{"id":4306,"date":"2010-01-02T01:27:38","date_gmt":"2010-01-02T01:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=4306"},"modified":"2013-04-03T19:04:51","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T19:04:51","slug":"post-race-on-america%e2%80%99s-next-top-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=4306","title":{"rendered":"Post-Race on America\u2019s Next Top Model"},"content":{"rendered":"

Post-Race on America\u2019s Next Top Model<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

International Communication Association, TBA
\n2007 Conference
\nSan Francisco, CA
\n2007-05-23<\/p>\n

Ralina L. Joseph<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Communications, American Ethnic Studies and Women Studies
\nUniversity of Washington<\/em><\/p>\n

African American supermodel<\/a> Tyra Banks<\/a>\u2019s popular reality show for aspiring young models, America\u2019s Next Top Model<\/a><\/em>, both reflects and produces twenty-first century ideals of post-feminism, a \u201cgirl power\u201d moment in which second-wave feminism is antiquated, and post-race, a post-Civil Rights<\/a> moment in which race is relic. ANTM<\/em> features a sizable number of women of color contestants who are led by an African American female leader. The show\u2019s explicit message is that racialized and gendered identities are equalized in the \u201cTop Model\u201d space. However, all of the contestants, both women of color and white women, are disciplined so that they must signify hyper-raced, hyper-sexed and essentialized versions of \u201cdifference.\u201d At the same time, the contestants must also perform as safe, genteel, and essentially white middle class \u201cCover Girls.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this paper I investigate performances of racial and gender masquerade in a 2004 episode of America\u2019s Next Top Model<\/em>. This episode features a confluence of race as costume, because the contestants \u201cswitch ethnicities\u201d with the help of makeup and wigs, and gender as maternity, because the contestants don milk mustaches and three-year-old children as props. ANTM<\/em> demonstrates that performances of post-ethnicity and post-feminism are always reliant upon racialized and gendered stereotypes and the logic of capitalism. While the mixed-race contestants are showcased as the most seamless transgressors of racialized and gendered identity, as all of the women slip on race and gender \u201ccostumes,\u201d the show illustrates the seductive power of post-identity politics in the twenty first century United States.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…As a graduate student I worked on notions of contemporary mixed-race African-American representations as being particularly emblematic of a post-race and postfeminist excuse that was vital in constructing neo-conservative political measures like California\u2019s 1996 anti-affirmative action measure prop 209 and 2003\u2019s racial privacy initiative prop[osition] 54. Historically and into the new millennium hybridized Black female bodies have been represented as not only sexually available, but also complicit in their exploitation (one of my favorite examples is Halle Berry<\/a>\u2019s much lauded academy award winning turn in 2001\u2019s Monster\u2019s Ball<\/a><\/em> where she screams out in her sex scene with her death row inmate husband\u2019s prison guard\/executioner Billy Bob Thornton<\/a>, \u201cmake me feel good!\u201d). What I\u2019ve been working on post-grad school is how these connected ideologies of post-race and post-feminism operate in other popular culture where mixed-race functions more often as a metaphor. One cite I\u2019ve been investigating is the celebrity of thirty-three year old African American supermodel turned media mogul Tyra Banks and the phenomenon of her reality television show, America\u2019s Next Top Model<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Post-Race on America\u2019s Next Top Model International Communication Association, TBA 2007 Conference San Francisco, CA 2007-05-23 Ralina L. Joseph, Assistant Professor of Communications, American Ethnic Studies and Women Studies University of Washington African American supermodel Tyra Banks\u2019s popular reality show for aspiring young models, America\u2019s Next Top Model, both reflects and produces twenty-first century ideals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,8413,8,14,394,20,25],"tags":[1706,1444,1707],"class_list":["post-4306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-papers","category-socialscience","category-usa","category-women","tag-americas-next-top-model","tag-ralina-l-joseph","tag-tyra-banks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}