Mixed Race Studies

Faces of the Future: Race, Beauty and the Mixed Race Beauty Myth

Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota
American Studies Department Honors Projects
2012-05-01
129 pages

Clara Younge

Introduction

In November 2009, popular fashion magazine Allure revealed the “Face of the Future”. Between pages of glistening models with features ranging from freckled faces with full lips to loosely curled afros and almond-shaped eyes, photographer Marilyn Minter gave us not only the changing face of America, but the changing face of American beauty. As the highlight reads: “more than ever before, beauty is reflected in a blend of ethnicities and colors.” The accompanying editorial by fashion journalist Rebecca Mead extolls the “extraordinary” beauty of mixed race people and their potential to change “the fashion and beauty industries.”

She begins with the growing numbers of mixed race people in the US. With 6.8 million Americans identifying as mixed race in 2000, and nearly half of these being under 18, she says, “young America is starting to look very different from old America, and not just because it has far fewer wrinkles and better muscle tone.” The article goes on to describe each of the models according to her ethnicities, which are given in terms of both nationalities (“Barbadian,” “German,” and “Brazilian) and American ethnic or cultural groups (“African-American,” “Hispanic,” and “Creole”). Mead includes brief quotes from two of the women about their experiences with mixed race identity, particularly around phenotypic ambiguity. She emphasizes the unique looks of these models, saying that “fashion and beauty industries sometimes don’t know what to do with these models, but they had better get used to their like,” because they will soon be—if they aren’t already—the epitome of American beauty…

…To satiate readers’ need to categorize, the women’s ethnicities are listed in the corner caption of each picture along with the makeup products that they wear. In these representations, their heritages or composite “parts” become nothing more than products that they can put on for a photo shoot, and that the reader might just as easily purchase for herself. This reduction of identities and histories to an optional appendage that one can simply put on and take off at will, or to a commodity that can be bought in stores, reflects current post-racial ideology of the neoliberal individual subject who is supposed to move freely through society unfettered by race, class or gender.

Problematically, while the article claims to celebrate ‘ethnic’ beauty and ‘difference,’ it still upholds whiteness as dominant, as all of these models have European heritages, and all, as blogger Latoya Peterson critiques, “would easily pass the paper bag test” (2009). This rhetoric of inclusion only reinforces the boundaries of difference by excluding blackness as too other—too far outside the norm to be accepted.

In the narrative about mixed race bodies that Allure weaves, identity is individualized, privatized and depoliticized. The mixed race subject is included in the institution of beauty, but this comes at the cost of others. Here, inclusion of the mixed race subject not only reifies the dominance of whiteness, but also further otherizes blackness. This inclusion also hinges upon racialized and gendered paradigms of bodily essentialism. While mixed people may be welcomed into the institution of beauty, it is under specific stipulations. Mixed race identity is defined as inherently different from all other racialized groups, as necessarily part-white, as socially and racially flexible, and as inherently beautiful…

…But what prompts the proliferation of conversations in popular magazines, television, advertising and model agencies, and even scientific inquiry, about the reigning beauty of multiracial women, ultimate cuteness of mixed race kids, and overall attractiveness of “mixed” people? What (other than vanity) prompts us to say that mixed people are the most beautiful? In this project I hope to explore the question: Why are mixed people the most beautiful?—or why does everyone seem to think they are?

To get at this question I take two routes: I will first examine popular conceptions of beauty and how these have been linked with race, I will bring mixed race bodies into the conversation of beauty standards and ideals, asking: What do people mean when they talk about “beautiful mixed people”? Is it a certain type or combination of racial identities? And if so, how does this image fit into pre-formed ideas about race and beauty?

For the second leg of my journey, I will take on the question of beauty as something more than skin-deep. Many scholars of beauty have said that the construct and its definition – who it includes and excludes – is linked to not only personality and moral character, but also to racial inferiority and national identity. Here I ask: What is being said about beauty and mixed race? How is this discourse being circulated?

