I seem to have found a rather telling typo on Temperley London’s website. Temperley, if you do not know is a couture house that clothes stars for red carpet events (like Jennifer Lopez), and while perusing their website (I was curious about how much Molly Sims dress was on The Rachel Zoe project) I found something called “Latino Leather” pants in a…. very tan… hue…

Am I hallucinating? Or…

See the above image. I also see them spelled as “Lantino leather pants” so I was hoping Lantino was a type of fabric… or something in another language… so I googled.

0 relevant results.

I yahoo-ed.

0 relevant results.

For god sakes, I even bing-ed.

0 relevant results.

Shouldn’t someone at Temperley explain this? Are there no people of color viewing their website other than me? Jennifer? Jennifer’s people?

Out of exasperation I google translated. “Lantino” is Latin for Lantin (say that three times fast).

Lantin is a word meaning “radiant wrapping” in Inca. I found that little gem in an online Inca dictionary. I doubt that’s what they meant, but even if that’s what they did mean, it still leaves the INTENSELY unfortunate “Latino” typo. Am I being crazy or is this actually something? Did they actually name these leather pants after the skin tone of a race of people? And even if they didn’t and this means something relating to fabric, why didn’t they name them something else?

Last Thursday, Crystal Renn, the model who recently appeared in a Vogue Japan spread with her eyes taped in ways that were suggestive of an old theater makeup trick meant to make white actors look “Asian,” offered an explanation and defense of the cosmetic practice. Tape, it should be noted, is only one of many tools in the arsenal of this particular form of racial drag, also known as yellowfacing – a practice that is literally older than America. Contrary to popular headlines suggesting that “yellowface is the new blackface,” there is nothing new or novel about yellowfacing. One of the earliest incidences of yellowfacing in the U.S. occurred in 1767 when Arthur Murphy presented his play The Orphan of China in Philadelphia.

What interests me about this moment of racial drag or “transformation,” as Renn’s called it, are the reactions to it and her own explanation of the decision to tape her eyes. In last week’s published conversation with Jezebel editor Jenna Sauers, Renn insists that she “wasn’t trying To ‘look Asian’ in that eye tape shoot”. And I wanted to believe her. I have great respect for Sauers. Her writing has always displayed a great deal of thoughtfulness and acuity and she’s been a generous supporter of Threadbared for a long time. For all these reasons, I approached Sauers’ conversation with Renn as a generous reader, willing to be convinced. After all, Sauers initially assumed Renn was yellowfacing too. If she could be surprised with Renn’s explanation, I thought I might be too.

Here’s how Renn explains the eye-taping:

• In a way you become something else.
• No, it tends to be when there’s more makeup and drama. And the point is transformation.
• To transform is the greatest part of my work. It’s the thing that makes me the happiest. And to be able to try to do as many looks as I can and to show as many faces as I can, it’s exciting to me . . . I’ve had moles painted on my face. I’ve had freckles painted on.
• I become something else.
• We didn’t even think about [race] on the shoot. I’m the one who suggested it, and it didn’t even cross my mind. It’s something that I regularly ask makeup artists, you know, if it will bring something more to the character. Offer a different face.
• As the model, as somebody who thrives on the transformation, I am beyond thrilled to do stories where they change my gender, where they take me and make me something completely different.

What is so striking about Renn’s explanation is its ambiguity. She never says what look she was going for – just that she intended to become “something else.” This intangible “something” that has more “drama”, more “character” , and is so “exciting” is, for Renn, not racially specific. It is instead a generalized exotica, an experience of vague sensuousness. But do racist acts require intentionality? And what are the implications of Renn’s deracialization of a practice that was so clearly racist to so many people?

“Eating the Other”

Renn’s understanding of this “transformation” is reflective of a broader cultural logic in the mainstream fashion industry that has historically viewed and engaged with racial difference as a depoliticized and dehistoricized aesthetic. Racial difference, evacuated of its history and politics, becomes a set of design elements and sartorial flourishes (a kente pattern here, a frog closure there, a Native headdress on the weekend – why not?) that are absent of meaning and context. Fashion’s depoliticization of ethnicity and race rely on and reproduce what Nirmal Puwar calls “the amnesia of celebration.”

The problem is that the violent racist abuse meted out to Asian women who have worn these items has no place in the recent donning of these items. . . “Do you remember when you thought we were ugly and disgusting when we wore these items?”

The amnesia of celebration forgets (willfully or not) the historical and ongoing violence that women of color bear wearing the very same garments on their bodies while looking like they do – rather than like Renn does (or Madonna, Gwen Stefani, and the list goes on). The eye shape Renn creates using tape is one that has given rise to schoolyard taunts, sexual harassment, mockery in real as well as fake Asian languages, nearly a century of immigration exclusion, employment discrimination, fetishization, and much more for Asian women who were born with these eyes. Not what you’d call an “exciting” experience. That Renn is able to feel “transformed” through and by this cosmetic trick – one she equates with other tricks like fake moles and freckles – underscores the capacity of white bodies to play with race without bearing its burdens, without having to even acknowledge the existence of these burdens. Thus, the transformation Renn experiences and achieves is conditioned by her whiteness and the privileges that accrue to her racially unmarked body. At the same time, her transformation is possible only because of her proximation and consumption of otherness. The function of Otherness – even one that is unacknowledged by her – is reduced to the servicing of white women’s transformation.

This desire for transformation through the Other is not unique to fashion; it is connected to a much longer history of what Black feminist scholar bell hooks (always in lower case) calls “imperialist nostalgia”: the longing of whites to inhabit, if only for a time, the world of the Other. Bodily transcendence through sartorial and cosmetic play is enacted by the consumption of otherness – a “courageous consumption,” in hooks’ words – because it is about “conquering the fear [of racial difference] and acknowledging power. It is by eating the Other,” hooks explains, “that one asserts power and privilege.”

But Renn wasn’t “even think[ing] about [race] on the shoot . . . it didn’t even cross [her] mind.”

Here, I want to return to my earlier question: do racist acts require intentionality? The obvious answer is no. A well-intentioned compliment about how well I speak English or a clumsy flirtation that begins with a deep bow like I’m the Dalai Lama (both have happened to me) are meant to be friendly gestures that close the gap of racial difference. (“Don’t worry – I’m culturally sensitive.”) Yet, these examples are clearly born of racist ideologies about what “real” Americans look like and what are “real” Asian cultural practices. Racism is so deeply entrenched and pervasive in many societies (the U.S. context is not exempt but neither is it exceptional) that everyday racism, the kind of racism that is experienced in civic life (through social relationships, media, interpersonal workplace dynamics, etc.) is often unintentional. On the other hand, what is always intentional is anti-racism. The struggle against racism resists the pervasive ideologies and practices that explicitly and invisibly structure our daily lives (albeit in very different ways that are stratified by race, gender, class, and sexuality). Anti-racism requires intentionality because it’s an act of conscience.

But I think Renn’s (mis)understanding about eye-taping and intentionality is suggestive of something more than unconscious racism. I think that Renn’s explanation exemplifies how race is understood in this “post-racial” historical moment. What does racial discourse sound like in the age of post-racism? Well, I think it sounds like Renn’s explanation. This isn’t to indict Renn; instead, my point is to suggest that Renn’s explanation is an example of a post-racial narrative in which race is simultaneously articulated through and disavowed by discourses of class, culture, patriotism, national security, talent, and, in the case of fashion, creative license. Renn’s transformation is conditioned by its proximation to racial otherness and yet the language of creative license (Renn says: “To transform is the greatest part of my work.”) denies race as a driving and organizing factor in this transformation, it denies both her racial privilege as well as the eye-taping technique as a common cultural practice of racism. This kind of post-racial consumption of race in which the historical violence of racial difference makes no difference at all denies the ongoing reality of racism in the age of postracism. It is conditioned by the many privileges of whiteness (first and foremost among these privileges, a racially unmarked body). Recall Puwar’s incisive observation – which I’ve quoted numerous times on Threadbared – “It is precisely because white female bodies occupy the universal empty point which remains racially unmarked that they can play with the assigned particularity of ethnicized female bodies.”

We see the discourse of postracism also in Renn’s assertion that she is “not 100% morally okay with [blackface shoots] — I would feel that I’m taking a job from one of them. I would feel that I’m taking a job from a black girl who deserved it.” Renn’s sensitivity towards the need for more diversity in the modeling industry is not surprising. She has been a vocal proponent of size diversity among models (for a time, she was one of the most successful plus-size models) and has spoken openly about her own struggles with eating disorders and the pressures that come with the constant scrutiny of young women’s bodies in the media.

