Light Skin Stereotypes

As stated above, African-American women have been subjected to measure themselves against white women. White women are viewed, in this society and since the beginning of the concept of race, as the epitome of beauty. Logically, African-American women attempt to emulate the white standard. This creates an inferiority complex, because the epitome of beauty is white woman, than any other race can be deemed as inferior; this deteriorates African-American women’s self-worth. To remedy worthlessness, many body modification techniques have been made to fully mimic white women in terms of beauty. This emulation still is being done and it is continuous, because of the psychological ‘white fantasization .

There are many different stereotypes in the world today. They can be used for different categories like age, gender and race. Stereotypes are formed by the media, passed down from many generations and also just the populations need to understand the social world around us. Racial stereotypes make up large portion of stereotypes in today's society. Racial stereotypes can be used for comedic effect and our found to be funny by a majority of people, but they can also be depicted as hate to an ethnic group if it goes too far. One example of a race effected by stereotypes are Asian people. They have many stereotypes that have developed over the years. An example of a stereotype Asian people experience is that they cannot drive very well. Some

In the context of physical appearance, black woman are only featured with body parts- mainly their “large, rotund behind” (Perry 137). The presentation of the face is mainly limited to white or lighter-complexioned women. The highest idealization of women is one that possesses a “‘high-status’ face combined with a highly sexualized body read by the viewer as the body of a poor or working-class woman” (Perry 137). Perry further substantiates her claim by stating that “women are created or valued by how many fantasy elements have been pieced together in their bodies” (137). She debunks the opposition arguing that the bodies of black women are appreciated by pointing out that only a minority of black women have such attributes, and those without are pressured and struggle to achieve such proportions.

In “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh argues that racism can be found imbedded into the culture of society; conferring and denying certain privileges on some rather than all. This is a dangerous cultivation; endowing a strong expectation that white privileges are naturally deserving. Furthermore, making the cornerstone of McIntosh’s main argument; that white privilege is just a less aggressive synonym for dominance. When you receive privileges for looking a certain type of way, the recipient becomes immune; often not being able to acknowledge their advantages. As a result, this creates a cultural divide, between racial groups.

White companies and white faces with white products…white. With the population of America containing thirty-seven million African and African-Americans, racism is not only discriminatory but also is socially submerged within the terms of “beauty” (Bureau of labor statistics). Women in history have been seen as inferior to men; now, in the twenty-first century, women have been subcategorized in racial boundaries including color being the most prominent divider. As the famous Shakespeare said, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” In most 21st century companies the owners of major cosmetic brands such as Too Faced and Benefit are owned and founded by white individuals, which makes sense because the promotional models are mostly white.

Americans live in a media-saturated world, where images constantly flow from the pages of magazines, television, and computer screens. Media creates a brand of beauty by helping the viewer identify the item with the beautiful people that are selling it. They are selling a “brand” of beauty. Hundreds of years ago, a brand was sometimes burned into the skin of some slaves. The damage of the brand was not only horrible physical scars, but also emotional trauma. When society begins accepting the media’s brand as their standard for their own physical identity, or when ethnic groups are defined by these brands, the results can be just as devastating.

In Killing Us Softly, Kilbourne gives the example of the common advertising image of a black women in a jungle setting, wearing a leopard skin. In most media, white women are considered the “standard model” of what is desirable, both from the perspective of what a women should look like, and

Dina Gerdeman’s article discusses how the cosmetic industry in India has created a stereotype in which individuals with lighter skin tones are more acceptable and successful in comparison to those with darker skin tones. The media has portrayed this image persistently despite social activists arguing against the implications. Even though many campaigns have been created to combat this stereotype, the March 2016 case author of “Fair & Lovely vs. Dark is Beautiful,” Rohit Deshpande says, “…if you look at whether it’s done anything to affect the sales of the product category, the answer is no. This is a big market by any standards, and it’s growing exponentially” (para. 12). By the cosmetic industry’s perspective, “The government

Labelling ‘whiteness’ and white privilege and recognising how it has been institutionalised allows people to look beyond it to see how it has defined knowledge, membership and language in our society, as well as the way it makes and enforces the rules and regulations of life in our society. This allows the implicit standards against which people are measured to be revealed (Puzan, 2003). According to Puzan (2003), some whites make a conscious choice to raise their own awareness of skin privilege, but this is not considered obligatory by most whites and is not addressed through legal and social measures in the same way as the more-familiar ‘racism’ that is known by that label.

