Jezebel: whitewashing

"Whitewashed" Book Gets A New Cover

Anna N. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:40:00 EDT

Justine Larbalestier's Liar, whose original white cover image didn't match its black protagonist, is getting a new jacket. The publisher is sorry the old cover was "interpreted by some as a calculated decision to mask the character's ethnicity." [Independent]

L'Oreal Denies Beyonce Whitewashing • Grandma Takes Kid On Death Proof-Style Joy Ride

Maria — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:30:00 EDT

Re: The Beyonce L'Oreal skin-lightening accusations, L'Oreal denies lightening Beyonce. This isn't the first time that Beyonce's possible whitewashing has been attributed to her naturally light skin, what do you think? • Speaking of beautiful women: Researchers have found that beauty salons are an effective place to spread awareness about strokes. Using beauty salons as a place to raise awareness is so hot right now. • Cross-species friendships sure are a popular theme for children movies.

Some doctors in England are prescribing antidepressants for women who suffer from PMS (and show no depressed traits). • A play titled This Wide Night deals with the pain that some women go through when they are released from prison because of a lack of prison aftercare. • JC Penny launches an online RPG, Dork Dodge, to appeal to "fashion-conscious women" entering their first year of college by using real-life awkward moments of college life as a basis of the game. • Women athletes will make up 45% of the Olympic competitors in Beijing. • Disney rebrands Toon Disney into Disney XD, a channel that will appeal more to boys ages 6 to 14 by including more masculine gender stereotypes! • Robert Hazard, the musician who wrote Cyndi Lauper's 1983 hit, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", died today at the age of 59. • A small, unscientific survey has found that most women lie to avoid hurting someone's feeling, not necessarily to avoid getting out of trouble. * Young children (and women) in Afghanistan are being raped as the security situation of the country continues to deteriorate. • A female high school football player on a male-dominated team is suing her former coach who she claims made her practice without safety equipment (which her male peers had) resulting in getting her clavicle broken. • A 54-year-old grandma was arrested for child abuse after she took her 3-year-old granddaughter out for a joy ride (and "some air") by letting her sit on the roof of her car as she drove around.

Whose Fault Is It That The Ethnic Women In Magazines Are Whitewashed?

Dodai — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:00:00 EDT

In a piece originally on Guanabee and now on Racialicious, writer Alex Alvarez breaks down the racial stereotypes in women's magazines. "Latinas are portrayed as being sultry and seductive," writes Ms. Alvarez. "[They are] encouraged to have more overtly sexual bodies, with an emphasis on curves, dark eyes and bright, plump, shiny, slick, wet lips shown in loving close-ups, usually while the face to which they're attached is growling or purring or doing something else that's totally fierce." As for black women, Halle Berry is the ideal, even though, as Alvarez notes, "she happens to have a white mother." Black women with darker skin often end up "treated more like sculptural objects than flesh and blood women." Asian women? Always petite and "doll-like." Never mind the fact that "some Asian girls are chubby. Really! Some are muscular, some are tall, some are dark, some are doughy, and some are boney and awkward."

Meanwhile, even white women are whitewashed in women's magazines, Alvarez claims:

The gold standard of white beauty is a woman who is thought of as being the least "ethnic" and most "neutral" as possible. Fair skin, fair hair and thin, often lacking in curves that would be considered vulgar or distasteful (or exotic?) the stereotype of corn-fed Midwestern girls or sun-kissed, muscular athletic girls are eschewed for fair, tall, boney girls — often with what is described as a "boyish" figure, one without the tell-tale markers of womanhood — hips, ass. Personality. The ideal: Gwyneth Paltrow.

Alvarez makes some great points, but one connection not made here is the fact that women's magazines are now in the business of featuring actresses, and not models. When models ruled the covers, any blame for lack of diversity could be laid solely upon the editors. (And from Iman to Alek Wek to Naomi Campbell to Omahyra, there was a time when the modeling world was more diverse.) But an actress has a different career trajectory: Agents, managers, PR firms and performance vehicles — TV and film roles — all play a part in their success. Do the magazine editors push talentless but pretty stars on us? Absolutely. But when was the last time a dark-skinned woman starred in a Hollywood film? Neither the fashion industry nor the entertainment industry are perfect, but at least the fashion biz has an Alek Wek. The darkest-skinned woman you're likely to see on a women's magazine cover these days is Oprah, and it's because she owns her own damn publication.

Model Minority: How Women's Magazines Whitewash Different Ethnicities [Racialicious, via Guanabee]