as a racialized Other. None of the titles talk about their attitude or personality, and two of the phrases involve some sort of negative comparison - they’re silent, but also deadly! Watch out bombshell blondes, they’re coming after you.

And seriously, someone explain to me what “skin deep” means.

I am plagued, dear readers, by three large and loaded words that have haunted me in college for nearly four years. Two terms that are plagued themselves by overuse and misunderstanding. And I’m going to try to get to my issue with both terms, though it could very well happen that I get stuck on one and have to finish up at another time.

I’ve been called oversensitive many times, in many different contexts. I remember having to do assignments in middle school where you have to describe yourself for some reason, and I often picked the term “really sensitive.” Hell, that’s what I was, really - sensitive about things, about what people say to me, about what people say to other people, about people’s actions. I still feel this way; of course now I don’t connote these traits with oversensitivity. I don’t believe sensitivity towards certain actions and hegemonies keeps me from developing the thick skin I need to survive. And I don’t believe there is anything “over” about my sensitivity.

There is a line drawn, it seems, that divides the normal or appropriate amount of concern from all other amounts. If normalcy dictates what is an appropriate amount of sensitivity (which varies based on race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, etc.) to have about a given circumstance, then oversensitivity perhaps implies sensitivity in some sort of marginal space.

I think maybe using examples is a better way to explain myself. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in the past (long ago, when this blog was in its first weeks) that there was an ex- who was filled with good intentions who told me that I was emotionally high maintenance and didn’t I think I was being a little bit too sensitive about certain things? This was in response to my bringing up the way our time was divided and whose schedules we worked around in the relationship (if you guessed “his,” you would be correct). At the time, my response to this criticism was to hold my tongue whenever I felt compelled to ask why aspects of the relationship were going the way they were.

I won’t suggest that my response now to claims of oversensitivity is to look those claims in the eye and spit on them. There are moments when the doubt creeps in, that perhaps I’ve searched too far through my progressive lens and have started to split hairs, have felt emotionally charged or impacted by something that doesn’t matter, that signifies nothing about larger institutional systems of oppression. The little voice says to me…maybe women need to buck up.

This is a part of self-loathing, though, isn’t it? It appears in it’s ghostly form and haunts us from the inside, telling us we are not as good as the beautiful people around us. It makes us doubt, makes us drained of our thick-skin-reserves so that we must take the time to exhale, exhale, exhale away the comments we have heard all our lives that rise to the surface again.

Sigh - those comments. They really are like a little plague that doesn’t seem to be an ailment until you are having a conversation with a male peer and you find yourself wondering why he looks slightly disengaged when you bring up the political and you think, “I talk too much. I’m talking too much. He’s looking at me like I’m oversensitive.”

And then you return to your room and you call those women of color who support you through your thick skin and thin and they help you ward off those ghosts for a little while longer.

I keep getting asked what I dressed up as this weekend for the big Halloween party on campus. I was a bit hesitant in my response, because at this point I still hadn’t decided whether or not I could handle the event. I was probably going to go, I had this great 90s dress I’ve been wanting to wear that I cannot pull off on a random Wednesday. Furthermore, I wanted to do some article research, having recently decided to be an opinion writer for our school paper. Let me tell you, this is entering a lion’s den to some extent. And it’s actually an entirely separate post that I’m still not ready to write that involves racism and sexism in the classroom and my choosing mainstream journalism in an attempt to keep from feeling like a quitter. A lot of students argue that Halloween is the one holiday that’s all about fun and is sort of this horrifying combination of debauchery and identity swapping, but the reality is, in the way that it is practiced in mainstream America, Halloween is never all about fun for me - it’s usually about trying to deal with the problematic costumes around me.

I’m to focus on two examples here because there is simply too many things to cover and these two examples really got me thinking this weekend.

First, I saw these students dressed as homeless people jingling bowls and hats to beg for money from the crowd. They had gone all out: dirt smudged faces and tattered clothing and unwashed hair and expressions that attempted to emote wear-and-tear. The argument for the costume I suppose is that part of Halloween should be about dressing up in identities that are completely different from our own. But I think the reality is that Halloween is the time where people can get away with dressing up in particular costumes, a way of being racist and classist and homophobic without being called out on it because they aren’t actually saying anything or expressing opinions, they’re “just dressing up”. It’s “just a costume”. I’m going to make a few assumptions here, but I think the students who chose “homeless people” as their costume are probably in the exact opposite situation as homeless people on campus: they are provided housing. They are getting an over $100,000 education. They aren’t starving, they aren’t living in the streets, they have access to showers and probably have enough money to purchase new clothes and live a comfortable life. The privilege of being able to dress up otherwise is offensive and classist, and reflects a kind of ignorance that even now I’m having trouble processing.

