Vaseline has launched a Facebook app in India that allows users to lighten or whiten their skin tone in their profile photos. The app promotes Vaseline’s skin-lightening creams for men and feature Bollywood actor Shahid Kapur, whose face is spliced in two, half dark, half light. When downloading the app, Facebook says “Try the Vaseline Men Be Prepared Application for a fairer and spotless profile picture.”
Oh, if only this were about removing “spots.” Keep reading »
“I respect designers who aren’t afraid to go outside the box. I went to a Jean Paul Gaultier show, and I saw girls who are thicker than me, beautiful and voluptuous and different ethnicities. That made me so excited. I thought, ‘Okay, I can work that, for sure.’ It’s clear there are definitely fewer black women in the high-fashion industry. One of the things I respected most about Gucci was that they did a print campaign with me [in 2008]. I’m a black girl on a fashion spread for Gucci — that was a big deal.”
— Rihanna talks to Elle about diversity in high fashion. But what we really want to know is how does she feel about obvious Photoshopping? [E! Online] Keep reading »
Alicia Keys‘ new music video for “Unthinkable (I’m Ready)” addresses the heavy topic of interracial dating throughout the decades. I like the video, actually, because it shows how bigotry doesn’t necessarily disappear with time. But over at Feministing, our friend Courtney M. Martin — who’s also a Frisky contributor — is unimpressed. Martin found the “white dude in a truck and a bunch of angry black men” motif annoying, accusing Keys’ video of “fall[ing] into all of the tired stereotypes of the tragic interracial love story.”
Surely interracial dating is a complicated issue to deal with in a five minute-long music video, but maybe Alicia Keys could have been more original. What do you think? [Feministing] Keep reading »
Warning: this clip from a new ABC TV show called “What Would You Do?” is hard to watch, even though I know the “abusive boyfriend” and the “abused girlfriend” are only actors.
On four different occasions, “What Would You Do?” filmed diners at a restaurant watching two “couples” — one white, one black — sit down at a table when the “girlfriend” has obviously just been beat up. In both cases the “girlfriend,” who has cuts on her face and bruises on her arms, is terrified of her “boyfriend” and tells him to stop making a scene in public. Of course, he does not stop making a scene at all and only escalates his anger in front of all the other diners.
Good Samaritan strangers step in to help these abused “girlfriends.” Except when they are dressed provocatively, that is. Keep reading »
I haven’t seen “The Back-up Plan” yet, which is Jennifer Lopez‘s new flick about a woman who conceives via a sperm donor before meeting a guy she falls in love with. I just read this post at Feministing by blogger Miriam Perez, though, which pointed out something kind of odd: Lopez’s character in the film not only has a Caucasian grandmother, but gives birth to blue-eyed, redheaded, light-skinned twin babies. Keep reading »
It was in-crowd matchmaking of the highest order: Maureen Dowd, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, offered to set up Helena Andrews, a reporter for the politics site Politico. “I’ve got a guy for you. He’s so hot, it’s perfect,” Dowd told Andrews during the 2008 election, identifying her plum bachelor as none other than candidate Barack Obama‘s personal assistant, Reggie Love. To some political wonks, Barack Obama’s right-hand man might have been a prize. But the Times‘ wannabe yenta turned out to be wrong: Andrews and Love didn’t hit it off at all. (Especially not after Love arrived to the date one hour late in gym clothes.)
Such a matchmaking foible was “dismayingly consistent,” Helena Andrews writes in the June Marie Claire. “Never mind the complicated algorithms of eHarmony: My matchmakers used simple math. Black professional + black professional = Huxtables.” Except … not. Keep reading »
[Essence]
[CNN] Keep reading »
This is the best response to Vanity Fair‘s all-white cover of Hollywood starlets we’ve seen: some pranksters mocked up a fake cover of “Vanity No Fair,” with — gasp! — women of color sitting in the same outfits and poses as the actresses on Vanity Fair‘s March 2010 issue. Click here to see a larger version.
Thanks, ladies, for showing us what Hollywood really looks like: more like reality. [Sita Young] Keep reading »
“Many customers have brought to our attention one of the color names listed for our BDG Burnout Henley, and rightfully so. We screwed up, and are sincerely sorry. The burnout pattern on this shirt is comprised of two colors – one is an internally developed color we called ‘Obama Blue’ and the other is ‘Black.’ Unfortunately our website database truncated this combination to read ‘Obama/Black.’ We should have caught the error, and apologize for offending anyone.”
– Urban Outfitters responds to complaints received after a T-shirt on its website was described as being the color “Obama/Black.” [Jezebel] Keep reading »
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