As Bordo often references the work of Jean-Paul Satre for textual support, she at the same time critiques his work. She mentions how he does not present the affects of racial and gender stereotypes to associate the difference between self-conception and external judgement. More simply, she suggest that the way people individually perceive themselves is naturally different than the way others perceive them; but its important to recognize that difference and acknowledge how the perceptions of others are provoked by implicit stereotypes. As a woman, and as a woman of color, there are many stereotype's which have been ascribed to my body in even environments that doom those stereotypes to be at all necessary or even relevant at the time. Having felt the obligation to immediately break those stereotypes has better allowed me to recognize their affects. To effectively deliberate the present stereotypes in our society, in my recent courses we have taken time to list stereotypes ascribed to people of color, men and women; so as an exercise I myself created a short list of stereotypes which are usually assigned to me. Those are: that I come from a broken household and a racially exclusive neighborhood (all-black), my family is probably not that fortunate(more specifically, poor), I am uneducated, I am overtly promiscuous (sexually), and that I am probably a lesbian. The interesting thing about these stereotypes is that, I have often heard all of them and that they are all mere assumptions that have direct connection to just my body. From these stereotypes, I have been named hyper sexual, classed, and given a sexual oriented identity; which may I reiterate are all assumptions that have only been ascribed to just the appearance of my body, not fact.
Since this week of classes has been dedicated to social advertisements, I thought it necessary to offer a piece of material which includes a woman of color. Here I have attached an image of Beyonce Knowles and here picture which was featured in the L'official magazine. The magazine features Beyonce in African garments, with a darkened face. The issue of this magazine was intended to pay homage to the deceased Fela Kuti, who was a Nigerian musician and composer who was very popular in London(at the time of the issue the magazine was featuring its 90th anniversary). In analyzing and interpreting this image, I would like my readers to think about how her body is contextualized, what it means for her to be one of the most prolific pop stars of our time and take a photo so controversial, and of course think about the stereotypes ascribed to her body. What I also find wholly important is that her already ethnic body has been further racialized. What does this mean?
First off, I think it's just a little bit creepy that I can't recognize Beyonce at all here. She looks beautiful, but I wouldn't have known it was her if you didn't mention it.
ReplyDeleteMoving on, what disturbs me about this picture are the horns she's wearing on her chest and what they mean to me. One thing that really makes me cringe when people discuss Africa is the assumption that it is a primitive continent (or “country,” depending on your level of ignorance) run by savage natives running around in loincloths with animal bones stuck through their septums. This is the image that comes to mind when I see her adornments, because I know that every part of this picture was deliberately constructed to convey a certain message about what it is to be African, and are not naturally occurring.
Fela was a supporter of sticking to traditional African culture, but even so the images that I'm seeing of Beyonce in L'Officiel really do call to mind distressing Western perceptions of native Africans. And now that I think about it, her skin was most likely darkened in order to give her photos the "straight out of Africa" vibe. But a woman can be just as African as Fela Kuti and look like Liya Kebede. This is a link to a blog post on Afro-Punk’s website called What Does It Mean To “Look African?” The article mainly points to the widespread assumption that “pure” Africans are necessarily dark-skinned Africans, and I think you’d find it really interesting.
Is it a transnational form of black face? Minstrelsy?
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