While Bess Rattray's essay feels like part of Vogue's conspicuous recent push to run more "serious" content - albeit safely online - it's a piece worth reading. Rattray, like Madonna, has adopted a little girl from Africa. And while this might imply a certain solidarity, Rattray's feelings are ambivalent.

I would like to think that Madonna had pretty much the same motivation I did when I adopted an eleven-month-old girl named Nettie Tesfanesh from Ethiopia a year ago: She wanted a child, and if that child could come from a place where millions of kids live without safe homes and loving arms, well, all the better. Yes, OK, it's always to the greater good when a celebrity adoption gets us talking about Africa's children-so why could the sound of smacked foreheads be heard in multiracial families across America? Because the talk that results when a white Western superstar-sporting an $800 haircut and Parisian safari gear-"rescues" a black child is not usually an enlightening dialogue on AIDS orphans, or how money can best be spent to address poverty. In the hands of the tabloids, it's more like an outtake from Brüno.

In other words, whatever the motivation, these celebrity adoptions run the risk of reducing the act to a fad - or worse, to politicizing the dynamic in ugly ways. And of course, with Madonna, everything's different. It's like, is Madonna a role model for single moms? Is she showing how strong and independent a woman can be, that she's perfectly capable of taking on the challenges of parenting alone? Not really; Madonna has nothing to do with the challenges of the average single mother. Maybe in some contexts, a newly-single woman adopting a child could serve as an empowering example, in Madonna's it's... not. Simply put, no one would think to compare Madonna to other single moms. They will, however, compare her to other white women adopting African children, and while in one sense this is equally unreasonable, in others it's inevitable.

Madonna, Rattray notes, has further muddied the waters by, in both her adoptions of children from Africa, engaging in custody battles with the children's families, further increasing the impression of colonial entitlement that already, inevitably, hangs over the business. Says Rattray,

What is so irksome to workaday adoptive parents like me, is ...why Madonna, who adopted a boy named David to much criticism in 2006, decided to adopt another child from a country that doesn't have an established, transparent adoption system. In reputable adoption countries-which include China, Russia, and South Korea-there are elaborate checks and balances in place to guard against baby-trading and to protect the rights of a child's birth parents.

In contrast, Rattray says her adoption of her daughter, Nettie, was carefully supervised, and requires periodic updates and contact with Nettie's family. The writer finds it frustrating that Madonna's cavalier approach, the seeming ease with which she and Angelina acquire children, serves to trivialize both the seriousness of the process for most parents, and their motivations.

It was important to me to adopt a baby who might otherwise languish in an institution, scramble to stay alive on the streets-or die. People often ask why I didn't adopt in the United States, and, boiled down, my answer is that I wanted an infant, I wanted to go where the need was greatest, and I was open to a child born to a mother infected with HIV. In the States, there are families waiting around the block to adopt healthy infants, while in East Africa, formal foster-care and domestic-adoption systems are more or less unheard of. It's never easy to leap through the flaming hoops of paperwork and bureaucracy, especially as a single parent, but my year-and-a-half journey to motherhood via a remote, coffee-growing hill town called Mudula was relatively smooth, even speedy, in relation to most international adoptions.

Rattray acknowledges, however, that this dynamic will always, to a degree, be fraught. Given the burden of context, it simply is - hence the frustration when a star seems to reduce it even further to cliche. Take last year's controversy surrounding Italian-Brit artist Vanessa Beecroft's work. She says it's art that plays with ideas of colonialism. Critics say it can do this and still be racist. Beecroft says her images of African men in blackface devouring fried chicken, or of herself as a Madonna nursing Sudanese twins, are about reclamation. But there's the inevitable question: can it be "reverse colonialism" when it's still, well, colonialism? Can we get away from the fact that this is a white woman rescuing African babies - and, at the end of the day, does she want us to? Beecroft, who attempted to adopt the little boys, said the process - captured in a documentary film - was (according to the artist's press releases) "not just fetishization of the blacks. It will be a beginning of a relationship with that country." But her high-handed attitude, her patronizing references to "these people" and "these poor creatures" render her easy to dismiss. Said New York in its review of the documentary,

In the film's most disturbing scene, sisters from the orphanage try to stop her from stripping the children nude inside their abbey for an elaborate photo shoot. Beecroft refuses, complains, starts shooting again, and eventually loses a physical confrontation with one of the sisters, who takes the children away from her, furious that Beecroft is stripping children naked inside a church.