Her statement that she would never engage in a blackface shoot does two things: First, it elides the issue at hand (yellowfacing) for what seems to be for Renn a more real and authentic act of racism, blackfacing. In so doing, her statement suggests that anti-black racism is the only authentic form of racism worth talking or caring about. Second, it suggests that practices of yellowfacing and blackfacing (like, redfacing and brownfacing) take modeling jobs away from nonwhite models. This logic assumes that these acts of racial drag are meant to represent an actual racial body. Let me be clear: yellowfacing is not a practice of racial passing, of a white model passing as Asian. Photographers, magazines, and designers know Asian models exist and know how to hire them. But they don’t hire them for these jobs because yellowfacing is not about tricking audiences into believing that the body in view is actually Asian.

I’ve become really impatient with responses to racist practices of racial drag that involve comments like: “Why didn’t they just hire a Black/Asian/Latina/Native model?” (Yes, I believe there are anti-racist kinds of racial drag.) This question glosses over the actual operations of yellowfacing, blackfacing, etc. which is not about Asianness or Blackness but about Whiteness. It is about consuming Otherness, it’s about making racial difference commodifiable and palatable through whiteness, it’s about reproducing and securing white privilege. To quote hooks again, “eating the other” – hooks’ term for the consumption of difference – offers:

a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream while culture.

__________________________________

NB: It’s unclear to me who is actually to blame for Renn’s eye-taping. She’s insisted that it was solely her idea but editor-in-chief of Vogue Japan Anna Dello Russo has also taken credit for the idea. I asked Ashley Mears, a former model and now sociology professor at Boston University whose book about the political economies of the modeling industry called Pricing Beauty is due out this month from the University of California Press if Renn might be falling on her sword for Dello Russo. According to Mears, it’s plausible that Renn had some creative input. As she explained, “models tend to have very little input in the terms of their work or in how their images are crafted or manipulated. However, at the higher levels of the industry where Renn is working, in which stylists and models work with each other repeatedly on high-end productions, there is a greater degree of collaboration with models, especially if she takes initiative to be involved.”

Racism in the fashion industry is still alive and well. Duh. I have to say it somewhere in an article like this, so I thought, why not get it out the way from the start? However, the opinions put forth in Charles Beckwith’s modaCYCLE rebuttal piece “Racism In Fashion” are not themselves racist. But they certainly are ironic.

I think he might have forgotten to italicize part of his title. Racism: In Fashion. Can’t you just hear Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa in the background? Beckwith explains why Naomi Campbell has appeared on 8 covers of Vogue and Kate Moss has appeared on 24, is because consumers (read white consumers) want to see someone in the clothes that they want to be. Kate Moss dated Pete Doherty for a long stretch- I’m pretty sure no one’s clamoring to be in her shoes these days. But would they rather be in Naomi’s or Kate’s? An editor apparently lost their job over making the wrong choice, and Beckwith states:

“I have never met Naomi Campbell, nor can I confirm or dispel the claim of an Australian editor being fired for putting her on a cover. Though, if an editor had been fired for putting Ms. Campbell on a cover, no evidence was cited that would lead anyone to believe that the action was specifically related to racism more than likely profit motives.”

But, in what world are these mutually exclusive? In Ms. Campbell’s defense, if someone got canned partially in relation to your face, wouldn’t you be upset? I might not call a bunch of publicists, but is it so far fetched that it couldn’t be true? Maybe fashion recycles social mores as much as they recycle trends.

…subjectively, [sic] Kate Moss is a much stronger model with more ability to transform her face, and she is generally better liked in the business than the ill-tempered cell phone-throwing and community service sentence-serving Ms. Campbell.

Is Kate Moss is a stronger model? You can’t see it, but I’m side eyeing. Kate is indisputably an excellent model. She’s an inspiration for solid gold sculptures. She can slip through cracks in floors. I would imagine she is generally more likable.

Perhaps not near ledges or piers, however. I know, she probably knew the kid she pushed off a pier into the ocean. Kidding aside, didn’t Kate get caught on camera doing something illegal? Why no mention of that? And why not mention Alex Wek or Lea T or Liu Wen? I would never disparage one group to defend another, but, notice he uses only positive adjectives for Kate and only negative-tinged, multi-faceted, overly-dashed adjectives for Naomi. We all know Naomi isn’t a bed of honeysuckle on a warm summer day, but frankly, I think he just doesn’t like her. I mean, for good reason, she’s intimidating. That doesn’t mean that Naomi doesn’t have a point.

Later in his piece, he becomes much less incendiary and much more amusing. Still, after reading the first half I felt an overwhelming sense that I’ve been here before, reading this article, because Beckwith is conjecturing that it isn’t fashion’s fault. Minorities in fashion put people off buying expensive things. Look at the market research. I conducted my own “lazy survey” and spoke with friend who is a white and fashionable, blond and blue eyed, and works at a gallery. I asked if she would be more or less likely to buy something if say, the model used to be a man. Her reply? “What does that matter?”

The reality is that there about a million things going on in someone’s head at once before they make a purchasing decision, and maybe if I see someone I don’t want to emulate in the clothes I won’t want to buy them. Maybe my friend was being nice because she was talking to her gay black friend. The idea that the race or gender identity of the person wearing the clothes affects the consumer buying it is an excuse to disinclude. Soft racism if you will. In the end, it doesn’t matter if a man is wearing a dress, if you really really like the dress, you’re going to buy it. You’re probably going to want to try it on first.

[On making it illegal to discriminate based on race in the fashion arena:]

“I’m certainly not advocating more “black face” makeup on Caucasians or a drag queen takeover of Ralph Lauren campaigns, but that is what is being talked about.”

Now saying something like that just makes me want to get RuPaul and Ralph in a room together. Wouldn’t that get your attention? Who among us has looked at a Ralph Lauren, Emporio Armani or Davidoff ad for more than three seconds while flipping through a magazine? Do they even make Cool Water anymore? Fashion for the most part has become so set in it’s ways that when a new concept comes along, they either celebrate it (like the tattooed model or the albino model) or admonish it. This all boils down to reluctance to take risks. I personally think a lot of the fashion elite are afraid of change. Beckwith asserts throughout his article that it is an indisputable fact that black models are less profitable than their white counterparts:

Until there is an affluent consumer base behaving less alienated to dark faces, and that demand starts to exist from them for the thousands of new $10,000 evening dresses every 6 months, there is no reason for commercial enterprise to be pushing them to an audience that cannot afford them.

Does the phrase “dark faces” make anyone else need a glass of water? The fact of the matter is no one is buying $10,000 evening dresses in this economy. That’s why you can find Chanel Creative Director Karl Lagerfeld shilling his (admittedly, gorgeous) wares at Macys now. And, of course, all the models are all still white.

(Thanks to reader C for the tip!)

Fashion is having a Lara Stone moment – again. She is the face for Tom Ford’s new beauty line, meaning her exclusive for Calvin Klein has come to an end . No matter – she is still the face of Calvin Klein’s Fall/Winter campaign and its new underwear line, Naked Glamour. Stone is a unique face in fashion. While she can look pretty and soft, she has granite cheekbones, a protruding brow and a gap between her front teeth that give her a harder, more masculine edge. She also has breasts (a no-no in high fashion) and a clumsy walk. Still, her uniqueness has catapulted her to the top of fashion. In 2009, W called her the “most-wanted face” in fashion. In Interview magazine, Marc Jacobs writes that she brims with “feral attitude and personality and sexuality.” Stone, on the cover of August’s French Vogue, is an editorial favorite. That marked her seventh cover; former French Vogue editor, Carine Roitfeld put Stone on six covers, and even dedicated an entire issue to her. It’s easy to see why. Stone epitomizes the Roitfeld woman: tough, sexy, and a little freaky.

Lara Stone is part of an increasingly visible portion of high fashion – odd, gawky, and sometimes, downright busted. In a post entitled, “What is Beauty?” Photographer Garance Doré was taken by Nina Porter, then the face of Burberry. Porter’s grey eyes, short hair, and scrunched features look more appropriate in Middle Earth than on a catwalk. Doré believes that Porter, and other models like her, are an indication of evolving fashion standards. Others include Daphne Groeneveld, Lindsey Wixson, and Saskia de Brauw. They have awesomely odd features that makes them look distinctive, interesting, and alluring.

Saskia for Versace F/W 11 (left) and Saskia on the cover of French Vogue (right)

Nevertheless, the “blank canvases” – like Anja Rubik and Angela Lindvall – still exist. It is also true that any skilled Photoshopper can turn any of these eccentric beauties into a blank canvas. Compare the two images above: de Brauw’s Versace ad with her March cover of French Vogue. Still, the band of weird, tattooed, sometimes androgynous, sometimes masculine models are pushing the boundaries of fashion. They are moving fashion more towards the idea of individual beauty, and often, designers and editors use them to give their images personality and edge.

