So I've been thinking a lot about the body, femininity, and black female sexuality...and the wheels in my head are constantly turning. Apparently, the black female body is on a lot of people's (and company's) minds, including Old Navy, and painter/photographer extraordinaire Mickalene Thomas.
While sitting at the dinner table, my partner and I were watching Family Guy's satire of Fox News (how ironic?), when the scene ended and a spanking new 30-second commercial from Old Navy appeared on the screen. In this particular episode entitled "Mid-Town Flash with the Supermodelquins", a dialogue between three multicultural female and anthropomorphized mannequins and their male counterparts goes a little something like this:
Black Male Mannequin: "Look Buddy! Doesn't mom look pretty in her new midtown gown!?"
Son Mannequin: "You go, Mom!"
White Female Mannequin: "These Midtown gowns are so cute!"
Latina Mannequin: "Especially if I had your legs!" [Looks over at a random pair of white female legs in a box in a corner]
White Female Mannequin: "There's an extra pair in the back room..."
Latina Mannequin: "At $15 these dresses are gonna fly!"
[Live white little girl snatches the dress off of the black Mannequin, named Michelle] [WTF!!!??]
White Female Mannequin: [expresses shock]
Dog barks.
White Male Mannequin: "Sweet!"
Black Father to White Male Mannequin: "Hey man, keep your painted on eyes off my wife!" [puts hand up to White Male Mannequin's face]
White Male Mannequin: "I can't! Your fingers don't close."
Michelle: [with prototypical black girl attitude] "Oh what! Like you've never seen plastic before!"
END SCENE.
Son Mannequin: "You go, Mom!"
White Female Mannequin: "These Midtown gowns are so cute!"
Latina Mannequin: "Especially if I had your legs!" [Looks over at a random pair of white female legs in a box in a corner]
White Female Mannequin: "There's an extra pair in the back room..."
Latina Mannequin: "At $15 these dresses are gonna fly!"
[Live white little girl snatches the dress off of the black Mannequin, named Michelle] [WTF!!!??]
White Female Mannequin: [expresses shock]
Dog barks.
White Male Mannequin: "Sweet!"
Black Father to White Male Mannequin: "Hey man, keep your painted on eyes off my wife!" [puts hand up to White Male Mannequin's face]
White Male Mannequin: "I can't! Your fingers don't close."
Michelle: [with prototypical black girl attitude] "Oh what! Like you've never seen plastic before!"
END SCENE.
As I sit here at the breakfast bar in my partner's kitchen, I'm at a complete loss for words. Okay...not really but seriously... I don't know what to say first. So below I've posted a picture of some of the comments that the commercial has garnered.
Has Michelle Obama's ubiquitous celebrity and visibility made advertisers and the industry, mostly dominated by white men, mad? What does it mean for an image or representation of a black woman, vis-a-vis a mannequin, to be normalized, or even, humorized, as a naked derivative of sexual pleasure and voyeurism with "attitude" a la mode?The Youtube comments from the video speak volumes to the ways in which tidbits of popular culture and consumerism become conduits for propagating racialized and misogynistic fantasy within the American public imagination and consciousness. Yes, this commercial bares undertones of racializing stereotypes. Yes, it was probably intended to be lighthearted, contemporary, and humorous. And Yes, by participating in the dialogue that the Supermodelquins have started, I am reproducing the effects that this commercial garners.
However, as a black woman, I also understand that even though publicly, access to my own body and my own sexuality may be usurped from me and plastered all over TV and magazines and the internet, through every medium from Old Navy commercials to Smooth Magazine to Manet's Olympia, I determine when and where I enter. Which is why I admire such projects like those of artist Mickalene Thomas.
Her large scale photographs, prints, and paintings picturing black female subjects are the perfect segue way to engage in a dialogue about reclaiming and complicating so-called representations of black women, their bodies, and sexuality. Her first solo-exhibition, entitled Mickalene Thomas: She's Come UnDone! will debut at Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York City this Thursday, and will run until May 2, 2009.
Thomas's work is far from the panecea for distasteful and demode depictions of black women. In fact, it beckons us as viewers to ponder notions of celebrity, control, lust, exploitation, and emulation. Pieces like "Put something on it" remind us that there is no "right" or "wrong" representation of black women, but it is the way in which black female bodies are framed, in nuance, that reify the notion that well, presentation is everything.
Image: Mickalene Thomas, Put something down on it, mounted c-print, 30 x 24 inches, 76.2 x 61 cm, 2009. Courtesy of Lehmann Maupin gallery.
