More on the Psychology of PC
Sailer famously (for HBDers) said that much of female journalism is demands that society change its standards of beauty so that the author is considered more attractive.
Time magazine is running a story on Michelle’s hair. Really. Apparently there are websites devoted to black hair.
When the First Lady attended a country-music event in July without a single strand of hair falling below her jawline, the blogosphere exploded with outbursts ranging from adoration to vitriol. Things settled down only when her deputy press secretary clarified that there had been no First Haircut. In the aftermath, a didactic post on MichelleObamaWatch.com proclaimed that anyone “familiar with the amazing versatility of black hair” would have known that the new summer look was simply “pinned up.” (See pictures of Michelle Obama’s hairstyles.)
Many Americans have dismissed this hair hubbub as simply more media-driven noise – like the chatter about Michelle Obama’s sleeveless dresses, J. Crew cardigans, stocking-free legs or, for that matter, recent (shocking!) decision to wear shorts in the Arizona heat. But for African-American women like me, hair is something else altogether – singular in its capacity to command interest and carry cultural baggage. The obsession with Michelle’s hair took hold long before Inaugural Ball gowns were imagined, private-school choices scrutinized or organic gardens harvested. It’s not that she’s done anything outrageous. The new updo wasn’t really all that dramatic a departure from variations we’ve seen on her before (the “flip-out,” the “flip-under,” the long-ago abandoned “helmet”). Still, her hair is the catalyst for a conversation that begins with style but quickly transcends outward appearance and ultimately transcends Michelle herself – a symbol for African-American women’s status in terms of beauty, acceptance and power. (See pictures of Michelle Obama’s style evolution.)
The hair buzz heated up right after the Democratic National Convention. Websites dedicated to black hair posted and reposted a Philadelphia Inquirer article addressing what was presented as an urgent question: Were the silky strands that moved so gracefully with each tip of her head during her Denver speech straightened with chemicals or with heat alone? How exactly did she metamorphose what we know was once tightly coiled hair?…
The amount of money black women spend on hair will be explored in Chris Rock’s upcoming comedic documentary Good Hair. “Their hair costs more than anything they wear,” he said. Which helps explain the recent news out of Indiana University that black women often sacrifice workouts to maintain their hairstyles.
One might think having a black First Lady who is widely praised as sophisticated and stylish would represent a happy ending to the story of black female beauty and acceptance. Alas, our hair still simultaneously bonds and divides us. “There is no hair choice you can make that is simple,” says Melissa Harris Lacewell, an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton. “Any choice carries tremendous personal and political valence.”
Even though I’m biracial and should theoretically have half a share of hair angst, I’ve sacrificed endless Saturdays to the salon. It is unfathomable that I might ever leave my apartment with my hair in its truly natural state, unmoderated by heat or products. I once broke down at the airport when my gel was confiscated for exceeding the 3-oz. limit. (See 50 essential travel tips.)
I’m neither high maintenance nor superficial: I’m a black woman. My focus on hair feels like a birthright. It is my membership in an exclusive, historical club, with privileges, responsibilities, infighting and bylaws that are rewritten every decade.
I feel for blacks. Not only do they have to deal with constant reminders of white superiority in intelligence, but looks too. Anyone who understands women shouldn’t doubt for a second that the latter has political implications.
If races as unequal as black and whites are going to live together, there’s either going to have to be A) an unembarrassed acknowledgement of white superiority (pre-1960s America) or B) an elaborate system of lies that denies any standards of truth or beauty in order to have some kind of cultural parity (American 1960s-the present).
As a commentator pointed out in the last thread, blacks are 12% of the American population but have won 27% of Miss America competitions over the last 25 years. Of course, judging everybody by the same standards would mean a white woman winning every year. Since we can’t have that, blacks are given an AA boost. But how can any individual white know that he’s being anti-racist enough in any particular case? He ends up more often than not going overboard. This is why we are told over and over again that blacks are smart, blacks are beautiful, blacks are hard working. Those ideas we have in our heads that there are these objective things called “truth” and “beauty” are lies we make up to defend our white privilege.
