some folks need to read 'the bluest eye'

Maghag: Where Are All The Black Models? Let's Start By Asking Anna Wintour - Jezebel

this article by the times, paired with the jezebel post, is sort of interesting. it's something i thought about, too, while i was walking through Around the Coyote this weekend. the entire festival was a feast of images of middle class white angst. how many self portraits of waify, doe-eyed, depressed looking white hipsters was i going to have to endure? or, if i wanted to see some representations of brown-ness, was i going to settle for photographs of hurricane katrina victims and mardi gras? yuck.

more and more, i see artistic representation turning inward; we are only willing to represent what reflects ourselves. i think this is what's happening in fashion - the agents, bookers, designers, editors are not able to tear their gazes away from their mirrors. i don't care about whether models get work (girl, this is why college is a good idea) but i care about the representation of reality - or, if 'reality' isn't quite the word to use, then the representation of experience.

what does it mean when experience is only filtered through a homogenized lens?
when the only images we see are white, i think that's a problem.
when you aren't visibly represented in popular culture you might as well be invisible to everyone's naked eye.

in other words, we are training our eye to be blind to difference.

however, i believe that if this situation is ever to change, then the means of production has to change hands. know what i mean? at every stage of fashion production, the person in charge is white - the designers are white, the agents are white, the publicists are white, the editors are white, the publishers are white, the CEOs of the fashion houses are white, the buyers are white. it's a proverbial parade of whiteness.

until these things change, there's not much hope of seeing more diversity on the runway.