While fashion’s expanding idea of beauty is something to celebrate, it’s important to ask: why all of these “pretty-ugly” models white?

From left to right: Joan Smalls, Jourdan Dunn, and Liu Wen

The current top models of color are, by contrast, very beautiful. Flawless, really. Jourdan Dunn, Joan Smalls, Liu Wen, et. al. all have the features of a classically beautiful model: small face, high nose bridge, symmetrical proportions. They don’t have jutting facial bones or bug eyes. And while it may sound contrarian to lament their fresh and clean looks, it is to point out that standards of beauty for models of color have remained almost static since the days of Beverly Johnson.

How can beauty standards for models of color evolve when it is a struggle to simply put one on the cover of a magazine? Fashion has a schizophrenic relationship with race. Either there are few to no models on the runway (as is often the case at Calvin Klein, Versace, and Jil Sander) or fashion wants to make a dramatic point about using models of color, as when Lanvin sent black models down the runway en masse to close its Spring 2011 show, or Vogue Italia’s now infamous “black issue” or V magazine’s recent “Asian” issue. They want you to know that they are celebrating diversity. Simply put, being of color is enough to set a model apart. So while funky features can be a boon to a white model, they become a hindrance for a model of color. Their ethnicity is enough personality. Why add gapped teeth?

Similar standards seem to apply to “plus size” models. Representative “plus-size” model, Crystal Renn has a conventionally beautiful face. She is also the only one who has really broken into the higher echelons of fashion – a rise that coincided with a noticeable weight loss. As for the other “plus size” models, they, too, are never allowed to forget that fashion deems them big. Fashion editorials enjoy undressing them to remind people of just how big they are while slapping a bad pun like “A Life in Full” (Kate Dillon in American Vogue) or “Curves Ahead” (V Magazine) over their photos. It’s important to note that most of these women, too, are generally white. For a model of color, having a busty figure, would be yet another hurdle to overcome.

The one exception to this standard was probably Alek Wek – the Sudanese-born model – who rose in the nineties with a shaved head and full cheeks. Wek has since moved on to charity work, but her look has created the “exotic, dark-skinned African with a shaved head” type. Two rising African models – Ajak Deng and Grace Bol – fit the look (so much so that the latter says people sometimes confuse her with Wek); they also just so happen to also be Sudanese in origin. Perhaps it is only through these problematic “categories” that models of color will begin to achieve the diversity that their white counterparts so enjoy.

I was cruising on one of my favorite fashion editorial sites, Fashion Gone Rogue, when I happened upon this February/March 2011 cover of Russh Magazine featuring Delfine Bafort:

The Belgian model is surrounded by a group of adoring black men, who all seem to be looking at her lustfully. Her white dress, blonde tresses, and aloof stare contrasts markedly with their dark naked skin and enraptured looks.

Interesting.

The shoot seemed very reminiscent of other editorials I’ve seen in the past few years:

Gisele Bundchen by Sølve Sundsbø.

Black men being used as props is nothing new. Remember slavery?

In 2011, I think it’s past time to let these tropes go, don’t you think?

Related: Gisele Bündchen’s Photo Shoot is a Study in Interpreting Racially Charged Images, LeBron James as King Kong on cover of Vogue?

(Image Source: Fashion Gone Rogue)

Via Claire at the Fashion Bomb, French fashionistas are boycotting the beauty brand Guerlain due to racist comments made by Jean Paul Guerlain. The Fashion Bomb explains:

When talking about working on a fragrance, he said “I put myself to work like a [n-word]. I don’t know if the [n-words] have always worked hard, but…” ["Je me suis mis à travailler comme un nègre. Je ne sais pas si les Nègres ont toujours tellement travaillé mais enfin..."]
The actual word he used was nègre, which, translated, could mean anything from negro to coon to the n-word.

Also, in fashion faux pas, Threadbared points out yet another ad featuring a white model in blackface:

Stylite notes:

Numero’s issue #117 features an editorial starring fair-skinned and typically tow-headed model Constance Jablonski — except, in this case, she’s wearing afro wigs that vary in shades from chocolate brown to blonde and her skin has been decidedly bronzed, if not entirely darkened. The most eye-catching accessory in the shoot might be her co-star: a young, diaper-swaddled black child.

The spread has a late ’60s, early ’70s vibe, with no shortage of nods to hippie culture and style. We’re no experts, and we can’t decide if we’d categorize this spread as an example of blackface. Jablonski’s skintone and hair vary several different shades throughout the editorial, but one thing is for sure: if they wanted, at any point, to use a black model, then Numero should have hired one.

Via reader Sarah, we find out “ethnic” is the new color of the season, according to Fabric Trends magazine:

I can count the days following Fashion Week on two hands, the same abacus I could use to count the women of color featured on its runways. Despite constant cries from communities of color, models, the press, and even many designers to increase diversity on the catwalk, progress is slower than the careful steps taken in a pair of Alexander McQueen heels. The fashion world is working at a snail’s pace to color its image, and even then, only by way of appeasement, tiny bits to the masses so that they are temporarily satisfied. But among those scraps, people become desperate, sometimes seeing glimmers that hope that are far from it, and yearning for some acknowledgment from those who have little connection to their plight despite presumed allegiance.

To cite a specific example, one need look no further than the coverage of one of the most poignant protests of fashion’s alienation and exclusion of black fashion editors (and, not-so-tangentially, models and designers) on the opening day of Fashion Week. One of the participants noted that the only prominent woman of color in the business and publishing side of the fashion industry was Marie Claire Fashion Director and Project Runway judge Nina Garcia (pictured, at top).

I stopped reading for a moment. Since when is Nina Garcia a woman of color?

In the United States, color is a strange marker, particular because it rarely has as much to do with phenotype as it does one’s past. Of course facial features, skin color, and even speech patterns may be indications of racial and/or ethnic background, but it goes far beyond what is in the eye of the beholder. Beyond the factor of family trees, parentage being one of the biggest indicators of race (i.e. one may appear phenotypically white, but with one non-white parent, the possibility of whiteness dissolves), region, nationality, and language play huge roles as determining factors in the race game. In fact, despite markers of everything BUT non-white heritage in all other facets, including one’s appearance, like in the case of Nina Garcia, a last name of non-English origin can mean more than what literally meets the eye.

If you do a Wikipedia search on Garcia, you’ll see she grew up in Barranquilla, Colombia, home to many European immigrants. She was afforded many luxuries from an early age due to her wealthy parents and had a privileged upbringing that involved studying in the United States and France before going into fashion. At this point, you might find yourself asking, “What does this have to do with race?” Everything, in fact, considering that class has an almost direct correlation with race in Latin America. Though race in the United States is often times though of as “fixed,” despite one’s class, racial mobility is a reality in Latin America, particularly when tied to class and education. Make no mistake: Nina Garcia would not be considered anything but white in Latin America. Additionally, even if in some alternate universe Garcia were black, her class level alone would allow her to “transcend” the racial category, placing her – at least on a social level –as something other than black.

But Garcia aside, the issue of assigning race as a means of coloring Latin@s or people of other ethnicities who do not fall easily into the “white” and “black” racial categories we have configured for ourselves in the United States is a difficult one, fraught with a need to classify and, more than anything, create allies in the fight for social inclusion and recognition, even when there is not an understood alliance on both sides. The process is complicated, and I can imagine quite confusing for many who may have been considered one racial category or possibly not of any particular category at all beyond their nationality in their country of origin, only to come here and receive a racial categorization that is not only inaccurate, but also applied for the sake of ease. It’s much easier to lump all Latin@s into one category of non-white or non-black than to consider that within every single nation in Latin America, there are specific racial categories and groupings that directly correlate to the respective national histories therein.

This is not to say, of course, that Latin@s who may have considered themselves one racial group within their country of origin but who conform to or accept their newly assigned category within the U.S. do not exist. If anything, the general acceptance of a new racial category (and consequently, labeling others in new ways as well) is a part of the assimilation process when one immigrates to a new country, be it the United States or elsewhere. But for many, particularly those who have never had to think about race, the process of receiving a racial category, and usually one that does not directly correlate with their respective national equivalent, can be an unwelcome form of identity alteration.

In the case of those who come from higher class backgrounds and, in particular, are deemed white in their home countries, the shift can be disarming and a blow to one’s sense of racial self-esteem, particularly if the new racial category indicates a “descent.” While certainly a humbling experience, it is nevertheless one that, in its own way, a form of forced assimilation. It’s also a classic example of what I refer to as “identity imperialism.” By re-categorizing groups from other countries based on our own groupings, we show not only a general lack of familiarity with the world beyond our borders, but also a limited understanding of ourselves. An example can be found in the embracing of Brazilian models as a welcome “alternative” in the fashion world a few years ago. The dozens of Brazilian models gracing the runways? Still white. Their nationality does not dictate their race. Why many fail to understand this, despite “American” as a nationality not being an indicator of racial categories, is beyond me.

