"Wild Things"

From Killing Us Softly 4

Women of color are almost nonexistent in magazine advertising, but when they do appear, it's usually alongside some other qualifier that marks non-whiteness as exotic or primitive. There are two definitions of womanhood being constructed here: in ads, white women are domestic, nurturing masters of the angel/whore dichotomy while women of color are wild, untamed, exotic landscapes ripe for "conquering."

Differentiating the roles of white women and women of color isn't just an advertising thing, obviously; it's echoed throughout media and our culture as a whole. It's a part of the greater epidemic of what's pretty much white supremacy.  KJ Ward over at Black Girl Dangerous calls out Hollywood's obsession with white history and the tendency of media in general to completely ignore POC stories in favor of white ones. As if there simply isn't history-- or do they mean interesting/worthy/meaningful history?-- that isn't about medieval white Europe (or "retro" white people in America).

If that isn't some seriously colonialist mental gymnastics, I don't know what is.


One of the problems with depicting white people as the norm in media is that it forces everyone else--including POC-- to relate to their stories, while white people never have to even think about relating to POC. White history becomes just "history." White women become just "women." So representing any kind of specifically POC feature-- natural hair, for example-- takes the form of a superficial stereotype.

By drowning out POC representation with white representation, we wind up with things like that really, really racist ad.