As Racialicious's Latoya Peterson sagely puts it, "Her penchant for darkening the features of the models used in her work, the casual disregard for the environment she is in, and even her positioning as a white woman who wants to make the world aware of these issues plays into longstanding issues with neo-colonialism and racism" and that the viewer can see two things:

"1. That she is an artist, interpreting the world as she sees it.

AND

2. That artists can be influenced by racism and colonialism, even as they are trying to make a statement about one of these topics."

And there's the rub. Because anyone is influenced by these things, making a statement or no. And take someone like Bess Rattray. She may not be making the same kind of self-glorifying statement Beecroft is, but by definition, her act is still a statement in itself. What I was struck by, looking at Beecroft's lightning-rod image from The Art Star and The Sudanese Twins was the sheer vulnerability of the babies: they don't know whose breast they're suckling, just that they want nourishment. They don't know that their skin is being used as a contrast to the artist's angelic robes, or that the image is burdened with centuries of context and meaning. And it's this at the end of the day simplifies and complicates everything. And it's pretending that it doesn't, as Rattray knows, that's the problem.

Madonna And Child [Vogue]

Related: The Thin Line Between Art and Explotation [Racialicious]
‘Art Star' Vanessa Beecroft: Slammed at Sundance [New York]

Last night, Larry King devoted most of his show to Michelle Obama. Not her accomplishments, her appearance. (Related: She wears shoes!) We asked Racialicious' Latoya Peterson to weigh in on this strange, seemingly widespread obsession.

First, Erin Aubry Kaplan wrote about Michelle Obama's booty for Salon, in an article titled "First Lady Got Back." Kaplan then penned another article analyzing Michelle's hair choices, asking "Are we moving toward a black hair moment?" And somewhere along the line, Michelle's arms – blessed by NY Times OpEd columnist David Brooks as "thunder and lightning" - became a matter of great importance, sparking a wave of commentary about the appropriateness of a first lady who (ahem) bears arms. The countless articles about her complexion [I plead guilty. -Ed.] (and what that said about Barack's character/race loyalty) added to the mix of the insanity, culminating in a piece dedicated to her "angry" eyebrows.

I've been watching this literary dissection take place since 2008 and have still remained with the same question - why does there seem to be an incessant need to give every physical aspect of Michelle's body the once-over?

Pondering why Michelle continues to be reduced to the sum of her parts reminded me of yet another black woman who was demeaned in the same way: Sarah Bartmann.

Saartjie* "Sarah" Bartmann was one of the Khoikohi people, from what is now South Africa. After being enslaved, her masters decided that certain aspects of her anatomy would be a feature attraction. Bartmann was featured in Europe as "The Hottentot Venus." Marissa Meltzer summarizes in the Salon review of Rachel Holmes' African Queen: The Real Life of Hottentot Venus:

They marketed her as a kind of "scantily clad totem goddess," the Hottentot Venus, sex incarnate. Hottentots, what European traders called the native Khoisan for the clicking sound of their language, "signified all that was strange, disturbing, alien, and possibly, sexually deviant." She was objectified in the most literal sense, put on display in front of gaping crowds six days a week, doing suggestive "native" dancing and playing African instruments.

Upon Bartmann's death, her genitals, brain, and skeleton were removed and kept on public display.

In Patricia Hill Collins' Black Feminist Thought, he analyzes the idea of malleability as it relates to the image of Bartmann:

A prominent White male scholar who has done much to challenge scientific racism apparently felt few qualms at using a slide of Sarah Bartmann as part of his PowerPoint presentation. Leaving her image on screen for several minutes with a panel of speakers that included Black women seated on stage in front of the slide, this scholar told jokes about the seeming sexual interests of White voyeurs of the nineteenth century. He seemed incapable of grasping how his own twentieth-century use of this image as well as his invitation that audience members become voyeurs along with him, reinscribed Sarah Bartmann as an "object...a mallebale 'thing'" upon which he projected his own agenda. (p. 142)

While Collins framed her critique of Bartmann's image in the context of pornography, the idea of malleability can be applied to Michelle Obama's public persona.

Is the reason to keep dicing Michelle up into smaller and smaller pieces to impose some sort of control, or to make her image more palatable? Currently, the approval rating for Michelle Obama is higher than that of her husband; but this was not always so. During the 2008 election, much was made of Michelle's attitude, her "angry blackness," to the point where some wondered publicly if she was more of a hindrence or a help to Obama's campaign.

