Let's Give This Some Thought Somer Magnin

DESCRIPTION

In this episode we are going to dig into anti-blackness in our post-modern society as shown through fashion advertisements and magazines. This topic occurred to me a couple weeks ago as a mundane yet massively impactful way which anti-blackness is normalized every day. So how is it that the multi-billion-dollar fashion industry bringing anti-blackness into our daily lives?



SHOW NOTES

The fist topic of this episode is the 2008 Vogue cover featuring LeBron James, the basketball player, and Gisele, the super model. This advertisement has rightfully become on of the industry's most controversial advertisements as it is posed to resemble a King Kong poster. James portrays the gorilla, looking intimidating, strong, and predatory. Gisele portrays the female victim with a blue dress on, smiling, and held onto by James. This magazine cover is a clear representation of anti-blackness because it compares James to a gorilla, showing him as stupid, controllable, and something to be feared. This has been a common and extremely offensive comparison made by white people of black people to show blacks as inhuman and needing to be criminalized. The portrayal of James is a stark contrast to Gisele as she plays the victim, the white woman victim. Gisele's role in this ad is equally as harmful to racial stereotypes as she embodies and eternalizes the role of the white woman being taken advantage of by the predatory black man. This paradigm of white woman being the cause of villainizing black men is a very common narrative through American history that has resulted in false imprisonment of black men, white victimization and fragility, and a deeper racial divide. 

The second topic of the episode is fragrance advertisements. The first tow mentioned have white men in them. They are looking directly at the camera and have a woman draped over them like she is hypnotized by his scent. The only advertisement for a fragrance I could find was for the fragrance Unforgivable Woman and features a black man pushing a woman with notably lighter skin up against a wall in a very predatory way. First, the fact that I could only find on fragrance ad with a black man in it speaks to the society's racial preference for advertising which creates an issue of racism as only portraying one color of skin in ads makes that one race/color seem the norm and all other races become "others". Additionally, the way the men are posed in the ads is an example of society's anti-black opinions and patterns by portraying the white men as the center of desire but the black man as a sexual predator. Showing the black man as a sexual predator of this woman also adds to the paradigm of white woman fragility by advertising that they should be afraid of black men, leading to the further false criminalization of black men in America.

References:


URL to reference the Vogue cover with LeBron James and Gisele side by side with the king kong poster: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/uncovered-possible-inspir_n_93944 
URL to reference the Vogue cover only: https://www.thefashionspot.com/runway-news/439187-controversial-vogue-covers-published/3/
URL to view Lauder for Men cologne advertisement: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/perfume-ads-1980s
URL to view Azzaro cologne advertisement: http://www.mimifroufrou.com/scentedsalamander/2012/08/azzaro_pour_homme_night_time_2.html
URL to view blog with Unforgivable Woman fragrance advertisement: http://maisqueperfume.blogspot.com/2011/12/sexual-degradation-stereotypes-and.html.  [INCLUDES SENSITIVE CONTENT}
Information on anti-blackness and white fragility in podcast is largely from the book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo