jnamakkal:

On this season’s ANTM, they made the models dress up as “mixed race,” or as they announced “you will all portray two different very distinct races.” They then proceed to the the girls what their “races” are: Mexican-Grecian, Botswanan-Russian, and my personal fave, of course, Native-American/Indian. Following the squealing and exclamations such as “I don’t know anything about Tibet except that it needs to be freed” the handlers start to transform the “racial” identities of the models. And yes, this pretty much means dressing them in black-face.

Really? Two distinct “races”?

A few observations: first, they preface the whole thing by shouting out America’s most famous hapa (basically, halfie, mixed race). The shoot is happening in Hawaii, which is not only Obama’s home state, but also an island populated by a non-white indigenous population that was colonized by America. Strike one.

They insist on using the term “race” over and over, when it is clear what they mean in this context is cultural identity, signaled largely by fashion. While there is some value somewhere to acknowledging the cultural heritage of certain fashion trends, what they are doing here is essentializing heterogenous groups of people by confusing physical characteristics, cultural heritage, and nationality. This type of belief in the collective essential physical and mental characteristics of individuals within national borders has been the basis for the perpetuation of institutional racism. While they claim to be making a “mixed race” all they are doing is adding together two essentialisms: for example, Botswanan=black, Russian=ornate dress. Put the two together and you get what a 19th century racialist would have gotten. Strike two.

As the legions of 19th and 20th century European and American colonialists learned, exoticism sells. Mixing two “races” together, unexpectedly (Mexican-Grecian?), is meant to appeal to a nostalgia for the beauty and exoticism of colonial adventures, a romantic ideal that has died out with the realities of global migrations and third world struggles. The complexities of ethnic identity, an issue that faces many people throughout the world as most of us operate within a system of nation-states which leaves little room for the recognition of hybrid identity (which box do you check on the census forms?), are far shamefully misrepresented by this throwback to an era where it was okay to paint a girl brown, put a head dress on her, and call her an Indian. Strike three.

If ANTM did want to make a anti-racist statement about mixed-race identity in contemporary America, they could. Many of the girls on the show are of “mixed” identities, but the majority of them probably consider themselves “American” (you’ll notice that while the show takes place in Hawa’ii, no effort is made to link Hawaiian  exoticism with American identity.) Asking the contestants to represent themselves and their personal understanding of national identity might be interesting. Of course, that probably wouldn’t do a very good job of selling the bodies of 18 year old girls to a public intent on objectifying bodies they can’t relate to.