Women of Colour and Beauty Carnival
by Jess McCabe // 12 August 2008, 20:52
The Women of Colour and Beauty Carnival is up now, over at yennenga.
Some highlights:
The difference between "pretty" and "beautiful" at Having Read The Fine Print:
You see in my life as WOC , pretty has had fuck all to do with attractiveness, vibrancy, or sexuality , it has had everything with a validation.A validation that includes protection, ownership, and often the use of these things to pit women agianst each other, sometimes by patriarchial interests, OFTEN by racist thematics, and sometimes love itself.
karnythia on the theme of "learning to love myself":
Over the years I've come to terms with the fact that there is more to beauty than alabaster skin and blonde hair, but it still gives me a little twinge to walk past the magazine rack and know that chances are excellent that most of the magazines aimed at preteens and teens will not be featuring many WOC. And that's the age when it really matters the most. Why? Because little girls who don't see positive images of women that look like them grow up to be women that don't manage to love themselves. And it's not just about blonde dye, painful relaxers, weaves and colored contact lenses like I know some people will assume is the whole impact. It's also about bad relationships, eating disorders, and years of simply not feeling worthwhile.
And sparkymonster at Don't worry, I like righteous fury on the model Alex Wek.
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Redheadinred // Posted 12 August 2008 at 21:13
I was reading an article about the redhead gene and it said that, statistically, there are less redheads than black women on magazine covers. In turn, there are also probably less black women than white/other colour women. It seems like there's something in common here. People usually don't want to think there's a prejudice against red hair, and sure it's nothing compared to the marginalisation of WOC, but it's still interesting to note how people also feel red hair is somehow 'bad' and get bullied for it and can't wait to get rid of it.
Jess McCabe // Posted 13 August 2008 at 18:18
Redheadinred - yeah... but... there's not really the same history of oppression and ideology about people with red hair.
(Although perhaps there is an argument that anti-red-hair feeling is linked with historical oppression of Celtic peoples, but, well, hmm. All of this is not to do with the point of the post, which is about women of colour and beauty, so I'm creating my own tangent. Sorry!)