{"id":60749,"date":"2021-04-19T17:20:48","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T17:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=60749"},"modified":"2021-04-19T17:21:35","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T17:21:35","slug":"why-celebrating-mixed-race-beauty-has-its-problematic-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=60749","title":{"rendered":"Why celebrating \u2018mixed-race beauty’ has its problematic side"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why celebrating \u2018mixed-race beauty’ has its problematic side<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/a>
\n2021-04-08<\/p>\n

Natalie Morris<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nKim Kardashian West<\/a> at a Paris Fashion Week event on 2 March 2020. Photograph: Marc Piasecki\/WireImage<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The trend personified by the Kardashians is driven by the aesthetics of ambiguity \u2013 and proximity to whiteness<\/em><\/p>\n

I was insecure about how I looked when I was younger. My hair was frizzy and embarrassingly enormous. My bum<\/a> stuck out too much. My lips were too big. My thighs were too big.<\/p>\n

Everything about me \u2013 specifically my racialised features as a Black mixed woman \u2013 felt \u201ctoo much\u201d. I remember the distinct feeling of wanting to shrink myself, melt myself down into something neater, smaller, sleeker \u2013 which is how I saw my white friends, and the beautiful white people on TV.<\/p>\n

Then, in my early 20s, soon after moving to London<\/a> from my home in Manchester<\/a>, I began to notice a shift in how beauty was being represented. Suddenly, faces, hair and bodies that looked like mine were plastered on shop windows, grinning down from billboards, smizing (smiling with their eyes) from the pages of magazines. Every other TV ad featured mixed models or an interracial family.<\/p>\n

White influencers began plumping their lips, baking their skin, braiding their hair, even undergoing invasive surgical procedures to create curves where none existed. The things about myself I had wanted to disguise or alter in my youth were now in vogue \u2013 and I struggled to get my head around that. How did it become \u201ctrendy\u201d to look like me? And should I feel pleased<\/em> about it?…<\/p>\n

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

The trend personified by the Kardashians is driven by the aesthetics of ambiguity \u2013 and proximity to whiteness<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8413,8,10,20],"tags":[27733,2103],"class_list":["post-60749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-uk","category-usa","tag-natalie-morris","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60749","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=60749"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60752,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60749\/revisions\/60752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}