The second costume I want to talk about is one that I seem to have seen a lot on websites and over the weekend: the Pocahontas/ stereotypical Native American costume. With regards to the argument “Pochontas is from Disney and I was dressing up as a Disney character” my response is that Disney has racially problematic representations of individuals and helps to perpetuate many stereotypes about particular groups of people. So hiding behind Disney isn’t really going to help justify your costume. So often, the majority of individuals around me, myself included, ignore and exclude the history of indoctrination, imprisonment, destruction, and annihilation of Native Americans in California and the United States. When students dress up as Native Americans they are suggesting that the history of violence and oppression against Native Americans is something that can be forgotten, that their history and identities can be reduced to a culturally appropriative costume that can be donned by anyone on Halloween, that racist representations of Native Americans is appropriate.

My point here is that the “geishas” and “gangsters” and “belly dancers” and “maids”, the people who have the racial privilege to be able to dress up as “terrorists”, and “ethnic people” need to think about the racial and class privileges that allow them to do this….

Many people seem to choose costumes that are outside of normalcy - there is this combination of stereotyping and further marginalizing and often culturally appropriating communities. This is about exercising one’s privilege by dressing up as the Other - so when I see a white woman dressing up in the everyday clothes of someone from India, for example, there is something that allows that individual to feel comfortable in exploiting and appropriating another culture and identity, while also disregarding the history of that community, for a day that is apparently “all about fun”.

Yuck.

I’m writing about Halloween in conjunction with The Day of Red not only because they are happening on the same day but because there’s something to be said about costumes and the violence that these costumes are ignoring and making invisible. We need to think about the violence that occurs everyday against women of color and why there are so many women that think it’s ok to dress up in ethnic costumes, that do not encompass the history of violence and silence that affects the actual communities of women who are being stereotyped and caricatured.

We need to think about cultural appropriation of cultures and the kind of violence that appears in that process and in those cultures and what it means to simply walk around with particular aspects of the Other culture but without that trauma and without that violence (colonial and imperial and physical and emotional and patriarchal) that is deeply embedded in those communities.

We need to think about why there are people who can dress up today as Native AMericans, Geishas, Mulan, Princess Jasmine, Arabs, South Asian People, Belly Dancers; who can dress up today as beaten and murdered and bruised and bloody women from stories and myths, while there are Other women of color who are dead and who are stripped of their agency and who are raped and traumatized and beaten and silenced everyday.

I’ve been meaning to write a post on this show for a while now.

I have seen pretty much every promotional video about this show and I’m attaching the one that sends the clearest message regarding the plot-line of the show:

When I saw this video, I actually thought it was a skit from a late night comedy show. Turns out, it is the real deal, folks. This is a show about a white middle America family with a young awkward teenage boy whose mother tries to get him a friend by signing up for an exchange student. Turns out, the exchange student is a Muslim Pakistani boy, who follows every ridiculous stereotype for South Asian men who are “fresh off the boat” - this clothes, his naive enthusiasm and wonderment for the United States, his lack of social cues, etc. The thing that struck me the most though, is his thick accent. It sounds fake, it sounds contrived. It sounds like the makings of some racist television.

I have a feeling that the show is supposed to be a clever commentary on the xenophobia that plagues many predominantly white communities and families. The scene in the classroom for instance when the teacher says something like “Raja, in this country we raise our hands when we want to talk” then proceeds to ask if people are angry at him because “his people blew up the towers”. This is the only scene that appears in any way redeemable to me.

But this is the problem I really have with this show.

People, as a general rule, who watch mainstream television, are not that smart.

They don’t necessarily have a critical eye for the nuances of racial and political commentary. So when a character like Raja shows up, there aren’t going to be a whole lot of people who look at him as a smart and possibly witty caricature of how America perceives Muslim people. Instead, they are going to proceed to think that all Muslim people are awkward outcasts, that they all have really thick accents (think Apu from the Simpsons) and the boys are emasculated by their “foreign” values and cultural or religious practices. This is the kind of show that perpetuates stereotypes.

I guess the argument would be that it is a show about coming together despite differences. Two boys who are social outcasts from their big bad high school, can come together over food and religion and music. They can both feel like Aliens in America together.

