Notice that this product line is called African Pride, and yet the model is light-skinned, has straight hair, and more typically “white” facial features.
Race and Beauty
Comments
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Aaron Sailor
Chick you need to be quiet and stop trying to start stuff. That is a brown skinned woman with relaxed hair. And her features are NOT WHITE!! Now I will admit that the encouragement for black women to relax there hair is wrong. But stop the color debate when there is none!!
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Aaron Sailor
This is what pisses me off. I guess women will never be dark enough. This is the conflict I have with my writer friend. She constantly claims that Kenya Moore and gabrielle Union aren’t dark enough. NOW AIN’T THAT A “BEEP”!!
When you do this you are setting up an unattainable standard for “blackness” that many Black people CAN’T BE!! Just because a Black woman does not look like Fantasia or India Arie does not mean that they are not Black.
Don’t take away this woman’s blackness because she doesn’t fit your idea of what blackness should be. THAT IS IGNORANT!!
Now I will be the first to ADMIT that Halle Berry, Mariah Carey, Vanessa Williams, Paula Patton, Lina Horne are not ‘real’ black women. Because when these women walk down the street you cannot tell what ethnicity they are. BUT THIS WOMAN is no mistaking!!! You can clearly tell that she is a Black women. And she is very brown.
You setting a standard for Blackness by saying that all Black women should have ‘charcoal’ colored skin, really full lips and wide noses is reminisquant of those Black men that think all black women should look like Halle berry and Alicia Keyes. AND THAT IS NOT FAIR!!The women in my family ALL look like this woman!! And they are not LIGHT!! So are you saying that the women in my family are not Black enough??
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pushpins
So basically all black people in the media should look like either Seal or the Serena sisters?
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a
Yes, when a black person does not fall in with some sort of stereotype of how black people are supposed to look like she naturally cannot clearly represent black people in any media, like our Gwen here states. As if some africans cannot be more light skinned than other. Africans are not ethnically unified group like we all hopefully know.
But what do you know? This is an openly racist post here in Sociological Images. Shame on you.
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asteri
The point isn’t that this women isn’t ‘black enough’ or that she doesn’t fit the OP’s idea of ‘black’; the point is that the media is constantly reproducing beauty in a very specific way, valuing certain physical features and characteristics over others; constantly whitening the skin of darker skinned actors, models, singers, etc (we see this happening constantly: check out beyonce in l’oreal ads). The fact that this woman was chosen to represent this product says nothing about the woman and does not invalidate her identity; but it may say something about the company, and how it is a clear reflection of the overall goals and mentality of the mainstream media.
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BlackMan
Believe it or not gwen, some black people ARE light-skinned. I am lighter than this woman. Does that mean I am not black? I am thinking of getting a perm for my Fro (I am a black male), since its getting unruly the longer I grow it. Does that mean I am not black?
@asteri, what is your point? Does the situation of Loreal Ads somehow means we should judge African Pride based on the other’s actions?
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Mark
What’s to say that African women did not have so called “white features”.I believe in “GOD”. Being that said i will have you know that we all came from the womb of an “African” woman. Although i dont think it was called “Africa” then. They have a genetic test now that realy has no medical validity. I guess it would be a perfect pre-scan for “K.K.K.”. But this test tells you all the races in the world within your D.N.A. . What i find interesting is it will tell % as to how much of each you have. Guess what two races there is no genetic difference in. WHITE AND BLACK. Guess the apple dont fall far from the tree after all.
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Melle
When I read this blog post I thought it was strange because most of the women in my family look like this and we are all from West Africa. Because Africa is incredibly diverse there is no one distinct look. Because you are probably not African and are used to making gross generalizations, I can understand the mistake. I think this company only uses women from Africa on their advertisements. Just because whoever wrote this has a limited perception of what an “African” is and how they are supposed to look does not mean you should ultimately claim the company is attempting to use a woman with “white” features. I used to love this website, but reading things like this bothers me and is truly embarrassing to read coming from people I respected. Next time the blogger makes gross assumptions, I would suggest doing some actual research.
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