Who Is the Black Zooey Deschanel?

 ”In this case, that means that some women want to believe that their
predilection for rompers and kittens and baby voices reflects their
individual personalities and not some trend toward retro,
non-threatening femaleness.”

Respectfully disagreeing here. Most ladies I know who veer towards retro/handmade/MPDG styles–myself included–do so with the knowledge that they’re part of a greater cultural trend. A gal friend recently posted a picture of her vintage owl collection, but not without a self-deprecating joke about how Unique she is.

The problem is, Klausner insults women who don’t dress or act the way she does by saying they’re doing it for “the peen.” That’s so sexist I have a hard time wrapping my head around it. Women dress and act different ways for all sorts of reasons, but ascribing this trend to “wanting peen” is misogynistic–and heteronormative to boot.

It’s the same sort of shaming I noticed in her book, I Don’t Care About Your Band, when she called someone immature for still having Target “dorm furniture” in their apartment. Hello, classism! It’s fine and dandy if you live your life in J Crew pencil skirts and all your furniture is fresh from some boutique in Manhattan. But that’s your prerogative. Why the need to bash on women who do things differently?

i totally agree. “quirky” for black women can be interpreted as either a) signs of class/social position (i.e. “ghetto”) or b) racial infidelity (of the “you’re trying to be white” variety). for latinas, i think it depends all on your color (Are you a white latina? a white latina living among college-educated hipsters? asian latina? black latina? how do these things change depending on what race you belong to according to the outside viewer?). 

black women (And girls) are rarely given the option of innocence, and while that can be fine when it comes to being viewed as responsible and mature (read: job interviews, life experience, agency, etc), it’s not as positive when you just want a break from all the BS. we want to have fun too and be (or at least appear to be) girlish and free sometimes too, but it’s rarely an option. 

 
How is Klausner’s rant not a big steaming pile of ageism and social policing? How is it feminist to declare what’s acceptable for other women based on rigid social concepts which are largely rooted in a sexist society?
 
How is this any different than telling someone they are acting too gay, too white, too black, etc?

Since when is crafting – i.e. knitting, making things, etc. – the exclusive area young? It seems like the main trend in this thinking is to shame people for doing what they enjoy.

Aggressively dividing up culture in to rigid demographic boundaries is marketing, and allowing advertisers to exploit social status anxieties.

It also allows individuals pretend shaming and exclusion is somehow justified, rather than an indulging one’s need to act superior to someone based on dubious social cues.

It’s also important to note that Klausner’s writing career is largely based on a persona of the superior braggart. It’s unwise to take anything she writes seriously.

I can’t think of an equivalent personality, besides maybe Freddie Brooks on A Different World.  But she was maybe more of the bohemian now that I think of it…Interesting. I do think though, that it isn’t necessary for women to take themselves too seriously…to the exclusion of having any sense of child like wonder. Maybe that is what people are searching for–

One problem with the Klausner article was that she lumped in a bunch of popular trends with only the barest connection to childishness. For instance, I always thought of crafting as more reclaiming some of skills and artistry of  our mothers and grandmothers not returning to kindergarten.

“We can be strong women, aggressive women, promiscuous women…we can do
Bonet bohemian and Earth Mother (as Andrea pointed out), but never
carefree and childish. Even black girls are too often viewed as worldly women and not innocents.”

So hugely important!! This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. Quirky black girl (website notwithstanding) is not an accepted archetype for us. The manic pixie dream girl and the recent cult of twee is absolutely bound by race and class. Black women can be boho, we can exotic and weird (Grace Jones, etc…). But cute and irreverent? Not so much.

As for examples of a black Zoeey D, Aisha Tyler is FUNNY (in a non-Queens of Comedy Way) and seen as non-threatening. But that’s different from prosh and adorbs. Janelle is out there, in a way that does not explicitly feel boho to me (which is why I stan for her), but she’s more aliens and Metropolis than fuzzy kitties and Etsy.

The irony of course is that there are tons of us who have gone much of our lives as genuinely quirky weirdos. But where’s our parade? The great thing about the essentialization of black womanhood is that we are rendered invisible OR we’re automatically lumped in with the manic pixie set and seen as tryna act white. But you know what, I’m a black girl who was making silly DIY crafts long before it became a thing and I loves me some K Records-style indie pop. But I’ll be damned if I’m manic pixie anything. I also respectfully refuse to put a bird on *anything.*

I don’t think those two women fit under the Maniac Pixie Girl trope. India Arie is seen as bohemian (she actually crafts music that is empowering to women) and doesn’t portray herself as a woman-child. Janelle Monae is a tricky one. However, as someone above you stated, when Black women do come off as free-spirited, their sexuality and race is called into question. There is much said about Janelle Monae being a man or not being “really black”. 

I would say Nicki Minaj is an attempt at this trope but because she is Black, she hypersexualizes herself, while at the same time having to maintain an air of “I can still kick your ass”. 

I don’t think there is any kind of big new trend of women turning themselves into little girls.  I think there has always been a subset of women who do that, and Zooey Deschanel is just following in the footsteps lots of other white actresses who deliberately market themselves in this way, including I Love Lucy, I Dream of Jeanne, Crissy from Three’s Company.