As I mentioned in a piece I wrote long ago about race in Latin America entitled “We Want You . . . To Think Just Like Us,” despite our lazy re-categorization of immigrant groups and their racial identities, we don’t have it all figured out on our home turf:

In discussions (from an American perspective) related to race in other countries, there tends to be a forced application of American racial categories and norms, as if our identity grid fits each racial landscape without a need to vary its shape. And though we like to pretend that race is clear-cut in the United States, it’s obvious that concepts of race are more mutable than we like to admit.

Take the category “people of color.” What does it actually mean? Is it truly a useful term for the sake of building community within marginalized groups if some of the people within it benefit from privilege? If you consider black Americans, for example, studies have shown that despite blacks of all shades being categorized as one group racially (something that happens with less frequency in Latin America, as there are often categories for the people of multiracial backgrounds who phenotypically may not be easily placed squarely within the categories of black and white), blacks with lighter skin, if separated from their darker peers statistically, have more economic success (included therein, higher levels of education and higher paying jobs). Despite our not separating light-skinned blacks and dark-skinned blacks in comparative race studies, the statistics hint at skin color-based privilege in action. The same could be said of studies on Asian-Americans, which often lump together all categories of ethnicities therein, ignoring some of the problems of poverty and access troubling certain communities.

That said, can we legitimately force people from other countries into our own specified categories for them, despite our having yet to fully grasp the complexities therein? As we move to a more explicit and open multiracial America (and I say this as we have always been a country with people of multiracial backgrounds, just not one where we could openly embrace that due to the circumstances of racism in our country), it is time for us to reconsider the categories we have, and analyze whether or not they are still working as a means of building community, particularly when our presumed allies are technically playing for other team, lacking any connection to the experience of marginalization based on race (and/or class).

Miss Wendi’s voice? She now writes exclusively about music and fashion at her site Retail DJ.

This post is supposed to be about the latest occurrences of blackface in fashion — specifically, the 14-page editorial featuring Lara Stone, a white Dutch model, painted black and shot by Steven Klein for the October 2009 issue of French Vogue and also Carlos Diez‘s show at Madrid Fashion Week (September 22, 2009) in which models walked in blackface and, at times, with bared breasts.

There is indeed quite a lot to say about both events. To begin, fashion’s seeming ineptness for dealing with race in ways that do not accommodate and/or supplement the already too long histories of racial objectification and commodification. We’ve discussed much of this history on Threadbared (see especially here, here, here, here, and here) already and will no doubt continue to, as there seems to be an inexhaustible amount of material. Second, these events (and others like it) are revealing of the ways in which multiculturalism and multiracialism –under the guise of postracialism, postmodernism, or just artistic edginess– enables the continuation of white supremacy. For example, some are defending French Vogue for its provocativeness (“creative images . . . can sometimes [be] off-putting”) and for its postracialism (arguing that it is “sort of beautiful in that having a person of one ethnic background look convincingly like she might be of another race shows the interconnectedness of us all”). But what is on display in French Vogue and on Diez’s runway is not beautiful black bodies, but what Nirmal Puwar describes as “the universal empty point” that white female bodies are able to occupy precisely because their bodies are racially unmarked: “[Thus] they can play with the assigned particularity of ethnicized dress without suffering the ‘violence of revulsion.’”

The “violence of revulsion” that women of color generally, and black women particularly in the cases of this issue of French Vogue and Diez’s show, experience is not mediated by postracialism. In fact, the violence of revulsion is redoubled here. Blackface highlights the privileged universal empty point that white bodies continue to occupy even in this so-called postracial moment, and in so doing, it positions racial difference against whiteness, as the other to whiteness. Moreover, blackface and other performances of racial commodification produce a different kind of “violence of revulsion” — an everyday violence of revulsion like I experienced when I discovered Klein’s editorial and Diez’s fashion show.

By this second order of “violence of revulsion,” I mean the assault of racism and the assault of colonialism’s traces on what was for me, until that moment of violence, a relatively mundane workday at home. Violently interrupting this scene of banality is not simply these images of racial arrogance, but my own visceral response of anger, exasperation, disappointment, and a feeling I can only describe as racism fatigue. Such images and their inevitable postmodern, postracial, freedom-of-artistic-expression discourses and apologists are not only tired, today they are tiring.

Because this is a fashion plus politics blog, I want to post some very brief thoughts about the protests rocking Iran after what some observers are calling a fraudulent election, reinstalling President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against his main opposition, moderate reformer Mir Hossein Mousavi. (For news about the election and protests, The New York Times’ The Lede News Blog is frequently updated. For more analysis, check out Juan Cole.)

A glance at the Western media coverage from before and after the election reveals an overwhelming visual trope — the color photograph of a young and often beautiful Iranian woman wearing a colorful headscarf, usually pinned far back from her forehead to frame a sweep of dark hair. Such an image condenses a wealth of historical references, political struggles, and aesthetic judgments, because the hijab does. As Minoo Moallem argues in her book Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics of Patriarchy in Iran, both pre- and postrevolutionary discourses commemorate specific bodies –whose clothing practices play a large part— to create forms and norms of gendered citizenship, both national and transnational. What Moallem calls the civic body becomes the site of political performances in the particular contexts of modern nationalist and fundamentalist movements.

This particular image being disseminated throughout the Western press right now is no exception — we are meant to understand the looseness of the scarf, the amount of hair she shows, as political acts, manifesting a desire for Western-style democracy. But this shorthand is too simplistic, too easy. As Moallem argues, Islamic nationalism and fundamentalism are not premodern remnants but themselves “by-products of modernity.” As such, the image of the Iranian woman in her loose headscarf is not a straightforward arrow from Islamic backwardness to liberal progress, but a nuanced and multi-dimensional map of political discourse and struggle.

In her book, Moallem writes, “while I am interested in the production of the civic body, I want to show its instability over time in Iran.” We can see this instability in the histories of forced unveiling and forced veiling that mark particular historical and political moments in Iran. Very briefly, and no doubt simplistically, the pro-Western Reza Shah banned the veil in 1936 in a broad modernization effort, authorizing police to forcibly unveil women in the street. Women donned the veil during the lead-up to the revolution as a visible act of defiance against the Shah’s corrupt and brutal rule. After 1979, the broad coalition that had briefly united against the Shah was destroyed by the conservative Shia cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, resulting in a fundamentalist regime that, among other things, enforced veiling for women. As such, Moallem argues, forced unveiling and forced veiling are not dissimilar disciplinary practices that regulate the feminine body as a civic body subjected to the order of the visible. Moallem observes,

“My grandmother’s body –like my own later– was marked by corporeal inscriptions of citizenship. Both of us shared an incorporated traumatic memory of citizenship in the modern nation-state. She was forced to unveil; I was forced to veil. Living in different times, we were obliged by our fellow countrymen respectively to reject and adopt veiling. Our bodies were othered by civic necessity.” (Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister, 69)

This is the barest intimation of the complicated history of the civic body we are seeing in photographs from Tehran now — in which the young woman with the scarf tied loosely, the lock of hair curling against her cheek or forehead, is made to stand for both this history and also for so much more. As such I would issue two cautions. The first, we cannot necessarily know from how a woman ties her headscarf what the shape of her politics might be. And second, we might commit further violence (refusing her complex personhood, for instance) in assuming that we can.

But because the hijab is so often made to stand as a visual shorthand for Islamic oppression in the West, I wanted to reference its specificity as a political performance of a particular feminine civic body in Iran (which would be different than its history in, say, Turkey, where some female Muslim university students are demanding their rights to education against the state ban on headscarves in public schools and government buildings) in order to render these photographs that much more complex, and the emerging political situation that much more nuanced, in this moment.

(Image Credits: New York Times, Huffington Post, Getty)

This recipe for femininity looks, to me, as if it is aimed toward a stereotypical Hong Kong billionaire’s wife. The clothes evoke a demure, under-control, decidedly non-rowdy (read: non-Western) type of woman who appreciates her role as an ornament of great value, and sits prettily and quietly in Gulfstream jets.

—Cintra Wilson, “Critical Shopper: Derek Lam,” The New York Times

(Thanks to Rob Schmidt for sending this in!)

(Image credit: NYT)

What does this picture call to mind for you? What is the first thing you think of?

This shot one of a series of photos featuring Gisele Bündchen, shot by Norwegian fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø. The pictures make use of Gisele’s body contrasted with those of buff, dark skinned male models. I am often wary of the color contrast idea in fashion photography – darker skinned minorities always seem to end up as background color – the results are usually striking.

However, there also seems to be another dynamic at play here.

