Another response to Victoria Coren

Our good friends over at We Left Marks have written this:

Last week the Washington Post published the results of a phone survey of 1900 adults, on a range of issues, with individuals identified by gender and race. This weekend’s Observer published a follow-up article by Victoria Coren giving her interpretation of these findings. The general thrust was:

1. According to this poll’s results, American black women tend to have higher self-esteem are more career-focussed, romantically independent, less stressed and more religious than white women.


2. It must be because there are so few black models featured in magazines that black women “have managed to not get screwed up”.


3. Black women should continue to be disconnected from and under-represented in the evil media, for their own good.

While I have a lot of respect and time for Victoria Coren, and I’m sure this was written with the best intentions and possibly with a tongue firmly in cheek, I feel she has deeply misunderstood, reduced and misrepresented a multitude of black women’s voices. Aside from the problem of a white woman telling black women how lucky they are to be excluded from mainstream society, the leap of logic exhibited in the piece is frankly a bit dodgy.

The survey methodology

“Black women…hold all the secrets to a happy and ambitious life”

Coren has single-handedly decided that the lack of BME (black and minority ethnic) models in the mainstream media is the sole cause for black women tending to have greater self-esteem.

For a start, the respondents weren’t even asked why they felt good or bad about themselves. As the research is clearly not qualitative, that’s understandable. However to use the absence of further information to ascribe speculation to the results is a little reductive.

I’m no sociologist, but presumably any given individual’s self-esteem arises from a combination of various factors such as ethnicity and culture, family, romantic relationships, school experience, education, role models and others. There’s no one simple answer.

For the full post, please continuing reading at We Left Marks.

Less is Not More When It Comes to Black Women and the Media

In today’s Observer newspaper Victoria Coren kindly lets it be known that following from her readings of an article headlined ‘Black women ‘more confident in their bodies’ that, as a result, we are ‘300 miles further down the road of liberation than [our] paler sisters’. It is admirable that she is clearly such a fan of the strength and determination exhibited by ‘darker sisters’, however her analysis of the figures in the article above demonstrate that it is probably best for black women themselves to tell the world about their issues around self esteem. White middle class women, whose analysis of purely statistical data fail to recognize the complexity of our experiences, are not best placed to give a nuanced analysis.

In her piece Coren sites the fact that ‘in the survey, 67% of "overweight" black women said they had high self-esteem, compared with only 41% of "average-sized or thin" white women’. This is chalked up as evidence of the fact that black women need not ‘complain’, as we have been doing for so ‘long’, about the near lack of representation of us in the beauty industry. Despite bemoaning the fact that not enough black female figures are used in the ‘women’s market’, she tells us that ‘the bigotry in fashion, cosmetics, advertising, TV and Hollywood hasn’t damaged black women, it’s saved them!’ That is truly a bold statement to make, especially by someone who has no real experience of what she is writing about.

Any black person will tell you that the skin lightening industry is alive and kicking both here and abroad. Walk into any cosmetics retailer specializing in products for black people and you will find a wealth of creams declaring they will make you the lighter, brighter you, you have always wanted to be. And sadly, for far too many black people, that statement is in no way ironic. In India alone, the skin whitening market is growing at a rate of 18% a year. The nation’s leading research organization, AC Nielsen, believes that this figure will rise to 25%, making the market worth approximately £272 million. Globally the market is set to reach an estimated £6.3 billion by 2015. Yet, for Coren, black women are ‘mad to keep campaigning for greater visibility in Vogue or light entertainment, now it's clear that absence has made a lovely free space for them to form their own healthy self-image.’ Wishing that you are whiter and being willing to risk your health for the sake of doing so is not my example of a ‘healthy self-image’. Declaring to the world that it is a petty and ridiculous desire of black women to link our lack of representation in the media to these deeply harbored and negative self-images is, ever so slightly, annoying. It’s like someone adamantly insisting you’re absolutely fine when you know you’re not.