Some see gender as being “Black and White” and it is, literally. With numerous gender ideologies, not only is there division between the Black (African Americans) and the White (fair skinned Europeans), but between men and women as well. Generally, white men and white men only hold most of the power in the world that there is to possess and it has consciously been set up for them to do so. The technical name for this global concept is hegemonic masculinity. This highly sexist and blatantly racist model has been implemented by bigoted western agendas to then be culturally and systematically carried out for centuries; sometimes without question. In her novel “Black Sexual Politics”, Patricia Hill Collins masterfully highlights just how much hegemonic masculinity altered the once blissful power structure, not just in the western world but specifically within the homes of the Black community. She also confers the several quintessential benchmarks within hegemonic masculinity that the Black man must uphold in order for him to unambiguously maintain his “dominant” status.

During these years black entrepreneurs, journalists, and activists strove to promote black beauty ideals, practices, and products. But by this period a white supremacist beauty ideal was already well established; the black strug¬gle for dignity was against a foe that is fairly familiar to us today” (Camp 677).

The source of racism and white supremacy is fear of genetic annihilation. Their existence is a result of genetic mutation and environmental adaptation according to scholars and scientist of various fields. Albinism is a genetic imperfection that prohibits the production of melanin, the genetic content that gives color to eyes, skin and hair. Legendary scholar, author and psychiatrist, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing argues that African albinos, rejected by their parents, alienated from their communities and sensitive to the African sun, were forced to migrate northward to Europe. This as a consequence resulted in inbreeding amongst the exiles led to the birth of the White or European race. Racism and white supremacy functions both on a microcosmic and macrocosmic level. Similar to a massive bureaucracy, white dominion is wielded by a web of wealthy, influential and powerful individuals and institutions conjoined together through the common objective of subjugating the world’s people of color, especially Blacks, in order to ensure white genetic survival. As a collective race, Europeans are a numerical and statistical overwhelming minority in the world, contributing to less than ten percent of the worlds population. This fear of white genetic annihilation is also responsible for genocidal campaigns against people of color, Blacks in particular, because we hold the dominant genetic material to eradicate their recessive genes if race mixing ensued. In closing the problem of the 20th

“The belief that European American norms and more are universal and supreme to other cultural prescriptions and interpretation” (Day, Phyllis. J. A New History of Social Welfare). White privilege or "white skin benefit" is known for societal benefits that advantage individuals recognized as white in Western nations, past what is normally experienced by non-white individuals under the same social, political or monetary circumstances. White privilege is a quality so pervasive thus slippery in our way of life that we are still blind about oblivious in regards to its presence. Alongside patriarchy's abuse of classism, sexism, and prejudice it is a key component in the advancement and backing of numerous different qualities.

Firstly, an article that relates to my racial identity is called “Yearning For Lightness, Transnational Circuits in the Marketing and Consumption of Skin Lighteners.” This article was written by Evelyn Nakano Glenn. The purpose of this article was to examine the cultural and traditional boundaries associated with the profitable growth and large consumption of skin-lightning products across the world. Additionally, author Glenn focused on the practice of skin-lightness and the marketing of skin-lightning products within the African and African-American cultures (Glenn, 282). Findings from this article indicated that skin-lightning practices can be justified as a form of discrimination against people of dark skin color. In other words, skin bleaching

In today’s media, bodies of color, particularly black female bodies, are underrepresented and poorly represented by stereotypical images that are constructed by patriarchy and white supremacy. When stereotypes are distinctly visible and exposed in the media, they tend to be easily adopted by individuals, even though they are untrue. These stereotypes are quite problematic because they stand in for actual knowledge and real life experience. White supremacy is used as framework to contextualize Western ways of thinking of how we understand the knowledge presented about bodies of color. Mass media is a system of knowledge and power reproducing that attempts to maintain white supremacy by oppressing people of color, particularly women of color. In this paper, l will explore how hegemonic tropes of knowledge have been presented historically and how they are reinforced through representations in the media.