This is some big, bad bullshit to me. This show is falling into the myth of the melting pot - we can all come together and overlook, even erase our differences and be happy living and working together. If we focus on our similarities, then our histories of institutional racism and sexism and homophobia will melt away. Enter the color blind zone. Of course, what’s even more complicated about this show is it isn’t advocating for color blindness so much as nation-blindness. “People are awkward in America, too. White kids are dealing with bullies and socially uncomfortable situations here, just like when a person of color visiting from another country comes to the United States” - This is such a problem, I’m having trouble stating why exactly it is. It just seems so obvious to me.

I’m going to say one last thing about this which is that I think it’s easy to focus on individual conflict and circumstance and ignore the larger framework that the circumstance is taking place in - what an endearing plot, to meet someone who understands what it’s like to be an outsider. I can only imagine what kind of lessons Raja is going to teach his host family and host brother, through his exotic culture and religion.

Also, it’s 2007. I really think it’s time to stop using cliched “ethnic music” whenever a brown person appears on screen.

I wrote the entire post - it took me two hours. I was so looking forward to putting it all up.

And then wordpress did not save the draft even though it said it had and it is lost forever. It was such a good post. It was such a well written post and it simply cannot be replicated. Nothing you’re about to read will be as good as what are now mere ashes floating in cyberspace.

It’s one of those days where this kind of thing makes me get so mad and then I just cry for 10 minutes and then it’s over.

So instead of finishing up my work at home this afternoon, I will be attempting to rewrite the post as well as trying not to mumble profanities while doing so.

I have spent nearly a month going back and forth between commenting on the New York Times article that was published regarding skin lightening creams in India. As a U.S. citizen and inhabitant of the First World/Global North, I find myself so weary of commenting on trends or situations of this kind that are taking place in the Global South/Third World/developing countries (from here on out I will be using the term developing countries). It’s very easy to get caught in the mindset that somehow, one’s education or upbringing or condition or geography grants the person some kind of right or privilege to decide what is best or appropriate for another community of people. It’s easy to get swept into the postmodern missionary system, where phrases like “helping” and “saving” become ways of further removing agency from those communities. Language is an important and influential thing. So I’m going to try very hard not to get caught up in deciding what is right or wrong about skin lightening in India, and focus on the argument that is being made about the companies that are making these creams. This is a complicated issue because it speaks volumes about the larger issues that are at play here - the media and advertising, sexism in the workplace, long histories of patriarchy, and globalization.

I will be referring to this article here - entitled “Telling India’s modern women they have power, even over their skin tone” - it is an archived article so I’m not sure if there will be full access to it. Maybe someone will find a link to the article on another website. For now I will be putting up small excerpts from the article in order to talk about a few things that I thought were a big problem.

“The modern Indian woman is independent, in charge — and does not have to live with her dark skin.

That is the message from a growing number of global cosmetics and skin care companies, which are expanding their product lines and advertising budgets in India to capitalize on growth in women’s disposable income. A common thread involves creams and soaps that are said to lighten skin tone. Often they are peddled with a ”power” message about taking charge or getting ahead.

Avon, L’Oréal, Ponds, Garnier, the Body Shop and Jolen are selling lightening products and all of them face stiff competition from a local giant, Fair and Lovely, a Unilever product that has dominated the market for decades.

Fair and Lovely, with packaging that shows a dark-skinned unhappy woman morphing into a light-skinned smiling one, once focused its advertising on the problems a dark-skinned woman might face finding romance. In a sign of the times, the company’s ads now show lighter skin conferring a different advantage: helping a woman land a job normally held by men, like announcer at cricket matches. ”Fair and Lovely: The Power of Beauty,” is the tagline on the company’s newest ad”

Fair and Lovely’s advertising has always been targeted to dark skinned and often working class women who should lighten their skin if they want that promotion, or a job, or respect, or a husband. You might YouTube some advertisements of the company - they often depict women who are shunned by some high power executive or modeling agency or studio run by Western-clothes-wearing-light-skinned-Indian folk. Then they go back to their homes and use the cream and transform into similar looking W.c.w.l.s.I.f and everyone is so taken aback at how good they look and then they look so happy and youthful now that they have new skin. The problem goes beyond the issue of telling women that they can obtain lighter skin and invoke more opportunities - the problem is that this company is reflecting companies and workplaces that do in fact discriminate against women who have darker skin, or are not from global cities like Bombay or Delhi. Before I go on, I will say that this is not an exclusive characteristic of developing countries - the U.S. still, albeit not necessarily as overtly, privileges certain women over others in the job market and in everyday situations and discriminate based on gender (how much do you look like a woman), color, race, age, sexuality and class (where did you go to school, what kind of education have you pursued, etc.). The advertising for products like Fair and Lovely (and for newer lightening creams made by L’oreal - called White Perfect - big sirens going off in my head about that) continues to enforce certain color and regional and class related prejudices in communities.

