ethiopienne:

gerrycanavan:

These are pretty striking.

internal-acceptance-movement:

While we talk a lot about harmful media beauty ideals like extreme thinness, appearance-focused “fitness,” sex appeal, and photoshopping phoniness, one of the most oppressive ideals excludes anyone who isn’t … white. We call it the whitewashing of beauty.

In a country where a full one-third of the population is black, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latina, the serious underrepresentation of women of color in media is really disturbing. Further, when you only account for the women of color shown in positive roles or depictions – especially those depicted as beautiful or desirable – the number is almost negligible.

The mainstream beauty ideal is almost exclusively white, making it all the more unattainable for women of color. Though beautiful women of color like Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Queen Latifah, Rihanna, Jennifer Hudson, Halle Berry and others have achieved renown in U.S. culture, media representations of these women have become increasingly “anglicized” or “whitewashed” over time, with lighter-colored, straighter hair, lighter makeup, colored contacts and often shrinking figures.

Even when the women are being recognized for something other than their beauty, like, say, an Oscar nomination for incredibly talented actress Gabourey Sidibe of “Precious,” magazines like Elle still feel the need to whitewash her in order to feature her image on the cover. 

While representation of women of color in media has increased slightly over the past decade, finding positive depictions of women with dark skin tones or natural hair is still nearly impossible in mainstream media.Further, when we do see women of color represented as beauty icons in media, they almost always already fit white ideals –meaning they already have light skin tones, light-colored, straight hair, ideally “white” facial features, thin figures, etc. 

Essentially, WOC are viewing a distorted reality and holding themselves to the unattainable standard set by the non-reality of popular media – and most often, those standards are based on oppressive, power-laden ideals of whiteness. 

Recognizing the ridiculous lack of diversity in representation of media, and particularly when it comes to portrayals of beauty, is absolutely crucial for people of all races.

Recognizing is the first step toward rejecting those messages and the negative feelings they inspire about our bodies. After we reject them, we can continuously redefine beauty for ourselves – on our own terms – with the help of the beautiful people in our lives who recognize other forms of beauty as well. 

By Lindsay Kite, 2011. “Beauty Whitewashed: How White Ideals Exclude Women of Color.” Published at www.beautyredefined.net/beauty-whitewashed-how-white-ideals-exclude-women-of-color.

I can’t believe we still have to explain this…but here ya go…

(via onceuponanotsolongtimeago)

• Tags
• race
• fashion
• Photoshop
• pretty striking
• i'm in love with queue

This has been a busy week here at SPARK! Hot on the heels of our fantastic meeting with LEGO is a new petition (gotta love ‘em) started by SPARKteam girl activist Julia Bluhm. This fab 14 year old is calling out Seventeen Magazine on their overwhelming usage of photoshop. Julia is asking the magazine to commit to one photoshop free spread per month to celebrate real girls, because we all want to see regular girls that look like us in a magazine that’s supposed to be for us.

And (what a shock) we’re not the only ones who think like that! Julia’s petition has 13,000+ signatures already and it’s moving fast! How’s that for girl power?!

The petition has raced past every goal we’ve set and the press is taking notice (Huffington Post & The Daily Mail, anyone?!)

But we’re not stopping there. Once again, SPARK has started something amazing! We’ve got our bold, girl-supporting partners standing with us. We’re going to make sure Seventeen Magazine listens to us and we need your help!

Here’s what you can do:

First, if you haven’t signed the petition, get to it! Then ask all your friends, family members and obscure, distant relatives to sign it too. Tweet it, Facebook it, share it on Tumblr, the whole shebang. If you want more info on Seventeen Magazine, check out this blog by SPARKteam-er Izzy Labbe.

Next, head on over to our fantastic partner, Powered By Girl, to spoof this month’s Seventeen Magazine cover. Download your spoof to the PBG gallery and share it on Facebook. Don’t forget to tag SPARK Summit, so we can admire your culture jamming skills.

Then, check out our You’ve Been SPARK’d post-it action. Grab your post-its, a marker, and let Seventeen know what you think. Don’t forget to take a picture and post it to our Facebook page! The more images they see and voices they hear the better!  Love this action?  Please support our Indiegogo You’ve Been SPARK’d campaign!  Donate, donate, donate!  We can’t continue to do this work without your support. There are some awesome prizes up for grabs, so check it out!

Last but not least, for all you New Yorkers, or dedicated road-trippers, come join us and Julia as we visit Seventeen Magazine headquarters and demand that they listen to our request. We’ll be there at 11 o’clock, Wednesday morning May 2nd.  The more the merrier!

As Julia says, “For the sake of all the struggling girls all over America, who read Seventeen and think these fake images are what they should be, I’m stepping up.” So are we. Join us!

(via crystalsavestheday)

• Tags
• Seventeen
• magazines
• petition
• SPARK Summit
• advertising
• photoshop
• body positivity