Diversity Is More Than A Bra Size: What It’s Like To Be A Woman Of Color In The Lingerie Industry
By Guest Contributor Cora Harrington, a.k.a. Treacle Tart, cross-posted from The Lingerie Addict
Photo of the author by POC Photo. Hair & Makeup: The Shanghai Pearl. Lingerie: Kiss Me Deadly.
Today’s post was really hard to write. I’ve been thinking about the things I’m about to say now for months, but it’s only become clear in the last few weeks they urgently need to be said.
I never know which articles people see first when they visit The Lingerie Addict, and we get a lot of new visitors everyday. So I’m going to say a few things which are probably obvious to my longtime readers but may be less obvious to visitors who are new or who don’t come around as much.
- I’m black.
- I’m a US dress size 10, bra size 34C.
- I weigh 175 lbs.
- I’m American.
I’m saying all that to give you a bit of context about who I am and the perspective I’m writing from because, for some time now, I feel like the conversation on diversity within the lingerie industry has been dominated by those who behave like diversity only matters along one axis–and that’s size.
It’s reached the point where the common refrain I’m hearing from bra bloggers, lingerie retailers, and even some of my own readers when talking about me or this blog is, “Well, you’re a C cup. You don’t know what it’s like to be ignored by the lingerie industry.” And as much as I love everybody out there, it it really takes a lot of self-control to not get upset when I hear comments about like that.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m a woman of color, but this isn’t a blog about women of color. It’s a lingerie blog. And so I’m shocked when people, who either didn’t notice or didn’t think about the implications of my being black, complain about how underrepresented they are. Because they’re not seeing that almost everyone is underrepresented…including me, the woman who started the blog.
Though I’ve talked some about equal representation within the lingerie industry, I haven’t written about this exact issue before because talking about race in America is hard. And I think it’s even harder when you’re a racial minority. As a person of color, you often feel like you’re caught in a perpetual Catch-22. You can either avoid talking about your ethnicity (which effectively means pretending like it doesn’t matter) or you can talk about it openly and deal with the blowback, which often includes stinging accusations like “crying racism.”
The reason I’m bringing this up now is because, over the last year or so, I’ve watched the conversation on diversity shrink from one that was more inclusive of all women to one that only seems relevant to fuller-busted or fuller-figured women. I’ve seen so many articles and comments and blogs focusing on dress size and bra size and cup size, but next to none talking about other, equally important, issues like age, ability or, yes, ethnicity.
In a way, I understand why. People tend to talk more about issues which personally affect them, and, since the lingerie blogosphere is primarily made up of full bust and plus-size bloggers, that viewpoint has become the dominant one. Unfortunately, a consequence of that is issues which aren’t related to size keep getting pushed further and further down the priority list in the general lingerie conversation.
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