It used to be my opinions were confined to the effective or ineffective use of the Mad Relative. But I'm all THINKING THINGS lately, and I blame you.
We are, in what is becoming (sadly) the usual, talking about whitewashing again. I'm going to disagree with the Book Smugglers a little bit, which is not something I do terribly often because let's face it, they're usually right.
Oh blogger, your photo formatting is so droll. Anyway, dirty deeds have clearly been done, by which I mean some rather wanton photoshopping.
But, ok, is this specifically and only 'whitewashing' or is it part of a larger problem with our representations of beauty? I doubt the artists were all, Let's make this guy look less black, and were more, Let's make this guy better-looking. The fact that that ended up meaning the same thing is clearly cause for concern.
Because our definition of beauty is, not even 'white,' but a specific subset of 'white' (with maybe a few drops of 'non-white' code-named 'exotic.') I'm reminded of this video, where magazine cover-fixer-uppers take a perfectly pretty (and white!) girl and make her eyes larger, her neck longer, her cheeks slimmer, and then say THIS AND ONLY THIS IS ATTRACTIVE. AtU's cover bastardizers definitely made the main male character (who, by the bye, is a person of color) look white, but more specifically like a Particular White Guy With Hollywood-Face.
In my eyes, the Across the Universe mess is different than the Silver-Phoenix-we-don't-want-an-Asian-on-our-cover debacle. Because I am white, but my nose is nubby and my neck is short and I would be photoshopped to hell and back before I made it on any book cover, even if the book was specifically about a nubby-nosed short-necked girl. As much as we like to read about non-standard characters, someone somewhere hasn't accepted that we might want to look at them, too.
Someone somewhere else is now going to come after my ass for referring to POC as 'non-standard' and perpetuating an ideology of white normativity and if that's you then YOU ARE CLEARLY NOT LISTENING TO WHAT I'M SAYING. I'm saying that January Jones is standard and Olivia Wilde is an acceptable deviation from the mean and the rest of us, race notwithstanding, are nonstandard.
Stepford face
So. Both/and? Whitewashing, AND indicative of our ever-narrowing (and unrealistic) representations of beauty? I am open to being vehemently disagreed with and also lectured on how my white privilege encourages me to see problems only in things that also discriminate against my nubby-nosed short-necked self.
I see it as both, really, mostly because of what you said - "better looking" and "closer to a specific subset of white that has become the 'standard'" DO mean the same. And to me that makes it kind of impossible to dissociate it from race. I've seen some people suggest in comments that to call shenanigans on something like this cheapens "real" race issues, but I don't see how we can draw the line between "real" and "not real". I also don't see how we'll ever be able to address these issues in all their complexity if we don't look at the bigger picture. Yes, it's about standards of beauty, but to suggest that these can be separated from race makes no sense to me. (And just for the record I know you weren't saying they could or should be.) #justmytwocents
ReplyDeleteI think I agree with Ana.
ReplyDeleteDid you see the discussion happening at Dear Author? It is really interesting too. (beware some truly horrendous comments though)
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2011/01/24/monday-midday-links-more-ya-whitewashing/#comments
That is why I always wanted mousy hair, freckles, and glasses, because that is what the kid-book heroines had and they looked so pretty on the cover. (And were brave and awesome inside the book, too, of course.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, conformity is for dystopia. Not that it hasn't been said before, but it's being different that makes us human and special and all that.
ReplyDeleteNymeth/Ana - I agree that they are part and parcel. People in the Dear Author comments (to which, dear Lord) who are saying Oh, well he just looks fat and ugly so of course they changed it, those people seem to miss the fact that the model is a REAL PERSON (as far as I can tell?) who exists in the world with his own natural face, and to say that because his own natural face doesn't conform to Generic Attractive Face it should be changed? It's not like someone DREW a face and then is like, Oh wait, that's not what a face looks like. That IS what a face looks like! THAT GUY'S FACE! So, I agree that the beauty issue is related to the race issue, but in this case where it isn't an obvious bait-and-switch (like in Cindy Pon's book) it spirals into debates about whether they made him look more white or not, which is infinitely arguable and never decidable.
ReplyDeleteThe Celebrated Author - Pictoral representations of The Nerdy Chick are never quite what they should be. It's like when a movie 'uglifies' an actress by giving her glasses and a ponytail so they can make her over later.
We're talking about the "Across the Universe" covers here, yes? So far as I can tell, the only difference between the first photo (in my browser) and the second photo is that the second one has filled in the space between the two faces with--well. Space. More stars and nebulae. And some new text. I honestly can't tell a thing about the skin tones of the two faces; they look rather grey to me. I'm -pretty- sure it's a guy on top and a girl on bottom, but even that's more of a guess than anything else.
ReplyDeleteDid the skintones of grey even change from one picture to the next? Are we sure it's not an optical illusion created by the new contrasted background? I'm not. I mean, I've owned shirts I totally thought were black until I tried wearing them with a black blazer, at which point I realized they were actually navy blue. And don't even get me started on tuxedos, where "midnight blue" is actually the darkest color you can get. I don't know what Crayolas designers use, but they're certainly not colors I ever set to paper as a child.
Will - It's easier to see on the side-by-side (maybe click over to the Book Smuggler's link) but the shape of the jaw, cheek, and forehead have been altered to be more white-person-looking.