Over at Project Rungay, the authors of the post playfully warn their readers to “Grab a glass of icewater and a fan, girls” indicating the raciness of the pictures below.

One of the selected photos is used to show Gisele’s physical desire for her on-camera companions:

But the first comment on the Project Rungay post reveals some of the tensions at play with these images:

Ross
5/3/09 8:36 AM

wow, those photos are fierce. can’t tell if the guys are her slaves or if they’re raping her. interesting race dialogue. the first photo is super sexy

Your thoughts, readers?

(Photos:Photos: Sølve Sundsbø via Project Runga
(Thanks to Angel H., Roldy, Butterflyrei, and Taylord for the tips!)

So even though fashion designers have a tendency to appropriate and re-design fashion they witness during their world travels (or, cough, imperialist imaginations), the magazine writers and journalists just can’t seem to find the right words to characterize the collections. Instead of talking about geometric prints, the use of found objects as jewelry items, and color choices in a way that could be deemed appropriate and less offensive, they shade their words with sweeping generalizations and talk about “Africa” like a one trick pony.

In a recent New York Times fashion week photo spread entitled “African Influence on the Runway,” the first mistake made is the usual assumption that Africa is one big country. Morocco has a completely different fashion history from South Africa which has a different fashion history from the Congo, just, you know, as a tiny example. So in the title alone, they end up equating the diverse fashion traditions to one big imagined Africa. To make matters worse, the corresponding article is entitled “Out of Africa.” In reading the captions, I kept waiting for a punchline. The Times was just being ironic and funny, right?

Nope. They were for real.

Photo 1: a woman with crimped hair

“In the 2009 spring season, African style is a drumbeat through the clothes and accessories. Surprisingly it isn’t about the ethnic. Instead, it is the sculpted geometric shapes of Africa and its rich spicy colors that are the strongest forms of identity. Couture coiffeur Orlando Pita created these sculptural silhouettes for Christian Dior.”

African style is a “drumbeat?” Come on, y’all, really? Oh and just in case we forgot, “rich spicy” is not a way to describe food. It describes a continental identity in its “strongest forms.” Barf.

But wait, there’s more. . . so much more!

Animal prints on dark-skinned black women also scream “AFRICA!” in a really cartoonish kinda way . . . I love pink African leopards, don’t you?

Next up, Photo 3: a woman who takes a modern approach to the mumps:

I love the pants. I hate the description:

“The colonial world has also been mined for inspiration. For Ralph Lauren, the colonial looks fell somewhere between India and Africa, with low-crotch pants- those in between sarouel and jodhpur styles that are so a la mode this summer.”

I love that the colonial world has been “mined” for inspiration. What an adorable reference to the suffering of thousands of people in sub-Saharan Africa from the introduction of British, French, Portuguese, and Belgian colonialism. What a blast! No pun intended!!!! Oh and just in case you forgot, India is a country. So is Africa, you know, that big country in the southern hemisphere.

Photo 4: Marc Jacobs gets “spicy” with African masks:

Ok, gotta admit, these are awesome. The writer thinks so, too:

“Shoes are leading the forward march of African style- if you can get your hands on them. When it appeared on the runway, who could have believed this fantastical footwear could be the hottest item for summer 2009? No wonder Marc Jacobs baptized this shoe “Spicy,” giving a name to the shoe, as had previously been the custom with the now-fading it bags.”

Oh “African” style. . .

Nothing says “tribal” like a rouched burlap sack jumper dress!

“The most dramatic example of tribal fabrics was offered by the Japanese designer Junya Watanabe. He came up with bold prints in an African palette of big-sky blue, burnt orange, earth brown and leaf green. Those fabrics were made into pretty summer dresses.”

Next photo: Yup, every African woman I know has flowers growing out of her head. I haven’t been able to get it to work for me yet. Maybe it requires some special secret African recipe:

Photo 7: More headgardens!

Only this time, the cranial forest comes with jewelry made to look like it came from animals that are now endangered thanks to continued exploitation of Africa’s (continent or country? The mystery continues!) natural resources. We’ll look more “African” that way!

“Accessories with an African stamp work best for summer in the city, as seen at Marios Schwab. Bangles are everywhere, from wide cuffs to narrow bracelets, mostly in inventive modern materials to emulate the ivory and horn of now-endangered species.”

I find it humorous that the only time we ever see any reference to people of color on the runway is when they are practically mocking the cultures from which they originated with outlandish re-creations of “ethnic” style. I think it is wonderful to find inspiration in various cultures’ customs and traditions, especially when it comes to fashion, but there are far better ways to discuss said inspiration without patronizing, belittling, or oversimplifying said cultures. To add insult to injury, even in fashion lines that claim inspiration from other nations, the runways themselves remain white as Siberian snow. Diversity seems to only be a possibility when the colonial imagination of the designer runs amok or if he or she is deciding in which nation lies the possibility of cheaper manufacturing. Sigh.

In New York magazine’s Spring Fashion issue, there are six feature stories on clothes, designers, and models including a story on a group of tenderfoot but fresh-faced white male models (“Fashion Week’s handsome rookies”), an interview with style icon Kate Moss on her clothing line at the much-anticipated and much delayed opening of TopShop in downtown Manhattan (recent reports have doors opening in April 2009), and a recession-minded article with an increasingly familiar theme, “Everything Here is Under $100″). In addition, there is the usual array of designer label advertisements and celebrity spokesmodels: Posh and Becks for Emporio Armani, Katie Holmes for Miu Miu, Gwyneth Paltrow for Tod’s, as well as an anonymous sea of puerile, well-heeled, ivory-faced Gothamites slinging everything from Marc Jacobs handbags to cocktails to lifestyles.

Jessica Lustig’s article, “The Fashion Thief,” was the only feature story or advertisement in the Fashion Issue that featured a person of color, any color. Lustig follows Kevahn Thorpe, an African American young man from Queensbridge Houses project in Queens, New York, as he is arrested and rearrested for shoplifting from high-end Manhattan shops like Prada, Bergdorf, Barneys, and Saks.

There’s a lot about this article that’s unsettling.

For instance, Kevahn’s love of fashion is pathologized and made irrational (he’s a “fashion fanatic . . . for whom jail was not too steep a price to pay”) as if coveting fashion in New York City is at all unusual. Moreover, Kevahn’s “crafting” (his preferred term for shoplifting) is anything but irrational. Part of the “crafting” for Kevahn is his careful study of fashion labels, their histories, designers, and floor arrangements. Also, repeated mentions of his single black mom and hardscrabble life in Queens reifies tired “culture of poverty” theories from the 1970s and 1980s that blamed black mothers, specifically, and black families, generally, for all the problems of the “underclass” rather than, say, systems of institutionalized racism and uneven distributions of material and social resources, power, and wealth that privileged middle and upper-class whites. But most disquieting for me about this article is its inclusion in New York’s Fashion Issue during Spring Fashion Week. While all the white models, celebrities, and socialites who crowd the pages of this and so many other magazines are implicitly citizens of the fashion world – their unquestioned rights to fashion’s material objects and its privileges substantiate this – the lone trespasser is a black man who is repeatedly surveilled and forcibly removed out of this world’s borders. His claims to fashion, self-fashioning, and self-actualization are publicly denounced by the headline which identifies him as a “fashion thief” but also by the numerous, mostly anonymous, readers of the article whose online comments against him rise to the level of vitriol.

The racial logic of this article is not unlike those found in other magazines – some of which have been mentioned in this blog (see Oops, Background Color, Redux, and Background Color, Redux II). African Americans as well as other racial groups, when they’re featured at all in fashion and style magazines, are routinely figured as abject, subordinate, or illegitimate bodies that serve to highlight the true white subjects of fashion.

(Photo Credit: NY Mag)

Last summer saw the launch of ALO Hayati, “America’s Top Middle Eastern Lifestyle Magazine.” Thanks to a gracious donor, I finally got my hands on a copy of the July 2008 issue.

All lifestyle magazines have an aspirational feel to them, and this one was no different. Chock full of advertisements for Dubai hotels and Swiss watches, ALO wasn’t particularly different than any other lifestyle magazine. Considering the economic situation of magazines, it doesn’t seem like an incredibly auspicious time to launch one aimed at a materialistic lifestyle. I wasn’t able to find any updates about the magazine’s publication on the website, and as far as I’m aware, this is the only edition, though in the magazine they refer to an earlier issue in some places.

As someone who enjoys a good glossy every now and then, I delighted over advertisements with Kim Kardashian, and interview with exclusive designer Bijan, and a fluffy piece on intercultural relationships (though I did not care for the cover teaser: “Shocking Intercultural Stories”).

The magazine featured an interview with Leila Ahmed, which was a great one, likening the current western media representation of Muslim women to the same patronizing Orientalism that played out in the first wave of colonialism in Middle East. Her interview shed lots of light on the history and future of the headscarf. Despite the educational qualities of her interview, I kept thinking, “Who is this educating?”