I think the idea that there is some kind of dangerous increase in the number of women doing this borders on concern trolling.  Using websites as proof of some kind of trend is really valid, since the internet can make one person in pajamas seem like thousands of people.  There will always be some (white) women who play up a naive persona.

Plus, I think that this is also representative of a generation reaching that scary point in their development, around mid-twenties and early thirties, when they start figuring out how hard it is to be an adult.  Some respond by going hardcore into nostalgia.  When I was a kid, I remember news stories about baby boomers in that age range snapping up every Howdy Doody lunch box they could find to put on their shelves as decoration.  Now the millenials are doing that, and one way some do it is to do the whole hipster woman-child thing.

Now, the question of whether there is a black Zooey Deschanel is a very good one, very revealing.  So I’m glad that was the main focus of your post.  Was Lisa Bonet kind of like that?  I feel like she was always a flower-child kind of character.  But I also think I’m kind of stretching on that one.  Other than her, I got nothing.

America Ferrera certainly has a much bigger range, but her “ugly betty” character (while not manic by any means), loved cute things, dressed young, loved butterflies, heck even had braces- and her race and class were also firmly part of the story line throughout – not bringing this up as inherently good or bad, just something that struck me as a pretty prevalent depiction of a Latina who could fit some of those descriptions-

My own grandmother embroiders and her daughters sew, knit, and paint. It is a way expressing themselves and maintain their cultural/family  heritage.   A lot of people feel a connection of their family/cultural heritage  when they do these kinds of crafts. I know this sounds cheesy but I feel it is true.

Have you seen Sherri Sheppard from The View?  She may not love hello kitty, but she’s got that “wide-eyed, girlish, take-care-of-me” thing going on.

Also Sinclair from Livin’ Single was a refreshing break with stereotypical norms. A virginal, wide-eyed and in many ways naive personality who always saw the good in people and circumstances. I guess others wouldn’t have considered her pixieish because of her size.

 I had a friend who was African American and a
Goth. I recall her getting bullied for trying to be ” white” and
for  enjoying heavy rock bands. It was saddening since I  knew that that
was the way she was, she liked dressing in all black and loved rock and punk
music.

I often find myself dress in “cute’ ’or  “girly” style in order to desexualize
myself. I noticed that dress like that I’m less likely to get the unwanted
attention since it gives the impression that I’m 16 and not 21.

I actually like the manic pixie thing(heck,  jokingly call myself the Mexican American Manic Pixie girl). I use it as an excuse
to dress up and show off my “hipsterness”. As a latina( who gets pegged
as
white or Asian)  by dressing like a
Manic pixie girl I almost saying an F— You to the media on what it
deems acceptable for a woman of color to dress.   I know a lot of Latinas and African Americans that follow that hipster trend

Prior to the Chris Brown incident, I would actually say Rihanna was verging on “cute, quirky, innocent” girl territory.  I don’t know if she was in full Zooey territory, but I feel like any whimsical touches in her hair/outfits tended to be read as cute and individualistic.

And I hate that I have to differentiate between pre- and post-Brown incident, but it did seem to change her public perception, which is a phenomenon that probably deserves its whole own separate post  :(

“How is Klausner’s rant not a big steaming pile of ageism and social policing? ”  Bingo.  Do I need to go through my wardrobe and toss out anything with flowers?  Lose the trapeze dresses?  Start wearing stilettos?   Stop playing the ‘ukulele?    What the hell?  

Lynn on Girlfriends is the closest thing to Zooey Deschanel I can come up with.

I have seen lots of black girls pull of the manic pixie dream girl look. It’s not common, but it happens, and it’s nice. Interestingly enough, however, I have never seen a twee/hipster black girl with wild colors in their hair.

I’d love to read your comic!

“…because it means that Black women are limited in their self-expression and media representations because of some preconceived notions.”

I think there are a lot of Black women, especially young ones who are either not aware of these preconceived notions or just don’t care. I read several Tumblr blogs by Black women who fit roughly into Deschanel category. Although they have their own unique personal take on it.

Here’s an example;  http://bonjournikkie.tumblr.com/

I checked out Hello Giggles and I have to at least partially retract my defense of ZD. That website is REALLY whitey white syrupy. Would it kill her or Pratt to look outside of their iron clad upper middle class white comfort zone? Perhaps it would.  I know a half Jewish/Half Asian UCB grad who just landed her first job after two years of intern limbo-in Geology no less. I want to know what she’s going through not see a plug for Katy Perry’s video where she pretends to be a 15 year old having casual sex with every tired outdated video stereotype thrown in!!  There maybe no Zooey of color but many, many women of color, myself included love vintage, arts and crafts and yes the 50′s look. I can get my body to look good and be comfortable in reproduced 50′s clothing, I can’t in Citizens jeans.

I do not get it. I like “crafting” as much as the next person and although people consider it some kind of frivolous activity, I’m sure wool knitted sweaters and socks kept people from suffering hypothermia and frost bite. (funny how any activity considered womanly helps to preserve life and deemed irrevelent, go figure).

