So there's been some controversy lately over what Tyra calls a "multiracial" photo-shoot that she put together this season on Top Model (it also happened in season four.) There have been plenty of people accusing Tyra of putting her models into black-face because she painted them & dressed them to represent stereotyped views of ethnicity other than their own. Tyra somehwat refuted these claims on her show by explaining what traditional blackface is; and, yes, its true that what Tyra did on her show wasn't blackface in the most traditional interpretation... but you know what? It still pisses me off.



Here's what rubs me the wrong way: Tyra claims that she did this shoot, partially, because as a black woman she has been frustrated for a long time about the way the modeling industry isolates black women (and pretty much any woman who doesn't look stereotypically Caucasian.) Okay, I get it, I'm with her there, and it SUCKS that there are fashion designers and magazine editors who will exclude models for not being white... but what Tyra did? Isn't helping.

Instead of celebrating bi-racial women by shooting bi-racial women, Tyra has turned a group of mostly Caucasian women into representations of these races. In essence, she is simply supporting the newly "trendy" practice that magazines like Vogue have been taking part in: painting white models to do "ethnic" photoshoots.   (Each link shows a different example of this trend in recent photoshoots!)



This sends all sorts of fucked up messages. For instance, black women may walk away feeling as if they aren't good enough  to depict their own ethnicity in a photoshoot.... because instead of casting a black woman, the producers of these shoots instead, decide to paint a white woman to play the part. Is this really the message we want to be sending to women?
This ties into another media & ethnicity related incident that caught my eye this week: on Saturday, SNL opened with a highly offensive skit that mocked relations between US and China. Beyond being completley degrading, the skit was offensive because of some awful casting choices made.

[Here's a video of the sketch along with an analysis from Jezebel]

Although the Caucasian actor depicting Chinese President Hu Jintao was not dressed up in any way to appear non-Caucasian (a decision that would have been considered "yellow face" by many) the accents that he and his 'translator' in the skit put on make a mockery of the real Chinese language, and the whole skit simply serves to underline my main issue: SNL didn't have a cast member who could accurately depict the Chinese President, because their current regular cast is 76% Caucasian.

I actually commented on the offensiveness of the casting in this skit while watching it in m room Saturday night, but the people I was with didn't see a problem stating that NBC "didn't have a choice" since they didn't have a Chinese actor on cast. "They cast based on talent," I was told, "they can't cast people based on ethnicity alone."

But thats not what I'm suggesting and honestly, this very common excuse seems incredibly flimsy to me.

The fact of the matter is: America is an incredibly diverse country, but oftentimes that does not read through our media. Many shows and magazines will often cast a token non-white actor/model/whatever but even that cursory gesture seems to be falling by the wayside, as "color-face" becomes more and more permissible and, yes, even trendy.

This is not the direction we need to be going in; we need to cast more diversity, not less! There are tons of talented models, and comedians, and actors out there who are not caucasian - they deserve the same chance that any white comedian/actor/model gets, and its up to the viewing public to get them that chance.

We have to call these magazines, and TV stations and let them know that we want to see diversity in our media, not the parody that we're currently being given.