Here’s the thing that I really want to get into though.

“‘Half of the skin care market in India is fairness creams,” said Didier Villanueva, country manager for L’Oréal India, and 60 to 65 percent of Indian women use these products daily. L’Oréal entered this specific market four years ago with Garnier and L’Oréal products, but so far has a small market share, he said.

The idea of ”glowing fairness” has nothing to do with colonialism, or idealization of European looks, Mr. Villanueva said. ”It’s as old as India,” he said, and ”deeply rooted in the culture.”

There’s no denying that the notion of ”fairness,” as light skin is known in India, is heavily ingrained in the culture. Nearly all of Bollywood’s top actresses have quite pale skin, despite the range of skin tones in India’s population of more than a billion people.”

Fairness has nothing to do with colonialism or the idealization of European looks?? Oh Mr. Villanueva, what a silly man you are. Because what you should have reminded the large population of people who read the New York Times and use quotes from authentic Indians as facts about the entire Indian population is that while fairness, i.e. light skin, has indeed been privileged in Indian culture for years before British colonization, it doesn’t mean colonialism didn’t reinforce the power of white skin.

I remember extended family members always reminding me of the many things that can apparently make you dark - don’t be out in the sun too long. Don’t drink so much tea (did anybody get that one?) it will make your skin dark. I had the feeling that everything that young girls weren’t supposed to do was rooted to dark skin. Dark skin, at least for North Indian communities, meant you worked in the sun. Maybe you couldn’t afford servants. It meant you were poor or working class. But if anybody thinks that privileging white skin didn’t get reinforced by white folk coming to India and taking over the entire nation, then I’m going to go as far as to say maybe they’re in a bit of denial. Because with the white skin of Britain came whiteness and white privilege and those things become very tied together. So while fairness doesn’t have everything to do with colonialism or whiteness, it sure as hell as something to do with it.

I read some comments floating around the internet, and on the Sephora blog, that compares skin lightening in India to tanning in the U.S. This is a very interesting comparison to me, because from the outside it appears to be a valid one. But I’m going to argue that it isn’t and here’s why in a nutshell: when white people tan, they aren’t stripping themselves of any kind of white privilege that they have - I understand that there is a stigma about white people being considered “pasty and unattractive” but tanning does not strip white people from the privileges that they benefit from because of their race. In fact, tanning is a way of benefiting from the exotic-ness and trendy appeal that comes from dark skin without the racism and colorism that many if not most people of color face in their day to day lives. Lightening one’s skin strips brown folk of oppressions that they will encounter based on the way they look. Tanning is a luxury. Skin lightening is a process that is created out of the institutions that tell women (and men) that it is a product of survival. Big. Difference.

I’m going to end on this final reinforcement - this is a complex issue. Not because skin lightening creams are a big issue - education is an issue. Poverty is an issue. Patriarchy is an issue. And they are issues everywhere. Skin lightening creams, and that NY Times article, is an issue because it is a testament to these larger issues. It is a lens through which issues of race and color and gender need to be challenged and talked about. It is a portal through which whiteness and patriarchy and media can be discussed.

Now I am going to save this post in three different programs and proofread and publish it.

Crossposted at feministe 

That said, I will be writing. My academic writing is my first priority these days and I don’t have to time to write papers and keep a blog consistently. I used to be able to before. But it seems I only have the capacity these days for one or the other.

I have however continue to read blogs daily and there are so many posts I always want to link to. Here are a few - not all are very recent, but they are all worth reading.

1. Bollywood and the Oscars. Ok there are two reasons why I love this post. One, I completely agree. India can never be allowed to submit “universal” films. It always has to be specific to Indianness or Indian culture (whatever that means). Two, I found out the author is a friend of one of my professors whom I respect a lot.

2. Tyra Tyra Tyra… Racialicious continues to be the blog I read most frequently (can you blame me? how can one resist the daily stories that appear about race in the media), and this post on Tyra Banks and her talk about body image are… I don’t know if I can find the words. Her sports illustrated cover makes her look even more stretched out than she does on the show. How many women of color do I know have the curves (or lack thereof) that she does? Yeah. Thought so.

3. Male privilege! Ah, Andrea, I’m so glad you continue to write for shrub.com - it makes me so happy. This is a great overview of how male privilege is seen in discussions about sexism, that comes down to the reality that being a pro-feminist man means stepping up.

