We live in a media culture that is so filled with disempowering depictions of women and narrow standards of beauty that we rarely question the content of these images that we absorb on a daily basis. This Monday (June 20, 2011, 3-4EST) I will join Susan L. Taylor (Essence Magazine), Deborah Rhode (Author of the Beauty Bias) and Gloria Lau (Executive Director, YWCA National Office) to seriously engage the influence of these images for the YWCA Webcast, “Beauty and the Beholder: The Politics of Beauty.”
But first, I had to do some thinking on my own.
When I stepped back to take a long look at the landscape of female imagery in popular culture, I realized these images functioned as primary vehicles for transmitting norms that undergird appearance discrimination in the lives of women. That’s when the real issue came into focus: the ism’s that popular depictions of women promote and the psychological harm they do to many – especially our girls.
Race-Ism…Promoting the False Association Between Beauty, Intelligence and Skin Color
Just the other day a video caught my attention. The little girl couldn’t have even been five years old (maybe in kindergarten). Her adult interviewer asks her to choose from a lineup of cartoons depicting African American girls whose skin tones range in color from lighter skinned to darker skinned. The interviewer asks the child to pick the girl from the lineup who is smart and beautiful. The girl repeatedly points to the lighter skinned cartoons. When asked why this one is smart and beautiful, she responds, “because she’s light.” The interviewer asks similar questions, this time asking the girl to point to the child who is dumb or ugly. Repeatedly, the brown skinned African American girl points to the darker images. When asked why, she tells the interviewer, “because she’s black.” Not even dark, but “black.”
I shook my head…that is deep.
The scene I described is from Bill Duke’s “Dark Skinned Girls,” a documentary detailing the pain that many darker skinned African American girls and women experience about the color of their skin.
By kindergarten the girl had taken in, and was wearing as truth, the racist images and messages from her social environment that taught her to appreciate lighter skin and to reject darker skin (skin like her own.)
It got me to thinking…
Other than magazines that specifically target the African American market, how often do we see ads featuring darker skinned Black women in positions of power? How common is the image of a darker skinned female executive in an ad targeting the finance and business sectors? It’s easier to notice the absence of darker skinned imagery when it comes to the beauty sector, but what about the outlets that focus squarely on intelligence, business and power.
How does this lack of positive association and imagery impact our girls’ race-consciousness?
Sex-Ism…Setting Standards and Manufacturing Womanhood
The second image that came to mind is of a little red-headed girl. She is smiling into a camera. Behind her you hear a voice singing (warning), “here it comes…here it comes…here it comes!” The camera zooms in on her face and the screen explodes with a barrage of visuals: scantily clad, pencil thin models in compromising sexual positions and ads promoting products that will “fix” the thing about your body that makes you unbeautiful.
And then come the practices…the actions to take when the products don’t cut it: graphic shots of plastic surgery to increase this or shrink that, women starving themselves (anorexia), forcing themselves to vomit (bulimia), diet pills, appearance driven obsessive exercising.
Yet again I shake my head…this too is deep.
The clip is from Onslaught, a Dove ad that explicitly focuses on the role that the media plays in setting and maintaining beauty stands in our culture. What I noticed is that the ads aren’t just selling a product to make you beautiful…they’re packaging and selling womanhood.
More often than not girls and women internalize these standards because we’ve been taught that attaining these physical qualities will make us sexually appealing and socially acceptable (mostly for the sake of attracting men). To meet these standards, is to be desireable, which is of course the essence of what it means to be a woman. Really?
There are several problems with this: 1) Beauty by this standard allows someone who isn’t a woman to set standards by which women gauge not only their physical attributes, but their value as a human being; 2) Womanhood defined in terms of appearance fails to give so much as a nod to character and common sense (the twin powers that give beauty its shine); 3) Beauty defined in this way is incredibly heteronormative (what about the woman whose goals for attracting a mate don’t include the approval and desire of men – how then does she measure her identity as a woman?)
What impact do these loaded images have on girls’ perceptions of what it means to be a woman?
Bill Duke’s “Dark Skinned Girls” and Dove’s Campaign for True Beauty remind me of what’s at stake in these images: the hearts and minds of our girls.
Our girls deserve the right to imagine themselves without the fetters of the ism’s embedded in popular depictions of women. But, It’s going to take some work on our part. We’ve got to put as much energy into creating opportunities for them to see themselves as they can be, rather than in the narrow places that isms’ carve out for them.
How are you doing it?
Rather than invite more opportunities to analyze what’s not right about what we see, I’d like to switch it up a bit. Drop me a line to let me know about the ways you create space for the girls in your life to see themselves fully, in spite of the isms.
How do you encourage the girls in your life to move in the freedom that comes with self definition?
I was disturbed by the children's comments/responses that you referred to in Bill Duke's "Dark Skinned Girls", but was more troubled by what I perceived to be leading questions. Unfortunately however, we can't dismiss the responses, for they certainly point to a more systemic problem - that of a wickedly embedded indoctrination of what's beautiful and what isn't. I won't stop at that layover for too long. Like you, I'd prefer to have the discussion about what we're doing differently with our girls. I have 2 daughters and one son, and I have a zero-tolerance for commentaries that give a person an advantage over another based on non-character characteristics. I am very attentive to the conversations that my children are having with each other, with their friends, and in response tom external stimuli. I listen AND respond. I think that that is 1/2 the battle. I believe that the other 1/2 lies in how, as mothers, mentors, aunts, friends, view ourselves and communicate a healthy body image that isn't tied up in our skin color, weight, and certainly NOT in our ability to land or attract a man! I have a little routine with my both of my daughters (each their own shade of Black) upon getting dressed for the day. It involves giving themselves a kiss in the large mirror that sits in the hall outside our bedroom doors. They repeat after me: "I love me! God made me! God loves me!" I pray that they'll never forget!
ReplyDeleteI have no children, but I take every opportunity with my grandnieces to affirm the beauty of their natural hair, their skin color, and their intelligence (not necessarily in that order). I have also gone back to my natural hair. Shockingly, my niece has decided to go through the summer without the pressing comb and flat iron wearing her natural hair natural. This was shocking because she asked me once if others' at work considered my natural hair style as unprofessional. I responded it does not matter what they think; it is about how I feel. We have to bombard ourselves and our "daughters" and "sisters" with positive messages since they are bombarded with negative ones 24 hrs/day. There is nothing more beautiful than our natural, healthy hair. And while we should love our curves too, this should be in the context of a healthy lifestyle.
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