And finally: Why now? Why mixed race? How does the myth of mixed race beauty fit into current discourse around mixed race identity? How is the concept of ‘beauty’ representative of broader social trends such as citizenship, neoliberal inclusion, and new racial projects concerning multiracial identity?

This paper combines an interdisciplinary review of theories on beauty, race, gender with a critical mixed race studies lens. Previous scholarship on the history of American beauty standards and ideals lays the groundwork for my exploration of racialized beauty standards. Scholarship in critical mixed race studies and critical race studies are the-foundation for my discussion of the beauty myth as part of a larger social trend around race and mixed race identity. Contemporary cultural texts such as the “Face of the Future” article inform my investigation of current beauty ideals and my discussion of the discourse around the mixed race beauty myth and beauty in general. This project uses commentary from focus groups conducted with students at Macalester College. The findings from these focus groups represent the opinions, ideas and dialogues of and between contemporary subjects who live within this beauty culture. The results from these focus groups situate my work in the experiences and opinions of real people and guide my analysis of the mixed race beauty myth.

My contribution to the discussion on beauty will be the inclusion of modern-day mixed race subjects. Thus far there has been research on the hypersexualization of mulatto women during slavery, but the racialized sexualization of mixed-race women today has been less explored. I also critically analyze the presence of previously described beauty ideals and types in contemporary culture, testing the theories of previous scholarship and the standards of years past for relevance in our current cultures
of beauty.

I place the mixed race beauty myth within a broader conversation about multiraciality. Both of these discourses elevate the mixed race subject in the popular racial imaginary-to the status of super hero. Through analysis of the mixed race beauty myth, I want to contribute to a larger critique of the idea that mixed people will all somehow save the world, simply by existing—or simply by being beautiful.

I chose this project out of personal interest. As a woman with a mixed race identity, I have heard this statement that “mixed people are the most beautiful” many times. As a woman immersed in a culture that emphasizes the importance of femininity and attractiveness, the question of beauty has concerned me. And as a light-skinned woman of color I have been bombarded with conflicting messages telling me that people who look like me are or aren’t attractive, or that I am, but my darker-skinned sisters cannot be. It is necessary for me to recognize the positionality that I bring to this project, because it doubtless informs the way I approach these questions, their answers, and my entire process…

Read the entire honors thesis here.

3rd Annual: What Are You? – A Discussion about Mixed Heritage

Brooklyn Historical Society
Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
Saturday, 2013-11-09, 14:00 EST (Local Time)

From the Travyon Martin murder trial, to racist responses to the Cheerios commercial starring an interracial couple, recent media events illustrate that the U.S is definitely not post-racial. Join BHS in exploring critical questions relating to multicultural and multiracial identity. We’ll discuss big questions like: How do we perform and display our identities? How does media, film, art, humor and photography shape and mediate mixed-race identity?

I will be introducing the panelists.

Panelists include:

• Michael David Murphy and Alyson West, creators of We are the 15%
• Chris Johnson of transmedia project, Question Bridge: Black Males
• Anoushka Ratnarajah and Marcelitte Failla of Toasted Marshmallows, and
• Jay Smooth, host of hip-hop video blog Ill Doctrine and video producer at Colorlines.com.

Plus a dance performance by special guests – We’re Muslim, Don’t Panic.

Co-sponsored by LovingDay.org, SWIRL, MAVIN: The Mixed Heritage Experience, and MixedRaceStudies.org.

Brooklyn Brewery beer and light refreshments will be served.

For more information, click here.

The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium [Ibrahim Review]

Modern Language Quarterly
Volume 74, Number 4, December 2013
page 566
DOI: 10.1215/00267929-2153679

Habiba Ibrahim, Associate Professor of English
University of Washington

The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium. By Elam Michele. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. viii + 277 pp.

Read or purchase the review here.

