The increasing sexualization of racially ambiguous women in the media has recently made my ethnic ambiguity “trendy.” Had I grown up a few decades earlier, my mixed heritage would have made me an outcast, and a stain on my white bloodline. But now, as Jin Haritaworn explains, “the capitalist discourse celebrates and markets multi-racialized people as the superior bodies of the future” (1). Essentially, being mixed race or racially ambiguous is all of a sudden profitable, attractive, and desirable, arguably even to white people who occupy racial dominance. Haritaworn claims that “the attachment of ‘blackness’ produces a white man as masculine and desirable” (1). I have noticed that the use of makeup, plastic surgery, and fashion to achieve a more exotic look has become more popular as a result, particularly among white and white-passing celebrities. What better example of this than Kim Kardashian, who acquired her 350 million dollar net worth largely from capitalizing off of her appearances (2). Her surgically enhanced figure and appropriation of black culture and fashion has furthered perceptions that she is exotic, which has increased her allure and financial success (2). She has been called out for blackface with her excessive use of skin tanning produces and makeup, wearing her hair in braids that were modeled after the women in Fulani, South Africa, and a sporting a jeweled maang tikka, which is a traditional south Asian headdress (2). These instances of appropriation exploit the culture and history of minorities and reduces them to fashion accessories that diversifies Kim’s image and social media content.

Her husband, Kanye West, has also contributed to the sexualization of ambiguous identities in his song, “So Appalled,” where he raps, “Champagne wishes, thirty White b*tches… five-star dishes, different exotic fishes” (3). Attaining these “exotic fishes,” meaning exotic women, has become a novelty that is promoted by music videos that depict mixed race women dancing in sexually suggestive ways, increasing the curiosity and foreign appeal to these women. Dancers and actresses auditioning for these videos claim to witness colorism in the process, because most of the roles eventually go to the lightest women or the mixed race ones over the many black women that also audition (4).

This made me think back to a conversation I had in a meeting with a mixed race club that I am a part of at Pitzer College in California. A memorable discussion we had was about the whitewashing and tokenizing people of color in Hollywood. Movies nowadays often cast a single token person of color to make films seem racially conscious, or “woke,” if you will. However, these characters often perpetuate existing racial stereotypes, which completely defeats the purpose. We’ve all seen scripts where the “black friend” is “ghetto” and a point of comic relief, and the “asian friend” is smart, quiet, and desexualized. Despite the increasing number of people of color in movies in the last few years, they are often whitewashed to be more appealing to White America. For example, the actors who get the Asian roles are half Asian and white and the actors who get the black roles are light skinned. The film, “Crazy Rich Asians,” attempted to deconstruct the desexualization of Asian men by casting the attractive Henry Goulding as a handsome male lead, but many people don’t realize that he is half white. Although as a mixed race person, it is nice to see mixed representation in media and advertisements, I fear that they are not given those roles for the right reasons. As interracial marriage and having interracial children becomes more acceptable and arguably desirable, the promotion of colorism within identities of color is becoming more apparent in much of the media I consume.

I was fascinated by a Prada advertisement with an artificially constructed and racially ambiguous Instagram model, named “Lil Miquela,” that took the internet by storm in 2018 (5). She was designed by computer programmers who created her appearance from scratch, so their choice to make her racially ambiguous says a lot about what type of models are desirable right now. She is part Brazilian but exhibits flawless fair skin, freckles, and light brown hair that is often tied in two Chinese style buns on either side of her head (5). She has more white features than an average Brazilian woman, but not enough to look completely white, or completely Brazilian, hence the perception that she is mixed race and “exotic.” I am hyper aware of these dynamics because of my mixed race identity, but I don’t think they are obvious unless you are looking for them. With Haritaworn’s concept of the exploitation of mixed race bodies in mind, how do you think exotification in the media has shaped your perception of racially ambiguous celebrities like Lil Miquela, Henry Goulding, and Kim Kardashian?

Sources

1. Haritaworn, Jin. “`Caucasian and Thai Make a Good Mix.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (2009): 59-78. doi:10.1177/1367549408098705.
2. Noronha, Charmaine. “Kim Kardashian Wore An Indian Headpiece And The Internet Wasn’t Having It.” Huffington Post, April 8, 2019. Accessed May 6, 2019. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2019/04/08/kim-kardashian-indian-headpiece-cultural-appropriation_a_23708299/.
3. West, Kanye, Kid Cudi, Raekwon, Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, Pusha T, Swizz Beatz, John Legend, Rza, Cyhi Da Prynce, Gil Scott-Heron, Bill Ward, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Peter Sinfield, Ian McDonald, J. P. Lang, Robert Fripp, Greg Lake, B. Bergman, Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Mike Dean, and Jeff Bhasker, writers. So Appalled. Kanye West. Def Jam, 2010, CD.
4. McClinton, Dream. “In Their Own Words: How Dark-skinned Women Broke through the Entertainment Industry.” The Guardian. Accessed May 11, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/apr/12/black-women-on-colorism-hollywood-entertainment-industry-panel.
5. Miquela, Lil. “Lil Miquela Instagram Advertisement for Prada.” Digital image. Instagram. February 22, 2018. Accessed May 13, 2019. https://www.instagram.com/p/BfgDCGqFitF/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_video_watch_again.