Now that Michelle is sufficiently examined, presented in small, manageable bites for consumption, some can function, the threat has been as the threat has neutralized. We've broken Michelle down, piece by piece - now, we can go back to talking about important things... like the first lady's sartorial choices.

*I use the term Sarah here. Salon reports that author Rachel Holmes, author of 'African Queen: the Real Life of the Hottentot Venus,' notes, "Saartjie (pronounced "Saar-key," meaning "little Sara") might not even be the name she was born with, calling the -tjie diminutive suffix a "racist speech act." In light of this, I chose to use the English version.

Racialicious [Official Site]
Michelle Mania! [CNN]

First Lady Got Back [Salon]
The Michelle Obama Hair Challenge [Salon]
Should Michelle Cover Up? [New York Times]
Dark And Lovely, Michelle [The Root]
Do Michelle Obama's Eyebrows Look Less Angry Lately? [Glamour]
Venus Abused [Salon]
Black Feminist Thought [Powells]

Earlier: Michelle Obama Is Not A Lighter Shade Of "Trophy" Wife

Nylon positions itself as edgy and fashionable. Are we to assume that taking advantage of the help is all the rage? It's like, "OMG, I was so bored I played gin with the maid. "Mimi continues:

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.

The thing about using people of color as props or background is that it's not only offensive, it is so damn old. Colonialism, slavery, movies in which the maid, porter or chambermaid has no lines — we've seen it all a million times. The lady of leisure as compared to the hard-working woman. Haven't we made any progress? How come no one cares when a company like Free People shoots in India using a blonde as the star and relegating cows, camels, elephants and indigenous schoolchildren to props or background? By using a non-white person as a backdrop against which the white person is supposed to shine, a photographer creates a world in which one person has more value than another. Clearly, the paid model (or, in Nylon's case, the celebrity) is the "star," but if you can only see her light by diminishing those around her, how bright can it be?

Background Color [Racialicious]

Earlier: Free People: Someone Watched The Darjeeling Limited Before Booking This Photo Shoot

ANNA: A few weeks ago a reader wrote in to me complaining about the items we've
done on women in, specifically, India, saying that she was sick of the fact that we link to the more horrific stories regarding women and girls on the Indian sub-Continent...rape, murder, abuse, etc. The blog post she was upset about regarded a piece in a British paper we linked to about pre-teens selling their virginity to adult men in India in order to financially help their families. The reader referred to our — and by "our" I mean the editors and the commenters — "smug First World selves" and railed against our collective "ignorance" and "condescension". I responded to her saying that I understood where she was coming from but that in terms of stories about women and India, we were strapped: 99% of the stories that concern women that we find coming out of that area of the world are negative and/or upsetting, and we don't even post 90% of THOSE. I added that we work with what we can find, which, in the English language media, is coming either from American news sources, British news sources, or news sources in India that are available in English. We want to acknowledge the problems and horrors faced by women in other countries, but we often get attacked for doing so. What are some tactics that we — and other American, Western media properties — can approach these with more sensitivity?

LATOYA: Ha. I completely understand where she is coming from. Often times, western media tends to promote the things that are sensationalist like teen girls selling their virginity to feed their families or what Ebony magazine termed "disaster pornography" - things like famine, starvation, and suffering that tend to get people to wince and then open their wallets. I can't specifically speak to India, but since I notice this a lot with stories about the African continent. For example, take the elections in Kenya that happened late last year. If you were paying attention, you would know that there was a lot of tension leading up to those elections - so an allegation came in that someone won unfairly and riots broke out. However, when this news was reported, the headline was "Tribal Warfare Breaks Out in Kenya!"

Sensationalist stories grab our attention a lot faster than regular, day in the life stories. It's like the piece with Malawi I posted on last year - the article about how badly the World Bank and donor nations (US) screwed Malawi over in terms of offering them aid money with conditions attached that would keep them dependent on foreign aid dollars. Since people in Malawi were starving, the government made an executive decision to risk losing the money - and we are talking hundreds of millions of dollars - and to instead try to save their people from starvation. And they did it! That article got no play, whatsoever. Buried in the world section of the NY Times.

