In Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers, Joane Nagel looks at how race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality are often used to create new national identities and frame colonial expansion. In particular, White female sexuality, presented as modest and appropriate, was often contrasted with the sexuality of colonized women, who were often depicted as promiscuous or immodest. qout sent in an 1860s advertisement for Peter Lorillard Snuff & Tobacco that illustrates these differences.
According to An Empire of Plants: People and Plants that Changed the World, the ad drew on a purported Huron legend of a beautiful white spirit bringing them tobacco. There are a few interesting things going on here. We have the association of femininity with a benign nature; the women are surrounded by various animals (I can’t tell what they all are, but I think there’s a fox and a rabbit) who appear to pose no threat to the women or to one another. The background is lush and productive.
Racialized hierarchies are embedded in the personification of the “white spirit” as a White woman, descending from above to provide a precious gift to Native Americans, similar to imagery drawing on the idea of the “white man’s burden.” And as often occurred (particularly as we entered the Victorian Era), there is a willingness to put non-White women’s bodies more obviously on display than the bodies of White women. The White woman above is actually less clothed than the American Indian woman, yet her arm and the white cloth are strategically placed to hide her breasts and crotch (I can’t tell if we can just barely see her left nipple or if that’s shading). On the other hand, the Native American woman’s breasts are fully displayed. (This pattern continues; for instance, in Reading National Geographic, Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins discuss the way non-White women’s breasts are frequently displayed in the magazine while only recently have a few exceptions occurred where topless light-skinned women were included, all shot from behind rather than the front.)
So the ad provides a nice illustration of the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender (particularly ideas of feminine gentleness and innocence), sexuality, and marketing.