ReplyDeleteI'm still thinking on this, but I agree with Nymeth and you on the idea that beauty and race are interlinked heavily. Right now I'm thinking, if we have to make a judgement about whether this is a race issue or a race issue and a wider issue then I'd say yes we're looking at a very narrow standard of beauty for everyone that excludes many white, non standard beauties, but...at least white people get to keep their racial identity whatever else may be obscured right? I mean if you're Beyonce you get all the crazy 'we hate beauty' photoshopping/person hatred everyone gets AND you get your racial identity removed in pictures as they lighten your hair and skin. If you're Kate Blanchett you get all the first stuff, but you get to keep your skin colour and hair that resembles your own. Agh I am veering into degrees of suffering talk so I'm sure there's something I'm missing that should be included.
ReplyDeleteI had my own rant about this last year. It was around the time Heidi Montag 'revealed' herself after all that surgery. It worries me as I have a girl who is totally obsessed with fashion (don't know where she gets it, I wore plaid until the 8th grade). She's just getting a taste of conformity at school because of some older girls and I'm trying hard to get her to stick with her own ideas.
ReplyDeletePS- In every film of Jane Eyre, Jane keeps getting prettified. She is supposed to be plain. Those actresses are not plain. They haven't made her blonde, yet.
I don't know enough about all of this to intelligently comment on standards of beauty and race, but I do prefer the first photo. Not sure if that's because I know the first one is real and the second one has been photoshopped or not. I just wish people were trusted with the truth more often.
ReplyDeleteClicked to the link. I see the difference in tones, but I'm not convinced it wasn't done solely to create better contrast against the new background.
ReplyDeleteAs for altering the shape and such: was that for race, or just because that's what everybody does with Photoshop? Did they really alter his jaw line to make him look more white, or thinner?
I dunno. Then again, I'm not a big fan of characters on covers.
Will - I think that the point here (I may be wrong - it's happened before!) is that by altering his jawline from what is definitely an African one to a jawline that is less discernibly racial, we have entered Racial Issues territory. So the question, like Raych says, is infinitely debatable; the typical African silhouette has a more sticky-outy chin and bigger lips than a white silhouette, so changing the chin/jawline/lips/etc. to something less "ethnic" is a problem when we start thinking hard about Standards of Beauty and how we none of us measure up. Now, we can talk about this until long after the next George R. R. Martin book is published [which should happen about when the damn cows finally come home... grrrrr(m)!!] and still not have an answer as to possible whitewashing because no Photoshopper or publishing house in their right MIND would admit to that crap. But because it was approved and because it is subtle, it sneaks into our consciousness: a more traditionally white silhouette is preferable, beauty-wise, to a more traditionally African one.
ReplyDeleteAnd FWIW in regards to the Dear Author comments, I call bullsh*t on the "they're making him thinner" argument. The model is clearly not fat from the neck up. I reserve judgment on the rest of him.
Raych, I think you nailed it.
ReplyDeleteWhat's completely bonkers about that Dove ad is that the same company (Unilever) produces and sells skin bleacher in India.
ReplyDeleteJodie - It's tricky to get into degrees of suffering. If I were photoshopped for a magazine cover my freckles would be whited out and my hair either lightened or darkened and my various features re-jiggered and I would end up looking like my much-hotter cousin or something, but I would still at least be my original race. So. This is a tangly issue.
ReplyDeleteChris - I'm terrified of having daughter for this same reason. BUT! In the new Jane Eyre with whazzername from Alice in Wonderland, who is exceedingly pretty, it LOOKS like they made her quite plain. Not ugly, just boring. Which is how I think of Jane: Original Sauce.
Amy - This is why we have the internet, so that someone can stand up and wave flags around this sort of thing that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Will - That's sort of my point. Maybe it was just to make him 'better-looking,' but 'better-looking' usually = 'whiter.' Regardless, that is a guy with a face and why can't we just leave people's faces the fuck alone? To claim that it was done for 'aesthetic reasons' is code for 'I don't like to look at non-perfect people.' Aesthetics needs to sit in the corner and think about what it has done.
Tikabelle - What you said.
Colleen - Grassy ass. I'm still feeling my way about in this one.
Ky - What's ALSO completely bonkers about Unilever is that they sell Axe Body Products, i.e. Hot Woman Bait.
Definitely they took an African profile and photoshopped off the distinctive features. Which would be bad but... the character isn't African (note: so I have heard; haven't read the book yet). He is apparently described as Not Of (or Primarily Not Of) White European ancestry, but also specifically as Not Of African ancestry.
ReplyDeleteSo it starts to look as though when the cover designers were told "This character is a Person of Color," they assumed that meant African, and slapped the cover together without actually reading the book, or checking with anyone who had. And I imagine they were well aware of the controversies of the last couple of years when pretty white faces were put on books about definitely non-white characters, and they were patting themselves on the back because they didn't do that. Then someone who had a clue about the character said, "...Ummm, wait a minute..." and there they were, poor cover designers, egg on face, again.
And then... making the whole story even MORE messy, this book has a reversible cover. One side has the (in)famous picture of profiles against the pretty pink and purple star-filled sky, and the other has a blueprint-like cutaway diagram of the spaceship. According to one review I read, this was done so librarians could change the cover in order to emphasize the romance or the adventure, and thereby aim the book at one or another demographic (not stated but strongly implied to be girls, who want luvvv stories, and boys, who wouldn't be caught dead reading them).
So all in all, the cover is a massive mess of assumptions.
The book itself sounds interesting, and I'm looking forward to reading it. They probably should have just used the spaceship cover, though--which I prefer, girly girl though I am.