In the PC wars of the 1990s there were always these well meaning professors who would write books defending the classics and an absolute standard of beauty or truth. But they were neo-cons on race who didn’t realize that the majority of humanity is not going to subscribe to a value system that places other groups above them. Nor would they accept a literary cannon in which their race wasn’t represented and instead value excellence and human accomplishment for their own sake.
We must realize how intellectually lacking colorblind conservatism is. If whites want to declare themselves foes of moral and artistic relativism, they can’t at the same time say that all races are equal. The left understood that and so the push for racial equality meant a war on all standards from the beginning.
As a wise man once said (Nietzsche? I don’t remember) “Who needs to alter reality? Those who suffer from it.”
6 Comments
Sep 3, 2009 4:54 am |
“If races as unequal as black and whites are going to live together, there’s either going to have to be A) an unembarrassed acknowledgement of white superiority (pre-1960s America) or B) an elaborate system of lies that denies any standards of truth or beauty in order to have some kind of cultural parity (American 1960s-the present).”
Your not kidding!
Funny, but in countries that have a much greater African Negro presence, there is absolutely no ‘celebration’ of Négritude -
~
Languishing at the Bottom of Yemen’s Ladder – NYTimes.com
[...]
SANA, Yemen — By day, they sweep the streets of the Old City, ragged, dark-skinned men in orange jump suits. By night, they retreat to fetid slums on the edge of town.
“They are known as “Al Akhdam” — the servants. Set apart by their African features, they form a kind of hereditary caste at the very bottom of Yemen’s social ladder.”
[...]
“In fact, the Akhdam — who prefer to be known as “Al Muhamasheen,” or the marginalized ones — may have been in this southern corner of the Arabian Peninsula for as long as anyone, and their ethnic origins are unclear. Their debased status is a remnant of Yemen’s old social hierarchy, which collapsed after the 1962 revolution struck down the thousand-year-old Imamate.”
[...]
” “All the doors are closed to us except sweeping streets and begging,” Mr. Obaid said. “We are surviving, but we are not living.” ”
[...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/world/middleeast/27yemen.html?_r=1
~
*Gee, where is the UN and the Multi-Kult Marxists when they’re “needed”?? Hypocritters!
Sep 3, 2009 1:13 pm |
I’d say innate prferences for hair structure and style among females in humans is freakishly broad. Prior to any western contact, innumerable african societies employed truly outlandish and alien hair styles among both the men and women. Some obviously went for down-length hair which is natural for non-tropical populations, but it was almost always something like dreadlocks. Nothing that approached the typical uniformity of non-tropical hair.
On the subject of race and aesthetics again, there’s nothing wrong with arguing that one race is, on average, more attractive- what does have ramifications, however, is how much of an ethnic group’s ethnic features would be exempt from innate human preferences for beauty.
The masculinity of so many black women is one main reason why so many people find them unattractive, but that’s largely related to testosterone differences. Then, you have other factors to consider, like facial symmetry, which is such a profoundly variable physical trait that I can’t imagine any ethnic group having a clear-cut uniform advantage on this.
All this talk of race and aesthethics seems to act as if whites don’t have their own ethnic cranio-facial extremities- which they very likely do, but they seem to have expressed them far less than most other populations.
A few that come to mind would be overtly projecting noses or overtly concave noses, the opposite of convex noses, which are quite common amongst middle eastern, north african, and indian populations.
Overtly projecting noses, however, are much more common amongst middle eastern and caucasus populations, but these are still found rather commonly among europeans. They’re probably most common among caucasus populations. (IE, georgians, azerbaijanis)
Overtly concave noses are a rarity, but slightly concave noses are very common amongst northern europeans.
To get a better idea of what extreme ethnic nose types would look like for whites, you’d probably have to plot the human evolutionary responses of the nasal structrue to climactic conditions, and see what type of extremities could be produced in that type of continuum.
