{"id":909,"date":"2008-07-23T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T13:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=909"},"modified":"2008-07-23T09:01:15","modified_gmt":"2008-07-23T13:01:15","slug":"a-21st-century-paper-bag-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=909","title":{"rendered":"A 21st Century Paper Bag Test."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Move<\/a>
\nMcDonald’s “mixed race” “cha cha slide” kid <\/em><\/p>\n

“The biracial look is in vogue in advertising. The process of changing racial definitions continues, and dramatic new developments may be on the horizon.”\u2014<\/em>Anthony J. Cortese, Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising<\/em> (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), p. 113<\/p>\n

Always count on BlackCommentator.com<\/em> to, once again, boldly go<\/em>: “Biracial is the New Black,”<\/a> by K. Danielle Edwards, laments what the author sees as a new light-skinned color standard for Black people in advertising and related contexts:<\/p>\n

\n

What\u2019s up with all the olive-skinned, spiral-curled, hazel-, blue- and green-eyed folks standing in for black people in commercials and print advertisements these days?
\nI\u2019ve noticed this trend for a while now \u2013 black models being phased out in favor of a new ideal: taupe-hued beauties with coifs that look like water wave #6. Gone are the likes of models Phina and Beverly Peele and in are the\u2026 well, they certainly cannot be called black, in the conventional sense. Even during February\u2019s Fashion Week in New York, famed model Tyson Beckford asked, \u201cWhat happened to all the black models?\u201d And Naomi Campbell lamented, \u201cWomen of color are not a trend. That’s the bottom line.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She adds:<\/p>\n

\n

Flipping through a recent issue of a popular black women\u2019s magazine, in a Nivea lotion ad, I spotted a lanky light-skinned lovely with a crown of zig-zag curl #2, in the arms of a man who might be described as tall, dark and handsome, but certainly not black.<\/p>\n

A few pages over, my fingers landed on an ad for Just for Me hair products, featuring a little girl with a wet-n-wavy \u2018do and beige flesh, who looked primed for plessage, a la 19th-century New Orleans. Then I stumbled over a Roca Wear ad, featuring a Hapa-looking, sienna-skinned cutie.<\/p>\n

A few minutes later, I turned on the TV and shook my head as I saw the new McDonald\u2019s \u201cCha Cha Slide\u201d commercial, featuring a bright-skinned boy with Duke kit hair<\/a>, who somehow just doesn\u2019t fit in with his clearly black mom, dad and sister at the kitchen table.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Nowadays,” adds Edwards, “the media reveals an unsettling spectacle \u2013 the systematic encroachment upon conventional Blackness, as agents of racial ambiguity increasingly replace it.” Preach<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McDonald’s “mixed race” “cha cha slide” kid “The biracial look is in vogue in advertising. The process of changing racial definitions continues, and dramatic new developments may be on the horizon.”\u2014Anthony J. Cortese, Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), p. 113 Always count on BlackCommentator.com to, once again, boldly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}