I’m not sure whether I should be upset that this MPDG trope doesn’t include WOC or if the very notion of U.S. societal views of “femininity” usually fails to include WOC, in a positive light at least. The MPDG trope is obviously praised and prized in the media with the success of actresses like Zooey Deschanel, so I guess I can understand why the question is posed in the first place. The MPDG trope is another facet of womanhood, particularly “white womanhood” that again only compliments and accentuates their white privilege. Like a form fitting glove that only looks good on a small group of women who are cis-gendered, heterosexual, thin, white, young, and have an easy means of supporting themselves further aided by being uniquely attractive, but also have men fawn over them that they probably would not need to worry about supporting themselves as they could just as easily have their pick of the “marriage market,” and only seems distorted to onlookers when women who don’t fall under those characteristics wears the same glove.
 
To me, this whole Katy Perry, Zooey Deschanel deal is an exercise display on white privilege, no different that the whole “White girl rapper” internet crave that’s been going on as late, with the likes of Kreayshawn and her “white girl mob,” that jezebel took note on about a week and a half ago. It seems as though, when white women are involved in these “trends” it gets mixed with the extra flavor of magical “privilege” and then BAM! instant popularity, people deem it another facet of “femininity,” people say it is a new “acceptable” display/expression of “womanhood” for all to see and everyone take note. WOC do not have that “extra flavor of magical privilege,” so yea, people are going to think and infer different things when we try on that “form fitting glove.” They’ll say “it just doesn’t look right” or “Its not even the same glove anymore.”

http://neonlimelight.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/nickicreep.gif

Shingai definitely has the manic pixie thing going, have you ever heard her in an interview? Also, I’d put V.V. Brown in the same category, but I think that it’s maybe important to note that as black Brits the both of them, the rules on the manic pixie inclusion may be a bit different.

“A Black woman can never be a “kitten 50s wife” for reasons that are just
too obvious to state. And even though we do enjoy every aspect of our
varied personalities, we rarely (if ever) get to see it portrayed in the
media.”

I’m so sick and tired of people telling me what I can or can’t be. It’s a crying shame that we are represented  in such limited forms and few choices on how to exist as black women. And if a black woman deviates one bit from the few roles that have been pre-determined by both the black community and white society, she catches hell from both sides.

I’m not only a bohemian, I also dress in gothic lolita fashion both as a way of self expression and a subversion of what’s expected of me. It pisses me off when people try to pigeon hole me by using shame and the “black people don’t” excuse to make me conform.

It’s like they’ve been so oppressed themselves that they can’t stand to see anyone else being free and they want validation that they made the right decision to hide their true selves.

Interesting…but I don’t get a sense of girlishness, womanchild, infantilization, pleasetakecareofme from her. Like you said, she’s ‘super cool’. The Zooey MPDG is awkward, a little weird, and childlike. Janelle Monae is way too put together. 

“Thrift store clothing leads to a host of class assumptions.” 

I don’t understand the connection of this sentence to any of the rest of the article. You’d think I have a lot more money that I actually have by the way I dress, and my girlfriend and I shop almost exclusively at thrift stores these days.

I agree that Asian/Asian American women have greater access to this cute/innocent persona, but I think these characters are also generally reduced to caricature. They’re given this specifically Asian, techno-Orientalist bizarreness and highly fetishized for it. But it seems Asian cute women characters are not (generally) afforded the hipster-intellectual-quirkiness that Zooey Deschanel and other white Manic Pixie Dream Girls are; AAPI cutegirls stay flat, foreign, and helpless. 

At the same time, I think it’s important to understand that cuteness (a.k.a. “kawaii” or “kiyopta”) takes on a specific cultural form in the Asian context. It can be problematic, but Asian cuteness is bigger and more complicated than straight sexist infantilization. Actually, I’m wondering how much white female cuteness is actually borrowing from and fetishizing Asian cuteness.

Actually, the trope might still fit her today: http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/thefamous/mariahs-new-perfume-ad-creepy-or-cute/1535

The point is that the “thrift store aesthetic” is read differently on different people. Some of the same second-hand clothes that are read as hipster stylish on women like Zooey Deschanel are received quite differently on women of color and often used to mark them as “low class” or the more racialized “ghetto.”

dunno: you’re missing all the blipsters, I think. I don’t think too many of them read as ghetto. It might be more of the hip-hopness issue.

um, they *still* have the iPhone…and live in a neighborhood where it’s safe and economic to own a bike (and have it be full-sized and to not have to buy a new one at least once a month). Keep pulling back on that lens, there…

yeah: I am so OBVIOUSLY rocknroll to classy, but people will talk to me about hip-hop and call me “girlfriend”. Mostly out of respect for my “in touch/music appreciation” and being of color, but I’m like “Dude. DUDE. I JUST SAID DUDE.  I know black people are allowed to say that now, but not when *I* started saying dude, ok?”

yeah, but a lot of these recreational uke players, while totally musiciany types, are not really getting in touch with the culture (great for ukes & props for the OGs, but bad for context). in my experience, it’s just a fad. and remember what hank hill said to bobby about jesus? that’s why it’s still an issue, i think.

Ummm, I’m a Women of color.