4. ” Is it okay to work this damn much for the desire of trying to create change?” I’ve read this post so many times because I realized in the last week that I am probably going to go into academia and pursue a career as a professor. And there are too many questions and fears related to this question of work, and whether or not it is great work, and whether or not it is worth it, especially in thinking about “future things” such as children, and family (in fact so many questions, that this is what my next blog post is about). I really love the blog in general too, particularly the new look - it’s one of the few blogs that keeps me inspired to write!

Until next time.

Over thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to watch way too much television. I’m in the middle of an episode when I caught a commercial for Crayola - one of their “use your imagination” advertisements that is supposed to be very sentimental and endearing, possibly nostalgic.Well this commercial was a little bit more than all of that - let me try to describe it as best as I can. I wasn’t able to find a copy of the commercial online, but maybe someone will and can add the link - because it really should be seen.

Young white girl is drawing - she draws a lion. The lion jumps off the page and the girl is transported into a jungle - trees, elephants, and other animals (all animated to look like they are made of cutout paper or markers, etc.). The ywg is riding an elephant and is now wearing a purple and pink outfit that can only be described as a cross between Princess Jasmine’s clothes and a problematic halloween costume. (Strike one)

She turns around to wave a young white boy - who is also drawing. He’s dressed in (deep breath) and outfit that strongly resembles a British colonial officer’s clothes.

Actually he looks just like those little miniatures above - sans gun/facial hair. (Strike two)

And just when you believe that it’s over - the boy removes what he’s been drawing off the paper - turns out it’s a bridge - and places it in the jungle, over a waterfall. I’m pretty sure there are little stick figures walking across after he puts it up. (Oh yes. Definitely strike three.)

I just don’t understand the thought process involved when this commercial was being produced. Someone thought “I want to encourage children to use their imagination - so I’ll put them in a jungle dressed as colonizers and appropriaters and have the women explore culture while the men build bridges and show the natives how it’s done”?

They thought “in our post 9-11 world, the historical nostalgia we want to bring up and echo is one of colonization, of remembering that our place is to help the less fortunate. the earlier we begin to imagine this, the better”?

Oh wait. They didn’t think.

I understand, it’s one advertisement. But - it’s always one advertisement, one statement, one instance - until these instances and moments become the instituional norm, the foundation that our foreign (and domestic) policy begins to echo, and continues to perpetuate.

I wish I could be more articulate about how frustrated I was about the depiction of the White West exploiting the Other. But I can’t right now. Rest assured, I will be writing about this again.

This is a pretty awesome site. Rachel’s Tavern lists racist incidents that have been happening on college campuses in the last couple of months. I have to say I nearly fell off my chair in reading the story about college republicans at BU who “feel the need to have a ‘Caucasian scholarship’”.

Yup. We all know that if I’ve started my day thinking I have time to post on a topic entitled “Diwali Barbie”, it’s not going to be good.
Sk sent me this, and I can’t decide whether the actual doll or the blurb alongside it is more disgusting.
I think, being a full believer that it isn’t what you say (or in this case, sell) but how you do it, the text is what put my heart into figurative cardiac arrest.

Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

The most important and magical festival celebrated in India is Diwali. Homes are decorated with marigolds and mango leaves, thousands of oil diyas or lamps are lit as auspicious symbols of good luck, and everyone enjoys sweets to the sound of firecrackers and revelers. Diwali Barbie doll wears a traditional teal sari with golden detailing, a lovely pink shawl wrap, and exotic jewelry. The final detail is a bindi on the forehead - a jewel or a mark worn by Hindu women to indicate that they are married. Doll cannot stand alone.

I know, I know. “But this is to diversify for all the brown children who need a Barbie to look up to!”. Actually, if we wanted little Indian children running around and worshipping a disproportionatly tall woman whose skin is unnaturally white and lives up to the standards of exotic in the West, we would point them all to Aishwarya Rai. At least she does something. Where is the President of the US Indian Barbie? Where the hell is Prime Minister Barbie?
I think the thing that kills me is how white looking she is. Her skin is white and Lord knows she’s letting her buyers feel like they can never live up to true Indian beauty standards.

What’s most ironic to me is the line “Doll cannot stand alone”. Thank you Barbie for reminding us that at the end of the day, no woman should really be able to stand alone. Especially not the exotic ones.

Happy Wednesday.

This is about language people! Language!

Aishwarya Rai is one of those women that I give a lot of credit to for paving some way for Indian women to be maintstreamed somehow but Lord Knows she could easily pass for exotic white and isn’t really helping by remaining passive about the language used about her. Then again, my victim-to-system blame lens reminds me that this is really about the public being eager to pounce upon any chance to objectify the other…