Like a BOSS
Hey, guys. So… race, what’s up with that? Word on the Internet is that stylists are now taping back the face skin of Vogue models, ostensibly to give them Asian looking eyes. Refinery 29 wonders if eye-taping is the new blackface, while 8asians quips that Chinky eyes are in. Meanwhile, the Asian women who come through my ESL class consistently ask me to name the English word for the eyelid crease that white people have. To their disbelief, there is no specific word in English because “we” typically don’t think about it. Little do we know how beautiful and enviable our giant eyes are to some, like the Korean girls who get eyelid surgeries as graduation presents.
On a recent visit to the wonderful Museum of Chinese in America I learned that yellowface is a very real tradition which extends far and beyond the Mikey Rooney phenomenon to many deeply offensive, absurdly hilarious, possibly okay, and whatever moments in the history of entertainment. In light of more serious qualms, what judgement is there to really lay down on the fashion world for wanting to change the shape of an eye? If I can tell you anything, it’s that these fetishes swing all ways. I am curious to see how people will become aware of this practice if it continues. Will they see it in a larger context of cultural beauty swapping? As exploitative or maybe desiring? Where are the Asian models?
And… Have you heard of Afrocentric? This man’s t-shirt certainly adds some odd-ball garnish to the above conversation, but let’s skip the unpacking and just enjoy it. Karen of Liv-Chic Furniture and Design asked for his photo on West 4th and 6th Ave in Manhattan. She says, “He was super nice and I am not quite sure if he understood the delicious irony, his friends thought he was SUPER cool that a NYer was stopping him on the street to shoot him.”
PS. It’s worth your while to visit this traveling exhibition on Race. I saw it in Nola and it gave me a lot of good things to think about.