Mixed race families are becoming more common in advertising

The Oklahoma Daily
University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma
2013-11-04

The Editorial Board

If an artist was assigned to paint a portrait of the average American family 75 years ago, odds are, he or she would paint a family of one race — typically either white parents with white children or black parents with black children.

Today, however, families are more diverse than ever, and this is a good thing for our country. As our nation progresses toward equality for everyone, regardless of sexuality or race, families are looking a lot more colorful than they used to.

Marriages between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other increased to 15.1 percent in 2010, according to a Pew Research report. In that same year, the report states interracial or interethnic marriages in America reached an all-time high of 8.4 percent. If that was in 2010, imagine how many more interracial couples there are today.

The increase in mixed families clearly demonstrates the historical barriers of segregation are crumbling down, but while much of the U.S. is making headway, some Americans are still lagging behind the times, letting their actions and words showcase their ignorant social morality…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

Mirror, Mirror – Who Is that Woman on TV?

Inter Press Service News Agency
2013-10-21

Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 21 2013 (IPS) – Carla Vilas Boas is of mixed-race descent – African, European and indigenous – like a majority of the population of Brazil. But she spends hours straightening her hair, trying to look more like the blond, blue-eyed women she sees in the mirror of television.

The 32-year-old domestic worker acknowledges that Brazil’s popular telenovelas have started to include characters like her – people from the country’s favelas or shantytowns, who work long workdays for low wages.

But among the actors and the models shown in ads, “there are only a few darker-skinned people among all the blue-eyed blonds. And you wonder: if I buy that shampoo and go to the hairdresser, can I look like that?” she remarked to IPS.

But her hair “never looks that way,” even with the new shampoo or the visit to the hairstylist, and Vilas Boas said that makes her feel “really bad.”

More than half of the women in this country of 200 million people – where over 50 percent of the population identified themselves as black or “mulatto” in the last census – do not identify with the images they see on TV.

Experts say that because of the prejudices reflected in the choice of actors and models, advertisers potentially lose a large segment of consumers…

Read the entire article here.

Review of Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy by Samantha Nogueira Joyce

TriQuarterly: a journal of writing, art, and cultural inquiry from Northwestern University
Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois
2013-10-01

Reighan Gillam, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
University of Michigan

Telenovelas, or soap operas, are the main staple of television entertainment throughout Brazil and in many other Latin American countries. Unlike in the United States, where soap operas can run for decades, in Brazil telenovelas end after presenting their storyline over a six- to eight-month period. They are designed to attract men, women, and children as viewers and have dominated in television’s primetime slots for the last thirty years. Although the plotlines, characters, and settings are fleeting, telenovelas have remained Brazilians’ favorite form of primetime entertainment.

Often Latin American telenovelas have served as vehicles to introduce social issues by depicting a common problem, such as gender inequality or limited access for the disabled, in order to raise awareness and stimulate discussion. In Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy, Samantha Nogueira Joyce takes one particular telenovela, Duas Caras (Two Faces), as her subject of study. Running for eight months in 2007–8, this telenovela deserves particular scrutiny because it was the first to include an Afro-Brazilian actor as the lead character and the first to make race relations and racism a constant theme. Joyce uses this telenovela as an opportunity to examine the role of television in contemporary currents of social change in Brazil. Through her analysis of Duas Caras, Joyce aims to demonstrate how “telenovelas are a powerful tool for introducing topics for debate and pro-social change, such as the instances where the dialogues openly challenge previously ingrained racist ideas in Brazilian society.”

The myth of racial democracy to which Joyce’s title refers is the Brazilian national narrative that defines the country’s citizens and identity as racially mixed. Put simply, it is generally thought that the Brazilian populace and culture emerged from a mixing of European, indigenous, and African people. Many believe that because there are no rigid racial lines that delineate black from white in Brazil, racism and racial discrimination do not exist there. In contrast to the “one-drop rule” of the United States, where “one drop of black blood” renders a person black, in Brazil, Joyce explains, “the racial blending has been validated not into a binary, but a ternary racial classification that differentiates the population into brancos (whites), pardos (multiracial individuals, also popularly known as mulatos), and pretos (blacks).”…

Read the entire review here.