Coren goes on to argue that the fact that 68% of black women say it is ‘”very important’ to have a successful career’ as opposed to 45% of white women is testament to our ultimate well being. Not a second thought is given to the fact that this figure might be related to class. Could it possibly reflect our understanding that as women from, predominantly, working class backgrounds we recognize that financial independence is of paramount importance? The precedent being set by many of our mothers who continued to work as a necessity when their white counterparts could afford to stay at home. Therefore, could we just possibly take it, not as a token of our adamantine ability to emerge unscathed by prevailing beauty norms? Is it more a marker of how we have been triply disenfranchised through race, class and gender, recognize this and are resolute in doing something about it?

Neither does Coren understand the fact that though 62% of black women consider it ‘very important’ to have ‘free time to pursue other interests – compared with …55% of white women’, this does not necessarily mean that we are unbound from assiduously trying to reach the very distant ideals of white beauty shoved down our throats on an hourly basis. Ask any black woman with straightened hair, that’s many, Victoria, if you didn’t know, and you will see that in fact, we are OBSESSED with Western notions of beauty. The truth is that many of us, in order to retain the mystique of long, straight white hair, will forgo activities we love, like swimming, for the sake of maintaining a beauty myth that insists on perceiving our natural hair, out for all to see, as a sign of rebellion or attitude, rather than just another hair style.

As a white woman, Coren in what is well intentioned, wants to reassure us, in the way often, only white people can do, that black women really do need to stop complaining, things aren’t as bad as we think they are. Well, my answer Victoria is that I think we’re the better judges of that. We need more black women in the media affirming the fact that black is beautiful and intelligent and all other positive adjectives you can think of that we are never readily attributed to us.

by Lola Okolosie

Ethiopian Girl, Ethiopian Girl

by Saba Mozzagizi

The other day my friend was on the tube when she overheard a group of young boys talking about girls, she didn't really pay attention until she heard one of them say very loudly “I don’t care, I don’t care how hot that chick is, I only want an Ethiopian”.

It is true, what is considered beauty in popular culture changes, which means what is considered beautiful in hip hop culture changes. Pop culture is hip hop, but hip hop is not pop culture; meaning everything you hear on the radio has been influenced by hip hop but there are certain aspects of hip hop culture that can still remain outside of pop (ie. models with fake butts). So when you see women with big butts on television becoming the trend, you can bet that in hip hop videos that the women have even bigger behinds, some of which have been artificially enhanced.

These bodies are now artificial so these women who are idolized for their parts can have the same measurements regardless of ethnic background. However rap artists covet these women based on their race rather than their individual looks ie. shouting out Brazilian girls, Spanish girls, Asian girls, Light skinned girls, Dark skinned girls etc.

Lately I have been hearing more and more of this type of coveting language surrounding Ethiopian women, especially since I have moved to London. I have been stopped on the streets by men who are obviously not Ethiopian, that have taken the time to learn a few phrases in Amharic (the most spoken language in Ethiopia) to start a conversation. Why? People are people, the differences within races are greater than those between different races. There are plenty of “unattractive” Ethiopian girls!

I may be a bit sensitive because I am the first person in my family to have been born outside of Ethiopia, in Canada. My mother had lived a life of fear of her government, oppression of her political beliefs (she was a socialist), love and laughter before she had even arrived in Canada at the age of 25. So maybe I am sensitive to the fact that someone who has gone through so much should be only talked about for her outer beauty and for the fact that some teenage boy might have wanted to “have” her or date her daughters, nieces etc. just because she was born in a particular country.

Do not get me wrong, growing up in a city and going to schools with very few black people, hearing rappers consider women of my ethnicity beautiful, made me feel better. It made me feel like maybe, somewhere, people considered girls with my same background attractive. However, there is a difference between appreciating an individual’s beauty and deciding that you will only date one race or ethnicity of people.

Oh, and by the way calling a woman exotic based on her looks is not a compliment, it is racist.

Black women, beauty and advertising

by Chitra Nagarajan

I'm sure you all remember Satoshi Kanazawa's claim that "Black women are … far less attractive than white, Asian, and Native American women." Psychology Today has since apologised for the post and removed it from their site (hence, why I haven't linked to it but you can read commentary about it here).

This week, comes the news that

Naomi Campbell is like chocolate...

...and Dove can make your skin become 'visibly more beautiful in just one week' (meaning of course whiter).


So not impressed.

Operation Black Vote has called for Cadbury's to apologise and withdraw its campaign and said the Dove advert reflects subliminal racial stereotypes in advertising.

What do y'all think?