Thursday, September 23, 2010
I Won't be Your Flavor of the Month
Figuring out transnational race politics is no easy task. Race, like other systems of oppression, shifts and alters with geography, with time, with culture, with context. The way I experience race in the US, where I'm usually primarily seen as a woman of color (with my nationality/ ethnicity being secondary), differs from Dubai where my dark-skin and South Asianness is emphasized, which differs from Sri Lanka where I'm part of the ethnic majority and therefore privileged.
What inspired this blog post though, is a trend I've noticed lately in Hollywood that corresponds with something long prevalent in Sri Lankan communities I've lived in. In regards to Hollywood, I like to call this the 'ethnic lite' phenomenon. You know what I'm talking about. The one where it's trendy and desirable to have 'ethnic' features like full lips and curvy bottoms, so long as you're still white enough to be, well, white.
Think Angelina Jolie as Cleopatra. Think the swooning over 'dark beauties' like Megan Foxx. Think WOC celebrities like Beyonce, Eva Longoria, Jennifer Lopez and Jessica Alba having to blond up and tone d0wn before going mainstream. Racialicious had a great post on how, when it comes to models of color, the fashion industry wants "white girls dipped in chocolate". I can't even list the number of nauseating articles I've come across in mainstream media outlets about how fashion is 'diversifying' and reflecting a globalized culture, when what's actually happening is WOC with sufficiently Eurocentric features are being exalted, with a particular emphasis on racial' 'ambiguity' and a fetish for 'exotic' mixed-race heritage that's actually extremely dehumanizing and reductive of the experience of multiracial people. This latest article by CNN basically sums up a disgusting, neo-colonialist, racist trend that's taken shape: where 'ethnic' features are commodified and appropriated, and used as weapons of further marginalization against the very people they once helped racialize. Now, WOC are measured not only against the white woman ideal, but against other WOC who fit the image of 'exotic' other.How does this fit with my experience in Sri Lanakn communities? Let me explain. One of my many Sri Lankan friends has gorgeous golden skin, high cheekbones and a dancer's body. She in fact bears a striking resemblance to Jennifer Lopez. Whenever Sri Lankan people talk about her obvious beauty, they fall back on how great it is that she looks ethnically ambiguous i.e she could be from any number of countries between Asia and the Middle-east. This quality is seen as extremely desriable.
Pictured on top is the most popular beauty queen in Sri Lanka right now, Jacqueline Fernandez. Sri Lankan people I know, are almost uniformly crazy about her. They fawn over her height, her slenderness and her wonderfully light skin. They talk about how she is a 'true beauty'.
While I concede that Miss.Fernandez is quite beautiful, I object to the standards in our society that value her beauty above others. She is actually part Malaysian, which is something else Sri Lankans seem to drool over: mixed ethnicity. People will say 'oooh, she looks that way because her father is XYZ or her mother is YYX', or ' she is part Sri Lankan and part-xxx, she is sooo beautiful'.
I'm not setting up to police who can identify as Sri Lankan, or who's an 'authentic' woman of color. What I'm trying to draw attention to is the way Hollywood fetishizes race ambiguity and exotic looks in ways that marginalize those of us who aren't ambiguous or exotic; just like Sri Lankan society exalts mixed-ethnic looks among its community in a way that suggests, to me, that we should aim to dilute our ethnic traits in favor of the cosmopolitan, race-ambiguous look of Jacqueline Fernandez. If the primary reason we swoon over multiracial beauty is because we think it edges us that much closer to whiteness, then we have a problem.
I have brown skin that gets darker brown in the summer. My hair is thick and strong. I'm very short. I look nothing like Jacqueline Fernandez, and neither do many of my friends (some of whom are mixed heritage). I refuse to stay silent in the face of our collective post-colonial brainwashing that elevates one kind of Sri Lankan beauty over another.In Dubai, many Sri Lankan women are employed as domestic workers, largely in Arab or white households. When people in Dubai have told me (and it's happened a lot) "You don't look Sri Lankan at all!" they expect me to respond like they've just paid me a compliment. Because of the high number of our women employed in domestic work, and because it's perfectly naturally all over the world to view dark, poor women as born to serve the needs of those that are lighter and richer, most people are surprised when faced with a Sri Lankan woman who is not under their power, and who can look them in the eye and demand access to the same things they have.
But many of us middle class to upper class Sri Lankans, when faced with these stereotypes, are quick to say 'Not all Sri Lankan women are maids' or 'Many of us are very well educated' or 'They look that way because they are gamay (village) people'.
Why this apologetic tone? Why the back-pedaling? What's wrong with looking like our women who labor under dehumanizing conditions to generate one of the biggest sources of revenue for our country? ( women employed outside the country remit a large amount of their money back home).
What's wrong, in fact, with these women? Can it be that they remind us, that despite our designer clothes and Western accents, that we come from a land of dark people and that our shared history is one of oppression and colonization based on darkness? Maybe it's because we know, in our heart of hearts, that our class privilege and education and conformity buys us that much into whiteness, while many of our men and women live and die under the shadow of racist colonialism that STILL devalues dark bodies.So here's me doing my bit to counteract the brainwashing we all participate in. I look Sri Lankan. I look South Asian. I am dark. I have thick hair that gets bushy.
Dark is beautiful. Sri Lankanness, in its MANY shapes and forms, is beautiful. I won't be commodified and appropriated into white patriarchy's latest fantasy, and I refuse to see such commodification as positive in any way.So let's stop pretending that Hollywood's latest fetish is a step forward. I want real representation on screen, one that doesn't box in, mislabel and exoticise my multiracial brothers and sisters. One that doesn't deploy colonial race politics that tear us further apart. One that's really committed to honoring our humanity.
Anything less is just not good enough.
