Example Of Fetishization Essay

Society has always forced women and men into gender roles that dictate what types of behaviors are acceptable, desirable, and appropriate for them despite their actual or perceived sex. Gender is a socially constructed form of identity but it is also racially constructed as well. Gender can be displayed through intersectional perspectives, you can discover many ways to display gender specifically in the culture of African Americans and how they differ from the dominate white culture. I am a Haitian American female and I found that through the pictures I captured of my friends, family members and I were of us inexplicably participating in gender and displaying femininity. I also observed my friends and family especially the men participating

The founding father, Thomas Jefferson, is known for his intellect and historical impact. Credited as the lead author of the Declaration of Independence and an opposer of slavery, his views on the black race originally came as a shock to me. In “Thomas Jefferson on the African Race,” Jefferson states that in order to compare the races they must be tested in America by the white standard. In doing this, Jefferson cements whiteness as default and perpetuates an ideology that has not been overturned to this day.

When you look at me what do you see? To society, I’m a black female who fits the stereotypical “wanna-be” black female wanting to have white hair textures. They watch carefully as I walk past them; afraid of my “black girl capabilities” solely based off of stereotypes that have been carelessly passed down from generation to generation. They think, “She’s probably unhappy with her dark complexion”. They wonder, “Why does she look so angry, it’s probably just another angry black woman.” With my big lips, high cheek bones, angled facial structures, they deem me pretty for a dark-skinned female. They view me as uneducated “like the rest”, unhappy because of family problems, as having third-grade vocabulary; simply, incompetent. Fortunately, their

The film Girl’s Trip has been applauded for being a celebration of blackness in the primarily white film industry. The majority of the cast and the writers for Girl’s Trip are people of color. The film was much more successful than its “white counterpart” Rough Night in box office revenue and reviews. However, most of the black characters in Girl’s Trip shift through various controlling images throughout the movie. The reason these stereotypes are less obvious than they are in some other films is because each characters portrays multiple stereotypes and different times throughout the film. This creates more dynamic, relatable characters but these characters still have not escaped the common controlling images for black women and men.

An illustration of misogyny would be Nelly’s music video ‘Tip Drill;’ whereby he participates in the objectification of women. Specifically, filming half naked women, using a worm eye angle shot to explicitly show the women’s rear end. In the music video Nelly is partaking in hyper masculine behaviour by grabbing females’ body parts, tossing money on them and swiping his credit card through their buttock. This exemplifies misogynistic characteristic identified by scholars; women are dehumanized and portrait as eye candy, worthless and sexual beings for men pleasure. Subsequently, these minimal representations of black women can be damaging to one’s conscious; it is also a form of othering African American females, not acknowledging their individualism

In the 19th century, the history of American entertainment had one popular and peculiar form that was referred to as the blackface minstrel act. The act was supposedly an American indigenous act that was performed by artists who were black faces. At first, the act was predominantly done by white people who wore black faces to depict how African-Americans spoke and acted, but eventually, there was a recorded increase in African-Americans themselves who too wore the black faces. The acts included a variety of comic acts, African-American music, comic skits, and dancing (Minstrel Show). However, with the shows’ popularity, it was also quite clear that the acts were highly depicted as racist towards the African Americans. This notion comes about from the fact that the acts portrayed African Americans as lazy, ignorant, and as those who loved music and dancing regardless of any other facet of life. Surprisingly, the history of the minstrel acts has over the time infatuated both black artists in the modern day and a clique of white artists locally referred to as “wiggers” which translates to white artists who want to act as black artists (Blacking Up: Hip-Hop 's Remix of Race and Identity).

When analyzing the intersections, it is clear the women of color face even more intense discrimination. Per the textbook, the wage gap for African-American women is 67.5 percent, Latinas: 58 percent, Asian-American: 90 percent. These figures are startling. As this is often the case, sadly, minority women are being taken advantage of the most. They face this further devastation for similar reasons, just on a new level. Racism is still prevalent in the country, and many people are being filled with racist biases without even knowing it. The media, religion, society, and other culprits have constructed a racist environment where people of color are victims of prejudice. When this intersects with sexism, women of color tend to face a multitude problems that the rest of the country does not, and it is not their fault at all.