While not every Middle Eastern person is going to be familiar with the history behind the headscarf, it seems sort of odd to have an educational feature about hijab in a magazine aimed at a demographic that has a fairly lengthy history with headscarves, even if many of them aren’t Muslim. Something about this piece tugged at me. It almost felt as if it was aimed at people who were not Middle Eastern.

Other pieces confirmed my suspicions. A photography section, entitled “Faraway Faces” (cue Aladdin soundtrack!), featured lots of “natives.” Lots of women wrapped up with only their eyes showing, lots of traditional attire, wizened old men, and even a camel. And the website isn’t any better. There are tons of shots of women wrapped up to look mysterious in glammy scarves (one such example is pictured at left).

This wasn’t even the worst part. This issue featured a special section on weddings, complete with all the typical wedding stuff (dresses, rings, honeymoon destinations). But it also contained coverage of an actual wedding. Neither the bride nor groom had Middle Eastern heritage. I assume that if they had, the magazine would have mentioned it, because otherwise, why would they be in a magazine about Middle Eastern lifestyles?

Because their wedding was entirely Ancient Egyptian themed.

(sigh)

Now, I don’t want to go dogging anyone’s special day. I know people who’ve had themed weddings of other time periods. And I can even dig that they have a lot of interest in Ancient Egypt (when I was in sixth grade, I would devour anything and everything related to the time period. It was interesting.)

But this? In a Middle Eastern lifestyle magazine? I mean, they did their homework and everything (the article mentions that the bride wore custom-made accoutrements modeled on those of ancient Egyptian queens), but the cake was in the shape of a step pyramid. Come on. It’s like attempting to have a traditional Mexican wedding with a cake in the shape of a sombrero. It just plays up the stereotypes that they’re (hopefully) trying to avoid.

The article conjured up not only some major Orientalist vibes, but reminded me of a similar craze in the Gulf: Arab brides dressing up in saris for their wedding celebrations. The dynamic is further complicated by the fact that many of them have South Asian maids, lots of whom aren’t treated well. It’s called cultural appropriation, people.

Fuckery aside, I did like a lot of the articles in the magazine. They profile not only legendary designer Bijan, but also civil rights activist and author Jack Shaheen. They interview not only Jordanian princess Sumaya bint El Hassan, but also Lebanese chef Viviane Chamieh.

I like the aim of the magazine: peace, regional association (despite the region being an ambiguous Western-defined term), and intercultural and interfaith collaboration. I liked the emphasis on “Middle Eastern” rather than religion or lineage (profiling those who are both born/raised in the Middle East as well as those born in the U.S. with Middle Eastern heritage on either side of their family). I liked a piece on double standards when it comes to sex that I found on the website (yes, admittedly fluffy, but we already covered that). I liked the fact that the wedding section had designs by Middle Eastern designers (more of that, please! There are plenty of them!). I liked that ALO uses Middle Eastern Americans as their cover models. So I really wanted to like this magazine as a whole.

If ALO can cut down on the exoticizing and play up the actual Middle Eastern angle of things (wouldn’t hurt to incorporate more Middle Eastern writers on staff, would it? Or cover things actually happening in Middle Eastern countries rather than covering countries themselves as tour destinations? And profiling more Middle Eastern Americans, like you did in your interview with director Mark David?), it can fully live up to its name.

Last year Puerto Rican artist Miguel Luciano created a pair of Nike Air Force Ones with the image of Filiberto Ojeda Rios, head of the Puerto Rican Indepencence group Los Macheteros.

Filiberto was murdered by the FBI in his home. Miguel Luciano’s piece wanted to explore the way that Filiberto had been commodified as a slain revolutionary (similar to the way that Che is commodified on t-shirts) and created these sneakers. The sneakers garnered some mixed feelings (check out Raquel Z. Rivera’s amazing piece about the tensions these sneakers bring up at Reggaetonica and here).

Well now the battle of the political A1′s on!

Artist Jimm Lasser recently opened his exhibition in New York, with Obama as the theme of the exhibit. “The Obama Force One” is one of the most interesting pieces in the show, with graphics of Obama engraved onto the sole.

What do you all think? Interesting comments on the commidification of “leaders” or just plain commodity?

Discussions about American Apparel’s new Afrika line of clothing on this blog, Feministing and Racialicious sparked some confusion among people who wondered “What’s so wrong with being inspired by another culture?” Nothing, really. But “inspiration” drawn from a historically oppressed culture comes with a tangle of baggage born of generations of marginalization and bias.

It’s all about the oppression

From Wikipedia:

Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It denotes acculturation or assimilation, but often connotes a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture.[1][2] It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, may take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held. Or, they may be stripped of meaning altogether.

The term cultural appropriation can have a negative connotation. It generally is applied when the subject culture is a minority culture or somehow subordinate in social, political, economic, or military status to the appropriating culture; or, when there are other issues involved, such as a history of ethnic or racial conflict between the two groups.Cultural and racial theorist, George Lipsitz, outlined this concept of cultural appropriation in his seminal term “strategic anti-essentialism”. Strategic anti-essentialism is defined as the calculated use of a cultural form, outside of your own, to define yourself or your group. Strategic anti-essentialism can be seen both in minority cultures and majority cultures, and are not confined to only the appropriation of the other. For example, the American band Redbone, comprised of founding members of Mexican heritage, essentialized their group as belonging to the
Native American tradition, and are known for their famous songs in support of the American Indian Movement “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee” and “Custer Had It Coming”. However, as Lipsitz argues, when the majority culture attempts to strategically anti-essentialize themselves by appropriating a minority culture, they must take great care to recognize the specific socio-historical circumstances and significance of these cultural forms so as not the perpetuate the already existing, majority vs. minority, unequal power relations.

In other words: It’s the oppression, stupid.

A Japanese teen wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a big American company is not the same as Madonna sporting a bindi as part of her latest reinvention. The difference is history and power. Colonization has made Western Anglo culture supreme–powerful and coveted. It is understood in its diversity and nuance as other cultures can only hope to be. Ignorance of culture that is a burden to Asians, African and indigenous peoples, is unknown to most European descendants or at least lacks the same negative impact.

It matters who is doing the appropriating. If a dominant culture fancies some random element (a mode of dress, a manner of speaking, a style of music) of my culture interesting or exotic, but otherwise disdains my being and seeks to marginalize me, it is surely an insult.

She loves me; she loves me not

I was thinking about this while reading Daphne A. Brooks’ article on Amy Winehouse in this week’s issue of The Nation. In “Tainted Love,” Brooks writes about the Winehouse sound that I found so compelling on the artist’s two releases:

Black women are everywhere and nowhere in Winehouse’s work. Their extraordinary craft as virtuosic vocalists is the pulse of Back to Black, an album on which Winehouse mixes and matches the vocalizing of 1940s jazz divas and 1990s neo-soul queens in equal measure. Piling on a motley array of personas, she summons the elegance of Etta “At Last” James alongside roughneck, round-the-way allusions to pub crawls and Brixton nightlife, as well as standard pop women’s melancholic confessionals about the evils of “stupid men.” What holds it all together is her slinky contralto and shrewd ability to cut and mix ’60s R&B and Ronnie Spector Wall of Sound “blues pop” vocals with the ghostly remnants of hip-hop neo-soul’s last great hope, Lauryn Hill. Who needs black female singers in the flesh when Winehouse can crank out their sound at the drop of a hat?

and…

Last March, New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones wrote that Winehouse’s inflections and phonemes don’t add up to any known style.” Her “mush-mouthed” phrasings on tracks such as “You Know I’m No Good” are, he wrote, her “real innovation,” a “Winehouse signature” that stresses linguistic distortion and sounds heavy on the wine. This, to some, is the sonic allure of Amy Winehouse: her absolutely inscrutable delivery seemingly sets her apart from the legions of white artists who’ve hopped on the Don Cornelius soul train to find their niche.

Let’s be real. These “mush-mouthed” phrasings are anything but new. Winehouse is drawing on a known style that’s a hundred years old, rooted in a tradition of female minstrelsy. Think of the oft-overlooked blues recording pioneer Mamie Smith, the artist who, with songwriter Perry Bradford, laid down the first-ever blues recording by an African-American vocalist, “Crazy Blues,” in 1920. Mamie Smith is hardly an iconic figure like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Her rep as “a vaudeville chanteuse” rather than a juke-joint vet all but guarantees her exclusion from the traditional blues canon. But it’s this background that enabled Smith to draw on a range of styles crafted in part from watching and listening to white female performers like Sophie Tucker and, eventually, Mae West–white women who, as theater scholar Jayna Brown has written, often learned to “perform blackness” from the women who worked for them. It goes to show that there were plenty of women, black and white, who benefited from the minstrel craze.

