race, racism, fashion

Jezebel has a fascinating and troubling photo spread of Giselle and several black male models. Click over there to see all the images.

See? Those contrasts can be beautiful, even racially charged, without being racist.

On one hand, I get that, aesthetically, the contrast of slender pale figure against heavily muscled dark figures is visually arresting. However, there’s a fine and frequently blurred line between valuing aesthetic difference and fetishizing cultural difference, and no amount of “but it’s pretty” gives you a pass from dealing with that baggage. There’s very clear helpless white woman/powerful black savage imagery being used here (in a rape-fantasy “but she wants it” context, of course)–imagery with a long, racist, painful history. There are ways to use racial/visual contrast without those kinds of connotations. I agree with one commenter in this great discussion going on at Feministe that the fashion industry knows exactly what it’s doing–they know they can stir up controversy and get attention without concern for consequences, because what are we gonna do? Stop worshipping pretty people? As if.

Finally, on a lit dork note: there’s something about it, especially in the first two images, that reminds me of this (the author of which, of course, had his own racist/colonialist baggage to deal with):

The woodborne people fall before her flat,
And worship her as Goddesse of the wood;
And old Syluanus selfe bethinkes not, what
To thinke of wight so faire, but gazing stood,
In doubt to deeme her borne of earthly brood;
Sometimes Dame Venus selfe he seemes to see,
But Venus neuer had so sober mood;
Sometimes Diana he her takes to bee,
But misseth bow, and shaftes, and buskins to her knee.

By vew of her he ginneth to reuiue
His ancient loue, and dearest Cyparisse,
And calles to mind his pourtraiture aliue,
How faire he was, and yet not faire to this,
And how he slew with glauncing dart amisse
A gentle Hynd, the which the louely boy
Did loue as life, aboue all worldly blisse;
For griefe whereof the lad n’ould after ioy,
But pynd away in anguish and selfe-wild annoy.

The wooddy Nymphes, faire Hamadryades
Her to behold do thither runne apace,
And all the troupe of light-foot Naiades,
Flocke all about to see her louely face:
But when they vewed haue her heauenly grace,
They enuie her in their malitious mind,
And fly away for feare of fowle disgrace:
But all the Satyres scorne their woody kind,
And henceforth nothing faire, but her on earth they find.

Glad of such lucke, the luckelesse lucky maid,
Did her content to please their feeble eyes,
And long time with that saluage people staid,
To gather breath in many miseries.
During which time her gentle wit she plyes,
To teach them truth, which worshipt her in vaine,
And made her th’Image of Idolatryes;
But when their bootlesse zeale she did restraine
Fro[m] her own worship, they her Asse would worship fayn.

Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

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