{"id":43743,"date":"2012-05-03T12:40:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T17:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=43743"},"modified":"2017-09-17T15:06:54","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T20:06:54","slug":"43743","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/05\/03\/43743\/","title":{"rendered":"“Nude,” Racial Marginalization, and the Wedding Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently put together a Pinterest board featuring our examples of light-tan clothes and products described as “nude,” “skin-colored,” or “flesh-colored.”<\/a>\u00a0 The practice erases or marginalizes people with medium or dark-colored skin by presuming that everyone’s flesh is light tan… even Michelle Obama<\/a> can be a victim of this kind of insensitivity. \u00a0Lil’ Kim<\/a>, too!<\/p>\n

Inspired by our older posts, I decided to check up on the Internets and see if the trend was still alive. \u00a0Indeed, and alas. \u00a0The first example I stumbled upon was Vera Wang’s 2012 wedding dress collection. \u00a0The collection isn’t up on Wang’s website at the time I’m writing, but media outlets are consistently describing the collection as featuring “nude” and “black” dresses. \u00a0The Huffington Post<\/a> is one example.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nI decided to go with the wedding theme. At Martha Stewart<\/a>, she suggests a “powder blue and nude palette” for the ceremony and reception.\u00a0Project Wedding<\/a>\u00a0had many examples of nude clothing and other items.\u00a0Finally, Belle<\/a>\u00a0had a collection of “nude” wedding shoes.<\/p>\n

To reiterate, calling this color “nude” reminds us all that light-skinned people are regular people and everyone else needs a modifying adjective. \u00a0In addition to the many other examples of this that we encounter everyday — like lotion for “normal to darker skin,”<\/a>\u00a0ornaments in\u00a0“bride and groom” and “African-American bride and groom,”<\/a>\u00a0and dolls in “dolls” and “ethnic dolls”<\/a> — these instances can be constant and exhausting examples of one’s marginality.<\/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 recently put together a Pinterest board featuring our examples of light-tan clothes and products described as “nude,” “skin-colored,” or “flesh-colored.”\u00a0 The practice erases or marginalizes people with medium or dark-colored skin by presuming that everyone’s flesh is light tan… even Michelle Obama can be a victim of this kind of insensitivity. \u00a0Lil’ Kim, too! […]<\/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":[373,283,285],"class_list":["post-43743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-color","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43743","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=43743"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71538,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43743\/revisions\/71538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}