Late last month I read that profile of Madonna in Vanity Fair and saw all of these assertions about Malawi - and by extension Africa - and they rang false to me because of articles and books I had read earlier. And the article Madonna/Vanity Fair had all kinds of biased reporting - saying Africa when it really meant one specific country, asserting that Africans practice witchcraft when most Africans are Christian or Muslim, saying AIDS is killing the continent but never discussing how things like cuts to international family planning funds, the global gag rule, and allowing faith based programs to use development dollars to take their "abstinence only" ideas overseas. But, as many of my readers pointed out, they would have never made the connections from one thing to the other; since we have all been fed the idea that Africa is poor just because, we never question things like asking WHY African nations are so indebted or WHY AIDS is still spreading at alarming rates. We would just rather fill in our assumptions and keep reading about Madge's new album.

So part of the battle is asking the question "Why?" You'd be surprised at where that will lead you.

It's important that we begin to familiarize ourselves with international policy and politics. Keep in mind, when we read newspapers and other forms of media, there are subconsciously things that we skip - things that don't really pertain to our lives and don't make sense to us. Keep in mind, I read most of the same news sources you do. But the things I read make more sense to me because I acquired some background knowledge on some of the more intimidating topics.

Finally, realize that things aren't always death, destruction and horror - those are just the discussions that jump out at us the most. Over the last month, I've read articles about the development going on in African nations that revolve around technology. The NYT Magazine did a great article on Jan Chipchase who studies human behavior for Nokia and goes into developing nations to figure out how to sell them cell phones. Fast Company just published a piece on how Google is moving to create an internet presence in Africa, even though only 5% of people have access to internet. They feel it will be a huge growth project. Another business magazine talked about how the internet played a huge role in the rise of India's development - by mastering English, the population has been able to take advantage of the lucrative outsourcing market. And they also discussed the rise of cities and changes in traditional culture, as well as how "call center culture" has launched chick-lit novels and movies and the new prototype of the young urban Indian professional. So there is tons of information out there in mainstream media sources - we just tend to overlook it.

ANNA: I hear you on this. I think what I keep coming back to is 1. Issues of
time (we don't have the luxury of time to educate ourselves as broadly and quickly as we'd
like - blogging is quick business!) and 2. Women-specific issues (most of the stories we find regarding women are negative in nature because women around the world are, for the most part, not treated very well.). But here are some other questions: Is it "disaster pornography" to pick up on the stories written by actual, mainstream media outlets about the plight(s) of women around the world? Do we have to ALWAYS ALWAYS question them, at least those that seem pretty clear-cut? Why can't 12-year-old girls selling their virginity in India just be what it is, which is — to many cultures — horrific? Why CAN'T people put value judgments on such things sometimes without being accused of being colonialist, paternalistic, patronizing...even racist? And lastly, what do you think the inherent problems are with Westerners reporting back from non-Western countries, particularly on women's issues? Can a white, European woman living and working the Mideast never tell the full "truth" of her adopted society because of her background? Can an Asian-American woman in, say, South Africa not do the same? And lastly, because so many areas of the world (particularly the female populations in those areas) are in need of support, both financially and politically, what is so wrong with getting people to wince and open their wallets, particularly in an era in which superficial shit like celebrity adulation is so rampant that we have pageant contestants calling Iraq "the Iraq" and a decline in newspaper and book readership?

LATOYA: Anna, you have to understand that those excuses are just that - excuses. Here's why I say that - you all are great (seriously, fucking great) at calling out sexist assumptions about women in the media. You read an article and can instantly pick up on all the bullshit buzzwords and baseless assumptions that someone has concocted to prove their points about women being weaker/less intelligent/more emotional, etc. It's second nature to you, right? But I bet it wasn't always that way. You have to educate yourself about these issues in order to have that framework in your mind to challenge them. So the same way you learned to critically dissect the lies that women's magazines use to sell issues - it's the same thing. No one wakes up with a working knowledge of sexism, power dynamics in sexual relationships, eloquent critiques of impossible beauty ideals and a deep understanding about how strict adherence to gender roles in society causes tons of issues. You had to learn that.

So, in this case, the answer is learn. You aren't going to be able to fully comprehend everything about everything out of the box. Like I said in one of my posts on Racialicious, it took me about three months to stop fighting against the mass media programming that poorer nations are just a bunch of whiny complainers who want to be like America. So it will take a while.

