Integrative Explorations Journal
ALIENATION: The Body and Color in Question Rekha Menon State University of New York, Buffalo State "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" As children we accept that "the fairest" is the same sort of measure as the fastest, the tallest or the richest. Later, in the growing sophistication of adulthood, we determine that the most beautiful is more like the bravest, the most popular or the most powerful. It becomes a judgment about which one might have an opinion but remains a quality that ultimately can be established by an independent and attentive authority. "Ladies and Gentlemen, the judges have reached a decision. The new Miss World is . . .." Thus the question continues to be posed . . .who is the fairest as though it were meaningful, even if the category of them all includes women of diverse races and nationalities. Indeed female beauty is becoming an increasingly standardized quality throughout the world. A standard so strikingly white, western and wealthy it is tempting to conclude there must be a conscious conspiracy afoot. 1
Sure there is. Isn't there? There is no need of a hidden plot to explain the pervasiveness of this image. The LOOK, the image, the western model, represents a mandate for an acceptable way of life . . .. The difference of the Other has proved adaptable to a wide range of theoretical frameworks and practical expressions. Modes of analyzing the Other are intertwined in complex and subtle ways with the changing fashions of the difference expression. There is a growing recognition now, though hardly universal, that the discourse of the Other in question is more chameleonic in its nature, in some ways more subtle in its modes of expressions, and more central to the modern self–conception than the traditional view allows. The Other, some now insist, is a category that should no longer carry social effect, "Many, whether supporting or contesting this contention, nevertheless agree that 'Other' (my emphasis) continues to color if not pervade contemporary cultural expressions." 2 Relations of theory and practice may be identified between historically transforming conceptions of Self/Other and the other changing categories of social inclusion or exclusion, such as ethnicity, nationality, class or gender. Alienating the Other has served as a central category of naturalizing, socializing, recognition and self–representation. The discourse of Self/Other and racist ways of seeing the world and representing it, have constituted and, more subtly still, articulate central tropes of modern characterization and contemporary figuration of oneself and Other. 1 Wendy Chapkis, “Skin Deep,” Beauty Secrets: Women and Politics of Beauty (South End Press, Spring, 1994) 37 – 38. 2 David Theo Goldberg, “Introduction,” Anatomy of Racism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990) xi.
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