For the short time our species has been out of africa, we’ve seen a remarkable amount of the variation the limits of our genome allows us to physicall express. But we haven’t seen all of it. While you can see plenty of black skinned south asians who perfectly resemble nordics from a cranio-facial standpoint, you don’t see any populations with white skin yet typical african cranio-facial structure.
For all we know, whites might not be the people with the least number of nasal extremities.
Sep 3, 2009 1:47 pm |
Oh, and on that volatile issue of skin color again, I find it unbelievably inconclusive. I’ve actually had email convos with Peter Frost himself about his work, and even he’s rather skeptical of some of the antropological evidence for lighter skin preferences that have turned up for SS african societies.
Plus, certain aspects of it don’t add up. He bespeaks of how people, prior to the large multi-racial societies today, were more aware of the differences in skin color between the sexes. And he also says that these differences are more apparent among individuals/races with skin colors at or closer to the middle-ground of human skin color variation- IE, between very light (europeans) or very dark (sudanese and senegambian blacks).
There’s a couple flaws with this reasoning, though. While it’s certainly true men universally have darker skin than women, due to their higher testosterone levels producing more hemoglobin and some other sex-based melanin differences, the thing is that, these differences are so slight, I don’t think the vast majority of humans are able to pick up on this difference. Wouldn’t they be more aware of individual variation in skin color than broad, sex-based differences? This would hold more true for ethnic groups that fall outside of the extremities, especially incredibly diverse places like India. Even non-mixed groups like black africans or arabs, who are obviously racially homogenous, show skin color diversity on the level of a typical “multiracial society” that westerners would be accustomed to.
So, in face of all this, just how does one pick up on the skin color differences among the sexes? I myself, and anybody else I’ve talked to about the subject, have never, ever noticed this. (except Peter Frost) Plus, I think it’d be easier to pick up on sex diffences in skin color among the more extreme skin color ranges of ethnic groups, due to their being far more homogenous individual variation in skin color.
Maybe this supposed perception of men having darker skin than women is due to men working outdoors more, and thus tanning more often, and their darker skin and other factors allowing them to tan more easily.
There’s alot else I want to say about this, but I’ll just throw this one last piece in: http://pages.globetrotter.net/peter_frost61z/fwdm4.htm
“Not only do differences in complexion aid gender recognition, they also seem to influence sexual preference. When a thousand American students were surveyed on their physical preferences in the opposite sex, 30% of the males versus 10% of the females disliked black skin. Conversely, 56% of the males versus 82% of the females disliked very light skin (Feinman & Gill 1978).”
I’d like to get ahold of this study. It doesn’t say what the age group is, but it was probably college students. The men show less of a preference for dark skin on the opposite sex, but it’s only moderately higher than the women, and it doesn’t constitute the majority.
On very light skin, it’s even more interesting. A little over half of men dislike it, while nearly all the women do.
Think of how pre-modern east asian cultures- wherein many people still hold this preference- preferred women with incredibly pale skin, and used makeup to aid in this process. Makeup that was basically chalk white and obscured any other coloration in the skin, even blood flow.
And in pre-modern China, I’ve heard a preference for light skin on males was the norm, due to elite males working more in scholarly positions. But you have to remember that most cultures are indifferent to male pigment.
This issue is very convoluted, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a clear-cut final word. The anthropological evidence for a preference for light skin, as it stands now, and what’s available to just us, is powerful, but the evolutionary evidence (perceptions in sex based skin color differences, and the preference being due to a function in neoteny) don’t remotely add up.
Sep 3, 2009 11:41 pm |
I think Obama and Michelle should stop hiding their blackness and let their ‘fros grow out.
Sep 4, 2009 8:36 am |
It also must be difficult for the firsts family to suffer from hydrophobia. The first time Michelle falls into the pool her hair will revert back to its natural state by kinking up. All it will take is one picture.
Sep 4, 2009 12:20 pm |
“I think Obama and Michelle should stop hiding their blackness and let their ‘fros grow out.”
Afros can sometimes be attractive on good looking black women, IMO.
I wouldn’t like it too much if they were sporting hair styles like, er, these: http://nubianhairsupplies.homestead.com/hair-styles-in-africa.html
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