Women are treated like shit around the world, this is very true. Women are also treated like shit in beacon of freedom America, particularly when you start considering issues like race, class, and immigration. But, just like there are kick ass things American women do every day, there are kick ass things that women around the world are doing too.

But to specifically answer your questions:

1. Yes, we always have to question because if we don't, we contribute to that whole narrative that the US is this great paragon of equality and every place else is some kind of human cesspool. Again, back to the Madonna/Malawi example - you could post on "starving babies in Malawi" and people go "oh no!" because that's what they are conditioned to do and we go buy a $24.00 bracelet that sends a dollar overseas, we mention about the horrendous situation there with our friends over cocktails and then roll right back into whatever stuff is affecting us right this minute. And no one talks about the World Bank, which is the leading reason why kids in Malawi are starving to death, and business moves as usual.

I am not saying that every other nation has no problems and nothing bad ever happens. But, it is kind of strange when we can post about the horrible shit that goes on in say, Italy (like your post on how 70% of Italian gynos refuse to perform abortions, even though they are legal) and have counterposts talking about cool/interesting things like how the Italian police department petitioned for more fashionable uniforms or the issues with modern dating in Italy. It provides a balanced view of the country. But that kind of balanced view never manages to make it over to African or South East Asian countries. So while we can read the literature and watch the movies coming out of those countries - there has to be SOMETHING else going on, some kind of larger social/cultural scene that is creating these works of art and lit - for some reason, our news reporting pretends that the only time they are worthy of our notice is when someone is suffering or something horrendous goes down. The answer is not to stop reporting on these events completely - just to be aware that these events do not exist in a vaccuum.

2. Value judgments are a tricky thing. In general, there is a problem with people conflating two separate issues and making them one. So, for example, let's take the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. I think we can all generally agree that it is fucked up when some citizens are entitled to more rights than others based solely on gender, and that's what Saudi Arabia does. However, the problems come in when people start sticking blanket value judgments that don't necessarily apply to that situation - like saying Islam is responsible for the situation in Saudi Arabia. Umm, no. Some fuckheads in power got together and said this is how it's going down and we're going to justify it using Islam. There are 52 nations that are Muslim Majority countries and that's not how they roll. Look at Turkey - it is a nation that is 99% Muslim. 99%! And they have a very secular government system. Malaysia, Ethiopia, Morocco, Indonesia, Bangledesh - plenty of nations are Muslim and they have different systems set up. But people tend to stick one issue in because that's what they think that is what is happening and miss the bigger picture.

Fatemeh, the publisher of the Muslimah Media Watch blog also points out how condescending it is to want to "help" women in a foreign country without listening to them. We tend to infantilize them (example here) and act as those these poor poor women don't have minds of their own and can't speak for themselves, never realizing that they are actively engaging in these issues - just not necessarily where we can see. From the little I know about Muslimah feminism, people who still actively adhere to Islamic principles tend to work within those guidelines while fighting for equality. Our idea of equality may not be the same as what they want. So, for western people, it's a really big fucking deal if Muslim women take off their veils and wear lipstick. To them, it's kind of whatever, they want to focus on employment options and pay equality.

3. In terms of wincing and wallets, let me just say that there is nothing wrong with being informed. The problem is that we respond, crack the wallet, and we aren't informed. So who knows where the money is going and what it is being used for? Think about it this way - we give out billions of dollars in foreign food aid per year - so why haven't we solved world hunger yet? We waste enough food in America to feed quite a few nations, so the issue is more complicated than just food. We need to critically look at where this money is going and who is benefiting. There are also great ways to get involved that don't involve much money and make a longer lasting impact. Want to end hunger? Start lobbying congress, volunteering with NGOs, raise awareness about how the IMF is "the Typhoid Mary" of international development. (Yes, Jeffrey Sachs' said that — read this sitting down.) Or, looking at how governmental organizations and non governmental organizations have tons of money but can't seem to get it together do fix actual problems, even when said problems could be fixed for about $10,000 (see here). So, there are steps to take that would be more helpful in the long run but people just don't ask questions.

By the way, westerners can report on non-western issues, as can expats living in other countries. The issue is not that they are not entitled to have an opinion, it is just that many times that opinion may be ill-informed and may not have the whole story. So, I think western journalists in particular have an obligation to tread lightly in areas that are not directly our own - after all, since we shape of lot of world policy, our words may have serious consequences.

Related: Meet The Neo-Colonialists: Madonna And Vanity Fair [Racialicious]