Style

When Single Motherhood is a Crime

May 23, 2014 — 2 Comments

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9. Single Mom Jourdan Dunn

20-Year-old British model Jourdan Dunn is a single mom.  When asked about her son, she once said; “I will always put Riley before anything else because I’m a mother first, everything else comes after.”

So I happened upon this on Style Bistro.  I was a list of Supermodel Moms.  Innocent enough, you may say?  Not so fast!  Why is it when the list features a Black Supermodel, an adjective is used to introduce her.  The adjective that I speak of is “single”… as in Single mom Jourdan Dunn.  The connotations of the single mom label in reference to Black women inculcates: sexual irresponsibility, promiscuity and the lack of sexual morality that is synonymous with representations of Blackness in the media.

The other part that stands here is that Ms. Dunn’s age is also detailed.  In fact, these are the types strategies applied to conjure the notion of poverty politics in which: 1) children having children is a problem and, 2) these children are being had for the sole purpose of going on public assistance.  What this does is reinforce the racist belief of the “welfare queens” who not only refuses to work, but is living high off the hog thereby draining the government of it’s financial resources.

But Angelina Joile is a “single mom”.  And she has six children at that!  Yes, she has “selflessly” adopted children from foreign countries (that’s another blog post), but she had two to three biological children of her own, and has yet to get married to the father of her children.  But she is not admonished for being a single mother.  As a matter of fact, she is lauded for her so-called “humanitarian” and is portrayed as strong…a powerhouse example of new-age femininity.

Interestingly enough, this list features more than one single mother, however Style Bistro refused to point this fact out.  The model Arizona Muse for one is a single mother.  She had a child in her late teens, early twenties as well, following a similar trajectory as Ms. Dunn, I suppose.  Luckily for her and her son, they were featured in J.Crew together. Other single mothers features on this list include: Kate Moss, who recently got married and is a renowned coke head (great role model for girls!); Brazilian Isabeli Fontana, whom I believe was married and divorced to her child’s father in less than a year’s time; Miranda Kerr, who recently divorced Orlando Bloom; and let us not leave out Heidi Klum who divorced from musician Seal.  What I find very interesting about the Heidi Klum/Seal union is that the pair began dating while she was pregnant with another man’s child…very tacky, wretched behavior in my opinion.  Naomi Watts is also on this list, but I thought she was an actress? A Thierry Mugler fragrance ad does not make a model, but this is not the primary reason I mention her.  She too, is a single mother who has two children with her baby daddy Liev Schreiber, whom she lives with.  I see many dilemmas in this set up, but that is my own grievance.

So with all the single mothers on this list Jourdan Dunn was the only one featured as Single Mom.  Could it be that the representations of single motherhood across the color lines is lopsided?  My guess is a resounding YES!  Single motherhood does not necessarily constitute a female raising her child(ren) alone or that she is taking advantage of government entitlements.  Women the world over are not just encouraged to have children at a young age for fear she will grapple with infertility in her later years,  but that in this day in age women are more than capable to raise children without a man.  So let’s say, a young supermodel who makes buckets and buckets of money decides to have a child, how irresponsible is this considering she is financially secure? Allow me to also point out that Ms. Dunn only has one child and went straight back to modeling once her son was delivered.  What this does is illustrate a very mature attitude and strong work ethic, especially when considering her chronological age.  This young woman should be commended for her fortitude and resolve, not be stigmatized by a global system that works to insidiously target representations of Blackness in the public arena.

The perceived slight toward Jourdan Dunn really stands as a condemnation in disguise.Tsk! Tsk!  And the devil has the absolute audacity to be moralistic.   So when did it become a crime to be a single mother?  Oh…when a Black woman is raising a child on her own.  I thought that certain types of people were more superior than those of darker hues?  I thought those of the melanin deprived constituency had an unflappable moral constitution that prevented them for engaging in such lecherous and disparate behaviors? However, we should all regard the practitioners of racism white supremacy as universal moral arbiters?

Who is She to You, YAHOO?

May 19, 2014 — 1 Comment

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https://music.yahoo.com/photos/2014-billboard-music-awards-red-carpet-arrivals-1400453201-slideshow/

Shaking my head DAMN!!!  This devilish devil is at it again with a bag full of tricks and wit to say the least of it.  Judging from the above photograph the dastardly deeds of the devil aren’t clearly apparent.  But once you copy and paste the above link into your browser, you shall get wind of his variety of wickedness.  Occasionally, my inclination is not to always spell things out because I rather lead the horse to water, as opposed to place the cup directly up to his mouth.  Allow me to provide an analysis of the discrepant behavior.

The above photo is of the incredibly beautiful Kelly Rowland.  She is one of the only surviving members of the original Destiny’s Child girl group next to Beyonce.  She has gone on to have a, well singing career of her own where she has recorded a number of albums comparable to the amount that her former band mate has had.

