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What Are You Looking At?

December 25, 2007 - 8:09 am

Over on Multicultclassics, a nice example of the most overused African-American stock image in the ‘families’ category. I believe these two were also on a United Way poster recently. This is not a critique of the models, by the way, but of the advertisers and marketers who chose those models, and who appear to have one ‘go-to’ black image, one which incorporates very, very light skinned people as representative of African-Americans, and is comfortable with representing an AA family as one with a child and one female parent. I notice more and more lately, especially after reading excerpts of model Alek Wek’s recently released autiobiography, how oddly African-Americans are portrayed, especially in American advertising and marketing communications, and I can’t help but wonder how we all internalize that representation. Wek made the cover of Elle magazine in November 1997, and at the time that was considered a very daring choice, since the traditional assumption about covers is that magazines with dark-skinned models sell fewer copies than covers with caucasian or light-skinnned models. Think about that for a moment - in 1997, it was considered a daring move to put a woman with dark skin on the cover of an American magazine. In 1997.

On Marketing Conversation, perhaps an explanation. At a national marketing convention, the speaker notices that there is not one African-American participant in the room , and the blog writer makes a good point - that people hire in their own image, to validate their beliefs, and when similiar people make media, it isn’t surprising that that media they all make is also similiar. But what does this say about how society communicates its cultural standards and beliefs if the voices that decide that communication are overwhelmingly caucasian?

Posted Thinking Out Loud, What Were They Thinking?!, gender |

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