rare -> book cover

with a black woman

so unabashedly,
proudly owning the
space, not being
the other and not
self-abasing in any
way -> powerful,
independent

Zaharcu Emma
AMST MA 1st year
Representations of African American
in U.S. Media
S. Draga Professor
COLORISM / SHADISM

Sweetness -> "light-skinned with good hair, what we call high yellow -
gives birth to a child with very dark skin

It didn't take no more than an hour after they pulled her out
from between my legs to realize something was wrong. Really
wrong. She was so black she scared me. Midnight black,
Sudanese black.

Bride a victim of colorism

COLORISM ( Alice Walker ) -> Alice Walker- refers to prejudice or
discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically
amongst people of the same ethnic or racial group ( Latin America,
Asian communities / African-American) -> origin linked to the practice of
slavery
Example: slave masters fathered children on slave women => lighter
skinned offspring treated more favorably than dark-skinned slave
 Oprah Winfrey
"It really boils down to the belief that the lighter you are the prettier you
are, the smarter you are."
-> real issue reflecting self esteem
-> colorism makes Sweetness unable to physically love her child :
breastfeeding as "having a pickaninny sucking my teat"
- colorism - practical aspect -> lighter skin meant being able to use the
ladies room in the department store or never having to drink from the
colored-only water fountain
- dark skin - for Sweetness' family -> a source of shame
- success of skin-whitening cosmetic products suggests colorism is a global
issue
- Bride produces her own cosmetic line

"I named it YOU, GIRL: Cosmetics for Your Personal Millennium. It's
for girls and women of all complexions from ebony to lemonade to
milk. And it's mine, all mine the idea, the brand, the campaign."
- Sweetness punished Bride for her dark skin because it had ended her marriage
- Louis could not bring himself to love a child with skin as dark as Brides

We had three good years, but when she was born, he blamed me and
treated Lula Ann like she was a stranger, more than that, an enemy.

- her mother insisted her child call her Sweetness instead of anything maternal
- Sweetness tried to protect her child from a world that would be even more
inclined to punish Bride for the darkness of her skin
- Sweetness will apologize for her childs dark skin, what she will not apologize for
is how she sees the world and how she raises her child

Some of you probably think its a bad thing to group ourselves according
to skin colour the lighter, the better in social clubs, neighbourhoods,
churches, sororities, even coloured schools. But how else can we hold on
to a little dignity?

- Her choices - shaped by the realities of being black in a white world > the lighter
your skin, the higher you might climb -> Sweetness also a victim
Use of Cosmetics

-> African American womens self-identity and self-

perception of appearance
- difficulties in finding the right foundation to match
their skin complexion
- wearing cosmetics -> magic => enhanced their
beauty and self-confidence
- personal power and issues of inclusion and
exclusion in media

African American women are looking for

affirmations of their own beauty through
seeing spokespersons or models of color in ad
campaigns for beauty products. One area that
was void of faces of color were anti-aging
products (Smith, 2009)

- African American girls involved in style received

positive compliments - > example : Bride
- African American men and women judged the attractiveness of women based on the
lightness of their skin=> photographs of African American women with fair skin were
rated the highest in attractiveness
- Beyonce/ Queen Latifah - mainstream media representations of African American
women have become whitewashed - transformation => lighter skin color, lighter
makeup, straight long hair, and lighter eyes (Beauty Redefined, 2011)
- African American women = beauty icon in the media; with lighter skin color and
ideal White facial features / thinness / straightening of the hair (Beauty
Redefined, 2011)
- using cosmetics / changing appearance -> self objectification : person or society
emphasizes focus on physical appearance, beliefs about importance of appearance,
and internalization of appearance ideals (Lee & Johnson, 2009).
- observers perspective on ones body (self-objectification) leads to negative body
image and mental health outcomes

-> power relations -> African American

women changed their outward appearance and behavior-> adopt an identity to satisfy
Black / White men rather than to satisfy themselves

Exception: Bride stands out, does not try to get whitewashed -> she makes a cosmetic
line for women of all complexions
She is the kind of woman who turns heads wherever she goes: she is tall, elegant, dresses
only in white => contrast => reflects her beauty
 Source of information
Black is (celebrities, products,
beautiful. glamourous lifestyle
etc ) for the African
Americans
 Overcoming Trauma -> overcoming abuse -> all carry burdensome childhood baggage /
have charged relationships with a parent

Brooklyn lived with an incompetent parent who was blind to others abusing her
Rain - hardest childhood of all: her mother sold her to men sexually and threw her out on the street
characters that manage to disengage from their psychological / physical damages in order to
embrace the African-American experience as the human experience.
The characters Bride and Booker must learn how to draw uptheirrespective womanhood and
manhood
All arrive at a place where they can at least function within society, there are certain parts of their
soul, their very personalities, that are damaged for good => emphasis on the criminal component of
childhood trauma and abuse
Bride treated harshly/ neglected
- a cosmetics company owner - sublimates the pain of her loveless upbringingand her guilt
over a childhood act of betrayal, by cultivating beauty and pursuing success
- born with blue-black skin to a light-skinned mother, Sweetness, Bride spends her childhood
craving her mothers love and approval but never receiving it
 Brides attempts to tell the secret shes kept for years => Bookers own pain is
exposed and he suddenly leaves
Brides attempt to find him -> finds out more about Booker / learns what to do for
healing
recovery -> her body regressing toward some prepubescent stage: her pubic hair
disappears, her ear lobe piercings close, her menstruation stops, her breasts vanish,
leaving only the nipples -> a botched mastectomy
Bookers leaving = cause of her bodys melting away => decides to track down
Booker to find out why he left her
You not the woman I want
Bride tracks Booker down in a California logging village, after each has spent time
alone confronting their individual failures.
Lula Ann Bridewell - leaves her mothers house => Bride ( embracing a new
personality) -> blue-black skin, accentuated by all-white wardrobe -> remarkable
beauty
Brides light-skinned motherSweetness => dark skin = Hams damnation
Sweetness does not show affection to her daughter=> she thinks that shes
training Bride for her reception in the world outside their home
chance to win her mothers love -> Bride with her classmates accuse their
teacher of sexual molestation (white woman named Sofia Huxley)
Brides testimony => Sweetness shows affection for her daughter in public
 Booker - a musician who hides his own childhood pain / Walter
Benjamin graduate student
- captivated by Brides beauty and they begin an affair =>
her company isnt enough to keep their fairy-tale relationship from
ruining when unspoken childhood traumas rise up between them
- mourning his older brothers murder, suffers desperately
- fashions his childhood hatred into an adult quest for truth
through history and jazz -> the trumpet starts singing at 19
shortly after Adams funeral => jazz meaning of oil and
straighten his tangled feelings
finds out a child molester, killed Adam and other local boys => true
justice calls for the man to carry the rotting corpse around as a
physical burden as well as a public shame and damnation. - Booker
who ends up carrying Adams killing like a cumbersome load
Jazz-> Billie Holidays song, God Bless the Child
Novel -> characters who achieve selfhood in
spite of childhood suffering
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
- wrote the lyrics after an argument with her mother
over financial matters => the singer's anger =>
charged relationship with her mother