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Well, the current debacle that prompts me to compose this post includes the other brown-skinned woman featured in the above photo with Ms. Kelly Rowland.  Her name is Estelle, and she is an R & B chanteuse from across the pond.  She too, has had a pretty fruitful career in her chosen profession.  My question is: can you pick out which one of these lovely ladies is Kelly Rowland and which one is Estelle?  A hint is: neither of them is Cyndy Lauper, who is off to the far right.  If you answered that Kelly is the lady showcased smack-dab in the center congratulations you have passed your annual eye exam.  The unfortunate thing is that the so-called “professionals” at Yahoo Music can’t seem to differentiate between the Blacks they report news on.  Looks like whomever captioned Kelly Rowland as Estelle needs to immediately re-consider a career change PRONTO!

I must say that I believe the person who made this “oversight” (I prefer to refer to it as an undersight if we’re going to be completely honest) is of the Caucasian persuasion.  It’s simple to draw this conclusion because Black people don’t look alike to other Black people.  Additionally, Black people understand the implications, even if not aware of the historical context of the idea of use all looking alike.  People can resemble each other, even remind us of people we know…I’ve even heard that all Black people have a twin in Africa.  But the fact that this event took place in America, we can abruptly dispel that hypothesis.  The practice of mis-identifying Black people as someone else is practice that I find is often reserved for Black females.

These are not mishaps or incidentals in the system of racism white supremacy…NO!  This is a tactic of war.  A contrivance to render the “other” as invisible; or diminish the value, virtue or humanity of a so-called minority within the system of racism white supremacy is certainly worth examining.  It is also worth affirming that this strategy is rooted in the fact that Western society often devalues the contributions and  presence of Black females as less desirable and the lowest of the rung.

White supremacist preoccupation with homogenizing the Black image is nothing new.  Just take a look at what appears on television and in the movies.  While depth and variance are prized within the context of whiteness, Black people who attempt to deviate from the norm or challenge the status quo are often criticized for being too abstract or having their works denounced as frivolous, improbable and unrealistic.  But isn’t the depiction of fantasy and imagination the primary ingredients of the media implementation, other than, for let’s say the news?  Fiction is fiction, and if one considers all the editing techniques and camera angles utilized in film and TV manipulation, we must conclude that even depictions of whiteness are works of fantasy and fiction so forth.

But back to the homogenization of Blackness.  This idea that “all Blacks look alike” was cemented into American society’s consciousness when research conducted in 1914 referred to this practice as the cross-race effect.  The theory goes “that humans tend to perceive people of other races than themselves to all look alike. All else being equal, individuals of a given race are distinguishable from each other in proportion to their familiarity or contact with the race as a whole.”  To understand this theory more acutely one must ponder 1) whom are the researchers referring to as “human”, and 2) what was the ethnicity of the test subjects?   These questions are important to consider when historically most non-white people in the U.S. and abroad within the system of white supremacist are doused the ideals, behaviors and thought processes of whiteness.  Thereby, white supremacist thinking is imposed upon all persons of color whether we are consciously aware of this phenomenon or not. This is what becomes adopted into the mainstream and later become better known as ways of being because we are products of our environment.  So when they indicate that some specific practice is consistent with “human” nature, we all fall right into line and become human, as opposed to hue-man, which about 90% of the world population is, in all regard.

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They say the devil is in the details and it’s the details that paint the picture, and as we well know a picture says a thousand words.  This tacky practice of misidentifying Black people as other Black people was well publicized at the latter of last year with the flagrant faux pas of identifying the luminous actress Alfre Woodard with the equally acclaimed actor Idris Elba.  Notice the distinction between actress and actor to signify that one is a female and the other is a male.  Yes, the wonderful people at the Giorgio Armani brand branded a Black woman as a Black man…despicable!  But this should not be a surprise because these are typical antics.  This is an entity who has a duplicitous agenda to create and provoke confusion in all areas of human relations.

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And recently at the vainglorious Met Gala, another hiccup occurred when the hip-hop legend Q-Tip (aka Kamaal the Abstract) was mis-identified as the U.K. rapper Tinie Tempah.  Via his Twitter, he quip’ “we all look alike”.  Although the undertones of his comment appeared on the surface innocuous, it was an appropriate condemnation of Vogue.com, whom later made the correction to accurately identify the man in the above photograph indeed as Q-Tip.  Once again, this should not be regarded as an inculpable act.  It is a conscious act of white supremacy that oftentimes expresses the Black presence is so insignificant that it is not worth exercising effort to be accurate about it, according to the rules of racism white supremacy.  I conclude the if Blackness didn’t matter, why would the dominant society work so feverishly to erase it?  It’s because Blackness is the primary muse for which this construct of whiteness can existence.  In order to put forth diligent efforts to erase an object of obsession, you must be eternally consumed with it is all that I’m saying.

By the way, this is a photograph of Tinie Tempah:

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So, if I were honest with myself I would conclude that the two men do indeed look alike; I mean, they both are wearing spectacles, are Black, male and rap.  Yup, I mean you would have to be blind to see otherwise.  But that is the condition of racism white supremacy.  It’s fundamental purpose is to synthesize everything and everyone that is not white into something uninspiring and monotonous.  Just another day on the job for the devil.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/armani-instagram-fail-black-twitter-attacks_n_4302110.html

http://www.ibtimes.com/q-tip-blasts-voguecom-identifying-him-uk-rapper-tinie-tempah-we-all-look-alike-1580977