On that note, I have found two more articles that relate to the struggle of Indigenous women which are “Aboriginal Women 34 times more likely to suffer family violence, but fear reporting it” written by Bianca Hall and also “Aboriginal Victimization in Canada” written by Katie Scrim.

In this article Felly Nkewto Simmonds discusses her experience as a socialiost as a black women. She dicusses in this article how her identity as black women is always put at the fore front, whenever shes asked to introduce herself shes never identified as just british even though was born their. Compared to a white person where their race is the normative, she delves into how black bodies are seen in society, and how that effects the treatment of those black bodies.

The ongoing problem of discrimination due to appearance has affected many, specifically black people. One of the most unusual things with no point or definition. This prejudice against black people has caused much unification within the United States. The lives of these black people have been severely affected, as it has affected their acts, appearances, and ways of life. As Brent Staples explains in his essay “Black Men and Public Space,” black people deal with many problems, from discrimination, and he explains these points in an orderly manner and each very thoroughly.

According to the article Intersectionality, intersectionality is “a theoretical framework that posits that multiple social categories intersect at the micro level of individual experience to reflect multiple interlocking systems of privilege and oppression at the macro, social-structural level.” In other words, this means that intersectionality means that a person can be multifaceted, in that they have multiple aspects of themselves which can them to experience things differently. An example of intersectionality is given by Kimberlé Crenshaw, she wrote about the court case in which several African American women sued General Motors because they were segregated by their race and gender. These women faced discrimination because they could not

Troubling Vision (2011) is a key text for studying blackness and black identity from the point of view of visual studies. I am compelled by Fleetwood’s analysis of the double bind of blackness as something that saturates the field of vision, “troubling it” while also remaining complicit to, and thus reproducing, normative framings of racial difference. At the core of her analysis is the critique of America’s insistent cultural and visual “investment in black iconicity” (11), which denies visibility to blacks as “ethical and enfleshed subjects” (16). The spectacularization of blackness entails that the image becomes iconic, “function[ing] as an abstraction, as decontextualized evidence of a historical narrative that is constrained by normative public discourse” (11). Troubling Vision critically addresses the presence of the black body as “commodity fetish” in American visual culture, mapping alternative paths of black visuality (112).

For this week's article I read, “Twilight The Glamorization of Abuse, Codependency, and White Privilege,” written by Borgia, Danielle. As mentioned in the title the article talks about how the Twilight series promotes unequal gender roles, obsessive behavior, codependent relationships, etc… Borgia said that this book idealize and romanticize abusive relationships in many ways. For example, Twilight portrays the teenage female protagonist as actively seeking to become the vampire’s victim based on her sexual desires, and Borgia believes that this is a bad message to promote to the readers (young teenage girls and their mothers). The main point that the author is trying to get across to the readers is that their needs to be awareness about how the relationship between Edward and Bella is unhealthy and unrealistic and that type of relationship shouldn’t be considered a desirable one.

Have you ever wonder to what extent has historical events impacted the film industry and film process? In fact, history has informed the ways in which black women’s sexuality was represented in films during and after the slavery era. Slavery and emancipation are all historical events that influenced the way films are developed. Early depictions of black women were confined to demeaning and stereotypical images where they had no explicit connection between their body and sexuality if portrayed. Anat Pick (2004) claims that the New Queer Cinema has failed to portray “gender-neutral queer” to “adequately acknowledge a lesbian presence” (p. 105). In Pick’s perspective, this failure is due to the fact that sexual desire is constructed around male

It was a warm spring morning in May when my mother and father headed to the hospital to give birth to a little girl. On May 18th, 1998 at 7:34 a.m. I, Allison Michelle Keitel, was born. A lot has changed in these past 18 years, but growing up in a time period between “the good old day” and technology was one of the best generations to live during. Getting to roll around in mud with my siblings and playing outside everyday was one of my favorite memories, however, my generation is also the first generation to grow up with technology. We were born in an era of change. All of the changes I have encountered in my 18 years of living have shaped me into the woman I am today. Since 1998, the perception of women has changed the most. Women have always had this pressure to have the “perfect” look, until our generation has been changing the way women feel forever.