{"id":19941,"date":"2010-02-02T10:55:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T15:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=19941"},"modified":"2013-12-15T04:17:48","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T09:17:48","slug":"fashion-world-still-clueless-about-what-naked-non-white-people-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/02\/02\/fashion-world-still-clueless-about-what-naked-non-white-people-look-like\/","title":{"rendered":"Fashion World Still Clueless About What Naked Non-White People Look Like"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought Samatha Critchell’s description of Michelle Obama’s light tan or “champagne”\u00a0dress as “flesh colored”<\/a> might get her fired.\u00a0 If nothing else, I figured it’d be warning to all other journalists out there to, for gawd’s sake!, watch your racist language.<\/p>\n

But, alas, the parade of “champagne”-colored gowns at this year’s Grammy’s had led a\u00a0flood of\u00a0fashion writers talking about the color “nude.”\u00a0 Here are just a handful of examples from the first\u00a0three pages of my google search<\/p>\n

Los Angeles Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Katy Perry and her dress<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the Los Angeles\u00a0Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Beyonce and her\u00a0dress<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

VH1<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Keri Hilson and her dress:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Associated Content<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

msnbc<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Heidi Klum and her dress<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Popsugar:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course (almost) no one is actually “nude”-colored, but the term still manages to naturalize whiteness insofar as white people’s skin color tends to match colors described as “nude” moreso than the skin color of non-white people (though there are always exceptions).\u00a0 I’m really surprised that journalists are still managing to get this language past their editors.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought Samatha Critchell’s description of Michelle Obama’s light tan or “champagne”\u00a0dress as “flesh colored” might get her fired.\u00a0 If nothing else, I figured it’d be warning to all other journalists out there to, for gawd’s sake!, watch your racist language. But, alas, the parade of “champagne”-colored gowns at this year’s Grammy’s had led a\u00a0flood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[225,373,23384,285,1757],"class_list":["post-19941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-clothesfashion","tag-color","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19941"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60498,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19941\/revisions\/60498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}