A black person might feel flattered at what appears to be Winehouse’s deep appreciation for “race music.” One might be grateful that the pop artist seeks inspiration frm African American culture and pays tribute through her style to too-easily forgotten women like Ma Rainey and Mamie Smith. I might feel that Winehouse was executing an homage to my culture, had the addled chanteuse not been caught on video singing racist slurs to the melody of the kids’ rhyme “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”

So, what to think of Winehouse’s appropriation in that light? It seems that a love of pulsing beats and from-the-gut singing does not translate into love and respect for the people that birthed the genre.

Ethnicity sanitized for your protection

Even if Winehouse had never revealed her prejudice, should black folks be glad that white artists are able to appropriate music rooted in the African diaspora and the black American experience, tone down the soul, market it behind a paler face and find the fame that eludes similar artists of color?

Consider Sharon Jones, the 52-year-old singer who usually fronts The Dap Kings, the band that has backed Winehouse. Jones and The Dap Kings “are widely thought to be spearheads of a revivalist movement that aims to capture the essence of funk/soul music as it was at its height in the mid-1960s to mid-1970s.” Curiously though, after three albums, Jones’ retro belting has earned her cult fame but none of Winehouse’s success. Thin, young, white and tragic sells so much better than dark, plump and middle-aged.

There is a long history of of white musicians being inspired by black music and finding fame with an “exotic” but safer sound, while their black muses languished in obscurity. Without diminishing the impact of artists like Elvis and The Rolling Stones on the popular music scene, surely it is clear that they benefited from a culture that would never allow a bluesman like Robert Johnson to gain mainstream prominence. The fresh sounds that electrified rock audiences weren’t really so fresh, just appropriated from an artist and culture made invisible by racism.

There’s the rub

What’s so wrong with being inspired by another culture? I’m not sure how to answer, because borrowing from a historically oppressed culture is not as simple as some would want it to be. Fair or not, there are hundreds of years of meaning behind that faux African print dress, that Motown-inspired tune and the silent Harajuku posse. I haven’t even touched on the stickiness of appropriating religious items and culture. (With Halloween on the way, we’ll all have a great opportunity to witness all the ways Americans “pay homage to” the West African religion of Voudou.) For many people of color, it’s nearly impossible to unhook what the mainstream believes is harmless cultural borrowing from the broader experience and history of our people. “Harmless” is really in the eye of the beholder.

So, over on Feministing, Samhita wrote an article about the new Afrika line of clothing by American Apparel. Under the headline: “Jungle prints are back,” the blogger wrote:

And this time to add to the classiness, they are being marketed as the “Afrika” collection. Please get ready to see self proclaimed, post-racist, ironic hipsters near you wearing this fall trend. You know because this isn’t totally racist or anything. This company will never cease to amaze me, in every way.

I’m siding with Samhita on this one. While I would not use the word racist to describe what American Apparel has done wrong, I would use exotification, “othering,” cultural commodification and, well, stupidity. Plenty of Feministing commenters disagree, however, with lots getting stuck on the idea that wearing animal print is inherently racially offensive. No one is saying that. The problem is not zebra print. The problem is distilling a continent of many countries, cultures, languages and peoples down to its wildlife and faux tribal print. There is a tired “dark continent” stereotype at the heart of the American Apparel clothing line’s name and marketing. And THAT is a problem.

What other continent is viewed this way? When was the last time you saw a fashion collection of brown bear fur and Celtic prints labeled “Europe!” No one would buy a pan-European marketing ploy that blended Irish culture with prints from animals found in upper Scandinavia and Russia. Such a thing would be foolish. But no one can be bothered to know the difference between Zambia and Mauritania. Africa becomes just a mush of dark tribal folk and wild animals, and suffers the indignity of insensitive marketing all the time. Asia, too, but that’s another post. (Someone needs to stop Gwen Stefani before she appropriates again.)

What do you think? Is American Apparel’s new Afrika line simply an homage or typical hipster cultural tone deafness? (Be sure to check out the comments over on Feministing. A link is at the top of this post.)

The real problem is less the absence of non-white faces from the media than the repeated underlining of “whiteness” as universally relevant even within the already “special” domain of women’s interests. A quick survey of columnists writing on “women’s issues” in the British media underscores this. Hardly any are non-white, while those that are will be invariably positioned as specialists on “multicultural”, “Muslim” or “black” issues. Put simply, white people have ordinary lives and concerns while non-white people have “issues”. “White” is content-free; everybody else is marked by their ethnicity. [...]

Fashion, of course, has long relied on non-white women – the multitudes of farm and factory workers who pluck the cotton, tend the silkworms, weave the fabrics and sew the garments. Their invisibility and ongoing exploitation by the industry is not going to be addressed by a proliferation of Tyras and Naomis. Nor are difficult issues of ethnic divisions and social marginalisation about to be sorted by special issues which only render whiteness further invisible and, hence, unquestionably normative. Maybe it is time now for a “white issue” with a focus, for once, on “whiteness”, what underlies its privileges and internal divisions, and how it perpetuates itself as a norm, one so entrenched that it has the power to render everything else a separate issue.

— Priyamvada Gopal, the Guardian’s Comment is Free, “Vogue: all white now?”

While the Gossip isn’t in my regular rotation (there’s always something about the production value of their albums that throws me), Beth Ditto’s ascension as a fearlessly fat and femme style icon is on my radar for sure. There’s much to be said about Beth Ditto, fat and fashion, but the above photograph from Ditto’s eight-page editorial in NYLON’s recent music issue is about none of these things for me.

It’s about the woman who may or may not be a real housekeeper at the motel at which this editorial was photographed, sitting on the edge of the bed with a handful of cards and gazing at Ditto with a weary but guarded expression. In the story that coalesces for me, studying this photograph, she has just been forced to play cards with a guest — not because she wants to, but because she could lose her job if she doesn’t. Nor does the game even feel like a break from her domestic labor; this sort of affective labor is no less taxing. In her mind (in the story I imagine about this editorial), she calculates how much longer she’ll have to stay and clean in order to meet her day’s quota.

But none of this is supposed to be visible (or even viable) in the photograph. We are not meant to consider her story. (And I’m made uncomfortable by my own attempt to “give” her an interior life.) Instead, the woman of color in her drab housekeeper’s uniform is simply another part of the furnishing in this bland motel room. She is banished as mere and muted background, the better to illuminate Ditto’s extraordinary excess of shine and glamor. For that reason, this editorial photograph both angers and saddens me.

Much has been written about the uses of people of color as part of the landscape in fashion editorials. (See, for just a small sample, Make Fetch Happen‘s disgust for colonial chic, Racialicious’ archive on fashion, or bell hooks’ canonical essay “Eating the Other”). This cliché includes “exotic” locales and touristic images of the “natives,” who wear clothes and other adornment that are imagined as traditional and time-bound. (In Viet Nam, a frequent setting, these might be so-called pajamas and conical hats; in the often-undifferentiated Africa, also a regular landscape, loincloths and face paint). The deliberate contrast between these figures (native and model) is arranged along a spectrum of race, but also time and space. The Vietnamese, the African, the Peruvian, are imagined to live at a temporal and geographic distance from the modern, and implicitly Western, woman who might wear these fashionable clothes. The compulsion to return to this scene, through which the natives in their deindividuating garb serve to highlight the cosmopolitanism, the expressive and unique sense of self, of the woman who wears (or at least covets) Prada, reveals much about the continuing investments of fashionable discourses to an inheritance of colonial regimes of power and knowledge. It is a fantasy, yes, but no less powerful for being so.

What is happening here is no less committed to this uneven distribution. The uniform deindividuates the housekeeper as much as a generic “native” costume might; she blends nearly seamlessly into the walls of the motel room, she clashes dully with the bedspread. We might even argue that the uniform in fact becomes the generic “native” costume; the racialization of this (also feminized) domestic labor in the hospitality industry has already been normalized, naturalized, to make this premise utterly reasonable. The housekeeper is meant to be invisible, working unobtrusively around the perceptual periphery of the guest, and this scene is no exception. She is part of the set dressing, in which Ditto’s bright and hard-edged New Wave styling intrudes to asserts itself as distinct, as foreground. This blandness, this generic and ordinary landscape, the photograph suggests, is not Ditto’s natural habitat. By implication, it is the housekeeper’s.

And although Ditto and the housekeeper more obviously inhabit the same historical moment, they do not exist in the same tempo. The housekeeper’s time is syncopated, regulated, by her repetitive labor; as imagined here, Ditto’s time, perhaps filled with boredom in search of novelty (like consorting with the housekeeper), stretches out at leisure. Here, the temporal distance is a matter of how each person experiences this small interval, this interlude of a card game.

