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| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
It’s a slow day here at work…my colleagues have become gripped in World Cup mania (that’s cricket, son) and intersperse the general quiet with yelps and spurts of “sixer!” every now and then from the streaming coverage they’re watching. That’s what I get for working with Desis—and being a Desi myself whose interest in cricket begins and ends with Lagaan and the luscious Aamir Khan, it’s indeed a slow day. So why not write a completely frivolous blog entry?
The headline on MSN entertainment news says, “Hollywood is alive with cultural diversity, and these mega-talented stars have us in a trance”—and the accompanying slide show features 23 of the most beautiful and famous women of color in the entertainment industry today. Calling them “World Class Beauties” (and with a nice little accompanying corporate sponsorship), the featured women are indeed beautiful and sexy, and many are talented, ambitious and intelligent as well. You’ve got the usual suspects—Beyonce, Penélope Cruz, Salma Hayek. You’ve got the women who are superstars in their respective parts of the world but have yet to (or haven’t chosen to) truly break into the heady heights of celebrity in the U.S.—Aishwarya Rai, Yunjin Kim, Gong Li. And there are also the so-called “unconventional” beauties—Parminder Nagra, Norah Jones, Maya Rudolph.
Yes, these women are almost all predictably quite thin. Yes, these women are engaging in the capitalistic construct of contemporary celebrity and extreme wealth. Yes, for several of these women, society’s interest lies solely in their physical attractiveness. And you could even say that for some of the women, their “cross-over appeal”(read: lighter skin, hair, or eyes) has enabled them to be embraced by Hollywood.
But keeping all of these things in mind—and critiquing it—sometimes it is just nice to see women of color featured as sexy and beautiful. I guess this is just one of those days.
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In Hollywood, you have leading men and women of all genders and ethnicities... but basically no Asian American men. You get Asian (not American) men brought in occasionally to play the asexual martial arts master, and that's about it.
(This is more about neglect than overt racism - Americans love a good fight movie, the best fight movies are currently produced in Asia, and the values systems for Asian movie audiences tend to be different. "Gorgeous", Jackie Chan's pet project romantic comedy, had to have all the love scenes cut out because it wouldn't play with East Asian audiences.)
Women of color are getting far broader options for screen roles than men of color in America, it seems to me.
As for the thin-ness -- plus-size actresses of color have significantly more opportunities than plus-size white actresses of color. Queen Latifah and Mo'nique pop immediately to mind, but then you've also got popular indie flicks like "Real Women Have Curves", etc.
If you can think of counterexamples, feel free to point me to 'em.
And, I also agree with you (wow, has this ever happened before?) regarding full-figured women of color having more opportunites. Some would trace that back to women of color, unlike white women, realizing that no matter how thin they tried to become, they would never reach the "idealized" standard of WHITE beauty--so alternate standards were created within communities of color. Still, although Chandra Wilson and America Ferrera might be rockin on prime time, why were none of them featured in this slide show? Does breaking into the mainstream mean adopting all of the oppressive values of the dominant society?