Transforming Korea into a multicultural society: reception of multiculturalism discourse and its discursive disposition in Korea

Asian Ethnicity
Volume 13, Issue 1, 2012
pages 97-109
DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2012.625703

Ji-Hyun Ahn
University of Texas, Austin

Since 2005, multicultural-based words such as multicultural society, multicultural family, and multicultural education have grown explosively in Korean society. Due to this social trend, adoption of the term multiculturalism has become a trend within the government and press to explain current social changes in Korea. Nevertheless, there have been few efforts to tackle multiculturalism as a crucial political project or a considerable academic theme of discussion. Thus, this study aims to examine how multiculturalism discourse in Korea has been received and draws its discursive disposition. It argues how the media, especially the press, incorporate other crucial issues such as ‘diversity’, ‘human rights’, and ‘minority politics’ in terms of multiculturalism. To analyse, a total of 275 journal articles were selected and scrutinised. This study contextualises Korean multiculturalism and suggests a meta-picture of the discursive economy of multiculturalism in Korea.

Introduction

Since 2005, ‘multicultural’-based terms such as ‘multicultural society’, ‘multicultural family’ and ‘multicultural education’ have grown explosively in Korean society. The advertising copy of ‘Dynamic Korea’ and many other multi-racial models in TV commercials seem to indicate that Korea is becoming a multicultural society. Furthermore, many journals deal with multiculturalism issues through features and series.

A key symbolic event illustrating this trend was when Hines Ward, an American football hero with a Korean mother, visited Korea in 2006. The passionate response to this ‘Korean’ hero from the U.S. ignited a discussion on issues of race and multicultural society in Korea. Following these events, adoption of the term ‘multiculturalism’ has become a trend within the government and press to explain current social changes in Korea. Nevertheless, there have been few efforts to tackle multiculturalism as a crucial political project or a considerable academic theme of discussion. In this sense, discussions of multiculturalism in Korea are either too superficial or absent altogether. What I want to point out in this context is that racial projects are now proceeding in Korea using multiculturalism discourse, and this serves as a launching point that propels this study.

One significant feature of globalization is an increase of mobility. The flow of people’s mobility is getting more and more diverse and dynamic. For example, Korea, originally supposed to be a very homogeneous country, is now experiencing a great, new influx of immigrants. In a demographical sense, South Korea has a total population of about 40 million people, with a foreign population approaching one million as of 2007. This influx of foreigners started in the early 90s with migrant workers, but the numbers increased in 2000 with a growing number of international, married couples in Korea.

Due to this drastic change, the Korean government has created many policies to assimilate those immigrants and foreigners into Korean society. Media especially plays a key role in handling this issue; for example, newspapers feature the issues of migrant workers and international marriage families, and frame the issues in terms of multiculturalism discourse. What is more, this discursive formation of multicultural society rearranges the order of other competing discourses such as globalization, neo-liberalism, and racism in Korea. Thus, this study has two aims: (1) it examines how multiculturalism discourse has been received and how the term multiculturalism has been used and (2) it studies how multiculturalism discourse in Korea draws its discursive disposition and how the media, especially the press, incorporates other crucial issues such as ‘diversity’, ‘human rights’ and ‘minority politics’ in terms of multiculturalism. I believe this would provide insights about how globalisation promotes social change incorporating multiculturalism discourse in Korea.

Analysing newspaper articles from 1992 to 2007, I demonstrate the typology of discursive dispositions on multiculturalism discourse in Korea. There are three dimensions: (1) multiculturalism discourse is representing multi-race, (2) it passes through minority politics and minority movements, and (3) it detours the idea of (cultural) diversity. I will discuss how this discursive disposition of multiculturalism is now proceeding in Korean society.

Read the entire article here.

Who stole all the black women from Britain?

Black Girl Dancing at Lughnasa
2013-10-17

Emma Dabiri, Teaching Fellow
Africa Department, School of African and Oriental Studies, London
Visual Sociology Ph.D. Researcher, Goldsmiths University of London

…Here in the UK, the  visibility of black women in representations of mainstream Black British culture is such that you might be forgiven for thinking we are an endangered species. The near erasure of Black British women from this terrain which is in the main dominated by black men and white women, is rarely commented upon, despite its prominence.  What is actually going on here? Is this some manifestation of the quite frankly ridiculous Eldrige Cleaver quote above. Or is it something else?.

The (ahem) ‘urban’ (we know what they really mean) landscape that provides the basis of so much of Britain’s somewhat depressing representations of mainstream youth culture borrows heavily from black culture, yet sometimes seems entirely devoid of black women. The characters who populate this world are black men and white women. Access may be permitted to the occasional mixed-race girl but beyond this tokenism this is the white woman’s world!

From movies such as Kidulthood, to the presenters of the Kiss FM Takeaway show, who typify this phenomenon, the symbols of ‘Urban’ or Black British youth culture are routinely Black men and their white female partners…

Read the entire article here.

The Impact of Internet Publishing and Online Communications on Mixed-Race Discourses

The Asian American Literary Review
Special Issue on Mixed Race, Volume 4, Issue 2 (Fall 2013)
Mixed Race is an Inbox: pages 127-136

Steven F. Riley, Creator
MixedRaceStudies.org: Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience

Glenn C. Robinson, Creator
MixedAmericanLife.us: Mixed Culture | Mixed Heritage | Mixed Identity

Steven F. Riley, creator of MixedRaceStudies.org, and Glenn C. Robinson, creator of MixedAmericanLife.us first met (virtually) in the chat-room of the March 16, 2011 episode of Mixed Chicks Chat and have corresponded with each other ever since. They have met each other in person at the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival in Los Angeles in 2011 and 2012.

Riley has received many comments describing how his MixedRaceStudies.org has become an integral part of college courses. Robinson’s sites are an open forum for dialog and social sharing, and have a steady growth of followers. Here, they continue their conversations about mixed race and technology.

Purchase the issue here.

Rearticulating Black Mixed-Race in the Era of Globalization: Hines Ward and the struggle for Koreanness in contemporary South Korean media

Cultural Studies
Volume 28, Issue 3, 2014
pages 391-417
DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2013.840665

Ji-Hyun Ahn
University of Texas, Austin

Since the mid-2000s, the term multiculturalism has entered the Korean lexicon as migration has become more and more prevalent due to globalization. The cornerstone of this multicultural explosion was a 2006 visit by American football star Hines Ward, born to an African-American father and a Korean mother. As a black mixed-race sports celebrity, he suddenly became an emblematic media figure in the Korean televisual landscape, signifying a broader racial reconfiguration in Korean society. This media event – what I shall call ‘the Hines Ward moment’ – created and opened the discursive space for racial politics and multicultural issues in Korean society. Hence, this article aims to look at what this discursive explosion of multiculturalism and mixed-race means in the context of globalization. Reading the Hines Ward moment as a symbolic media text, the paper examines how the media discourse on Hines Ward articulates the issues of national identity and racial politics in contemporary Korean society. For analysis, newspaper articles, television programmes and television commercials that deal with the Hines Ward case are examined. By analyzing the modes of articulation of the Hines Ward moment, this study deconstructs the image of a ‘global, multicultural Korea’ shaped by the Korean media and examines the struggle for Koreanness in the televisual area of contemporary Korean media.

Introduction: imagining a multicultural, global Korea?

There has been a common belief that South Korea (hereafter, Korea) has always been a racially homogeneous country because of the strong myth of ‘one people one nation’ (hankyoreh hanminjok) (Shin 2006, G.-S. Han 2007). However, this common myth no longer seems as effective as it was in the past…

Read or purchase the article here.