Meanwhile Ditto addresses the camera with a sexy, sly look that feels intimate, insider-y. This sort of winking acknowledgment of the viewer is important to the style sensibility that NYLON cultivates as an “alternative” fashion magazine. The NYLON reader is interpellated as fashion-forward, “in the know,” someone who can “get” and appreciate the many cultural references to MisShapes, Cobrasnake, Cory Kennedy, Williamsburg, whatever. (And, it should be noted, the world of NYLON is glaringly white.) But it also reinforces the distance between the presumed viewer and the housekeeper who is not included in this wink, and who is not imagined to share this same base of knowledge. (It doesn’t seem to matter whether Ditto’s look is conspiratorial –”Isn’t it fun to be fabulous?”– or self-deprecating –”Isn’t this fashionable life total bullshit?”– because this insight is decidedly not shared with the housekeeper.) And, of course, as Foucault taught us, knowledge is inextricably caught up in power – and this one photograph encapsulates this bind, how even this “minor” event, the trivial detail of the housekeeper’s uniform or Ditto’s look, might be complicit.

In a million ways, the housekeeper’s inclusion in this image emphasizes, and even enacts, her exclusion. I would have enjoyed this editorial much, much more, had she not been made to appear in it for the purpose of disappearing her all the better.

“Are we still talking about this in 2008?” asks Iman in an irate voice kicking off the “Is Fashion Racist?” article in the July issue of Vogue. I’ve certainly pondered that question myself over the past few years and I am sure that many other fashion enthusiasts have as well.

Really, why is it that an industry such as this one known for embracing a variety of outlandish personalities and ideas is so blind when it comes to putting new faces in its clothes, on its runways or in its magazines? For example, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen designer Philip Lim glorified on the pages of fashion tomes but I struggle to remember when I last saw and Asian model featured in a multi-page editorial. In spite of the fact that Pat McGrath, Andre Leon Talley, photographer Mark Baptist and designers like Tracey Reese are influential enough to sit at the proverbial table, that diversity hasn’t tricked down to model employment office. This seems to suggest that people of other races are welcome to provide the glitz for a shoot but must never be the one to wear the accessories.

I think about this topic often and it’s become the main focus of my blog because it wasn’t like this when I was growing up and first became enamored with fashion. I still remember the day my English teacher brought in a stack of old ELLE magazines to give away and I got my first taste of it. I spent hours pouring over those images back then. It was superficial and I knew but I didn’t care. It still meant something to me. Seeing the Beverly Peele on the cover of Seventeen when I was in high school back then made me feel good. It made me feel included in that fabulous something even though my bi-level two toned jheri curl was decidedly not happening. Side note: I still haven’t forgiven my mother for making get a jheri curl. I honestly think of it as child abuse.

My fashion jones followed me to college where I always had the latest pictures of Naomi Campbell tacked to my mirror for fierce make up inspiration. But then it seemed, things started to reverse themselves. Instead of marching forward and including larger cross section of ethnicities, fashion started marching backwards. The change was slow but deliberate. Black models became less visible as lighter skinned, more racially ambiguous Brazilian beauties hit the scene. They started dropping off too, save Gisele, in favor of Eastern European models, each new batch even more nondescript than the previous seasons.

Nowadays, when I talk about how it used to be I feel like an old woman rocking on my porch talking about the good ole’ days when they let us colored folk take pretty pictures.

In the article the author, Vicki Woods, writes that “[Vogue] magazine exists to inspire women,” but I wonder is she’s actually been looking at the same magazine that I have. Except for the odd issue that gets is right, most of what I see in Vogue is far from inspiring. While I will admit to coveting certain pricey items but I don’t think I’ve looked at a model in Vogue and wanted to trade places with her since the Summer’s Bare Necessities shoot and that was in 1992.

I agree with Woods where she suggests that one simply cannot compare the supermodels of the 90′s who “looked equal but different as they thundered down the runway” to the unhappy mass of similarly styled European models “who look pretty much alike.” Even Sarah Doukes of Storm Models remarked “It’s a naughty thing to say, because I’ve got some beautiful Eastern European girls, but to be honest, when I go in cars with them in Paris, I do get snow blinded.”

Bethann Hardison was so angered by the situation that she emailed Iman writing “Did you realize that over the last decade black models have been reduced to a category?” The two called a series of town-hall style meeting titled “Out of Fashion: The Absence of Color” held at the New York Public Library. Countless models told stories about being rejected for jobs, not because their particular “look” or walk was a problem, but solely based on the fact that they were black. Liya Kebede shared that she has had “experience with people who did not want to work with me because I was black..really, truly.” In any other industry, that would be a racist remark, and you would be taken to court for it!” After those meetings the wheels started to turn and the issue garnered more attention.

Models, especially the ones lucky enough to be earning a living as models, are reluctant to name names. So when Jourdan Dunn famously asked, “why are our catwalks so white?” it made international fashion news. Except that she didn’t actually say it, professional celebrity offspring Kelly Osbourne did. Jourdan shares “She was at the Topshop show, and she said it to a journalist, who ran out and did a telephone interview with me. She said, ‘Do you agree?’ And I said, ‘Yes, it’s true.”

Even as models of the moment like Jourdan Dunn, Chanel Iman, and blazing Dominican newcomer Arlenis Sosa, are making inroads, they still face opposition but from where? This is where the article falls short, unable to point the finger at anyone in particular. Certainly not at Anna Wintour, who isn’t even mentioned in the piece and presumably prefers to let her covers do the talking. Wintour doesn’t even bother to mention the article in her editorial.

So back to the blame game… Is it the photographers? No, according to Mario Testino. He says that photographers just “react to the supply.” Is it the designers then? Some of whom seem to think black bodies are all wrong for the clothes. Alber Elbaz of Lanvin says no no, not him. “I try all different dresses and when I see only the face of the girl-and the dress disappears-I know it’s the best dress for her.” Huh? He goes on to say that he was “trained” to use black models. “I loved them from the time I worked at [YSL]; he always used black models.” Because I’m thinking something is lost in translation there so I’m not going to go on too much about why someone has to be trained to see black people as a viable option. It’s getting a little too Haley Joel Osment in here for my taste.

Well, that leaves the casting agents (the gays are spared the finger pointing in this article.) Russell Marsh, who does casting for Prada and is very influential in the industry isn’t asked why there was a ten-year gap in between Naomi’s last walk for the design house and Jordan Dunn’s. He’s asked why he chose her. His unsatisfying answer pays lip service to her elegance and confidence being right for that particular show and then goes on to talk about how important it is that the clothes are not overshadowed as they were during the age of the supermodels.

Seriously, people talk about the AGE OF THE SUPERMODELS like it’s prehistoric or something. Last time I look around, most of those big names were still making money and to the best of my knowledge no one has successfully performed carbon dating on Naomi Campbell. Iman rightfully called bullsh*t on that saying, “You don’t want to look like these [current] models, you don’t want to emulate them.” Models exist to be muses and to make women want to buy the overpriced clothes they wear.

James Scully, who casts for Tom Ford blames celebrity culture. “When it’s tough for models, it’s really tough for black models.” While it is true that it’s rare to find a model and not an actress on a fashion magazine cover these days, Hollywood has its own problems when it comes to diversity.

Anyway, it seems the bottom line is that dour faced robotic beauties are in and models with unique looks and personalities are out. My question is that if designers really believe that their clothes are best represented on blank canvas models. Why is the canvas always white? Why not runway shows populated by say, Asian models of similar builds, styled the exact same way or black models grouped together for the similarity in their features? They are certainly not above exploiting a model’s race to grab attention. How can a group of professionals famed for thinking outside the box be so narrowly focused at the same time?

So where does that leave someone like me? While I am pleased to see models like Arlenis getting a break my enthusiasm for these things has dampened considerably. Often I will read comments from people who are puzzled as to why people like me bother getting upset about these things in the first place. “Why should I care about that white magazine and whether or not they put black people in it?” is a common refrain. I admit that there are some days that I feel the same way. Especially nowadays when I’m more informed and entertained by fashion blogs than I am by print magazines.

On the flip side, another part of me still longs for a time when I can pick up a magazine on the stands, read about fashion and see an array of images representing all types of beauty not just black or white. I don’t feel that any kind of change like this will occur if people stop complaining and give up. These old habits die hard. So while I am still hotly anticipating getting my hands on a copy of Italian Vogue, I still reserve the right to complain about it once I’ve seen it for myself. I can’t help it. I’m old and cranky and I’m a decade away from yelling at kids to get off my lawn. At the very least, I know there are people who feel the same way that I do and I know how comforting it is to read bitching online that could have come from ones own mouth. So this is for the two dozen of you who read this site and feel like I do. Cranky is the new black.