Loving This Picture....

I spotted this picture on the interwebz today, and just had to share it. I'm loving the picture because of the gorgeous little girls in it. I love how they are black and white (would be nice to see more girls of other races in there :>) but it was so cute to see that they all, regardless of race, could identify with a black princess.

Too cool!

Disney take note!

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Enough With The Blackface Othering Already!

*deep, frustrated sigh*

I've had up to here *pointing to hairline* with the blackface in modeling. Vogue France found itself in hot water for it earlier in the month, and here comes Tyra right behind them. It must have been a conspiracy of dimwits, I guess.

At least the Vogue spread possibly conveyed some kind of message (to some) about race, especially on the tail of the "revelation" about Michelle Obama's white ancestry. With that said, Tyra Banks with her race fetish ass, just had to come with her own twisted version.

See all the pictures here.

In tonight's episode of ANTM, Tyra experimented with mixed ancestry (or Hapa as it is known in Hawaii where the episode was filmed). She gave the girls such pairings as Russian and Moroccan, Botswana (how nice of them to misspell it with Batswana in the episode) and Polynesian, Malagasy and Japanese, and others. She gave the black girl Russian and Moroccan because she has those "high cheek bones" that Russians are famed for.

Ummm...Last time I checked, black peoples are known for their higher cheek bones, so I guess I don't see why she had to do Russian and Moroccan. I digress...

I watched the pictures in horror, not because of the blackface per se. It was tastefully done, at least in comparison to a minstrel show. What did bring the awful taste of bile to my mouth, was her "bloodlust" for putting these women, all of them white save an Asian and African-American model, in "traditional" garb and othering them.

Because putting white women in black face is SO much cooler than actually working with the girls' actual racial backgrounds.

To be more specific, it falls in the same box as "exotic" black women, who are only deemed to be attractive when they have a little less black in them (see any rap video these days).

Black models already don't get enough work, and everyone who knows anything about fashion knows this. I am tired of the "exotization" and "fethishization" of black women provided they are mixed with a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.

Not only that, the girls looked awful, as their features did not match their "skin tones." It's almost like she had the same lust that I witnessed growing up when the black girls in my elementary class would talk about our white classmates' hair and relaxing.

Then again, what can you expect from a woman who told Bianca that her features (with her HIGH CHEEK BONES) were too "strong," while praising the blonde haired and eyebrowed model for looking "angelic."

It's almost as if Black or Hispanic or Japanese, is new and refreshing, when white models don some dark makeup for Tyra. Otherwise they are just unremarkable.

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Tyra Banks' "Real" Hair... I Guess...

I will do a quick post on this because there's really not much to talk about.

Tyra made a big deal about "debuting" her "real" hair for the new season of her daytime, Emmy-winning talk show "The Tyra Banks Show" this summer. I guess she didn't disappoint those who were waiting to see it.

I was curious myself as to what extent she would go, but I wasn't holding my breath as to how far. Farthest being that she would be rocking a bad ass natural. She didn't disappoint me.

For those who expected to see a bunch of natural hair, I say "slow down" a bit. This is a woman who obviously loves weaves and the like, and I guess I question her motives and reasoning behind that.

It will take Tyra a long time before she gets to a point to rock natural hair, and judging from her pics, I'm not sure if that time will come next season or even the season after.

I didn't watch the whole thing, but judging from what I saw, she touched on hair and black women poorly, and didn't even begin to scratch the surface.

I would have loved to have her get into why she feels the need to wear the weaves all the damned time as opposed to wearing her "real" hair, relaxed or natural, often.

All we can do is hope that Tyra gets the memo, and musters up enough courage to go au naturale...one day.

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Should We Praise And Therefore Encourage Advertisers Who Appreciate Real Black Beauty?

I won't lie. I am a huge fan of Essence Magazine. I have been a loyal reader for years now - probably since 2002 when I was pregnant with my son. I think it's an excellent magazine and one of the few magazines where one can find beautiful black women of all shapes and sizes positively represented.

In the last few months, with the launch of the fall collections, I have seen one particular sister's ads without fail in Essence. She is modeling various outfits for Macy's INC International Concepts brand. Now you might be asking "haven't you ever seen a black model before?" The answer is many times, but very few tend to stand out like Atong Ajork in these ads.



Atong's hair is natural and even in little twists, her complexion is dark and her lips are thick and full. She is American of Sudanese ancestry. I know she is not the first of her kind. Alek Wek blasted onto the scene with a bold testament of black is beautiful even when dark and natural.

Roshumba also represented by sporting an afro for the longest time. This type of aesthetic is nothing new but it still isn't the norm.



Usually when we buck up on "black models" in the media, even the most prestigious like Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell follow the westernized standard of beauty. That's fine! There's nothing wrong with a weave or anything like that, but we know the message that this conveyed. When our daughters and sisters only see Tyra's red wigs and Naomi's long, straight tracks in magazines and on the television, they only get ONE side of the story. Models like Atong (who is also on the INC webpage) show another side of the story. We all know there are two sides to every story.

I am grateful that Macy's and INC not only chose a black model as part of their campaign (they also have a multiracial brother), I am even more grateful that they picked her as an ambassador for their fashions. If there were more Atongs and Roshumbas to balance out the elements, I am positive that a few issues of low self-esteem and self-hatred affecting young, black children would be decreased.

So wondered: should I write to Macy's thanking them for this choice as a black woman? I think so. I think we all should.

Positive reinforcement can do wonders, and if we let the mainstream know that we ARE watching and we do want to continue to see this, they might give more black women a shot at representing black beauty. We all know that blonde and blue-eyed is beautiful (or just pretty because some don't like that either), but so is kinky and dark-skinned. We need to let them know that we are reading and we do want to see more of us. How else are they going to move forward if we aren't giving them feedback?

What are YOUR thoughts?

To contact Macy's go here:
http://www.macysinc.com/contact/general.asp or click here. For more specific info, go here: http://www.macysinc.com/

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