photo from The Root
On January 13, 2014 Gabourey Sidibe attended the Golden Globe Awards. Twitter couch correspondents criticized her physical appearance and gown during the awards show. Sidibe had an interesting response to the criticisms.
Sidibe's response was witty.
Please refer to the CNN coverage of this issue here. You can read Gabourey Sidibe's twitter post here.
In class we discussed how beauty is policed in society, particularly black women's lives. We decided to use the term "pretty patrol". How is Sidibe's Golden Globe experience reflective of our discussion about beauty in popular culture and our ideas about "the pretty patrol"?
Sidibe's Golden Globe experience shows that society is very judgmental when it comes to beauty, in other words"the pretty patrol." In popular culture, today, there is a set image of women; tall, thin, and long hair. Sidbie does not fit the societal image of a woman and she should not have to. As a society we need to realize that everyone is not going to look like a "model," aka the societal image of a perfect woman. Sidibe had a different reaction to the beauty patrolling, she made a joke out of it. Society should be more like Sidibe and be confident in the world's differences!
ReplyDeleteJalyn, I totally agree. :)
DeleteSidibe's experience reflects how society has a need to have conversations about women's bodies only being acceptable or beautiful if they look a certain way. Sidibe was being policed based on these notions of beauty because to be beautiful in this world you would have to look more Eurocentric and be model thin. Popular culture has pushed this same image of beauty to define all women and by the tweets in response to Sidibe's gown showed that they didn't think she fit the mold. The "pretty patrol" is the use of bullying/policing/shaming people into believing that they are not pretty by societal standards because they do not fall into the category of "normative beauty". The "pretty patrol" perpetuates the same Eurocentric standards of beauty that alienates those who do not look the part.
ReplyDeleteI think you are on to something, Akila. I am interested to see the other ways that beauty is equated with Eurocentric physical norms. Thanks for the input.
DeleteI agree with both Akila and Jalyn, that our society is very caught up on looks. Every one now is expected to fit into unachievable standards. Every woman shouldn't be expected to be a standard size. Even when celebrities are pregnant they are criticized and mocked for being "fat" and are ridiculed by media outlets. I love that Gabourey's responses showed that she was confident in herself and not showing the hurt she could have been feeling because no one wants to be criticized and especially not in front of millions of people.
ReplyDelete