{"id":68894,"date":"2016-05-18T16:56:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T21:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=68894"},"modified":"2016-11-19T16:00:24","modified_gmt":"2016-11-19T21:00:24","slug":"is-michelle-jealous-of-melania-catty-stereotypes-and-racist-cartoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/05\/18\/is-michelle-jealous-of-melania-catty-stereotypes-and-racist-cartoons\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Michelle Jealous of Melania? Catty Stereotypes and Racist Cartoons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many are aghast at a cartoon recently released by a well-known right-leaning cartoonist, Ben Garrison. Rightly, commentators are arguing that it reproduces the racist\u00a0stereotype that\u00a0African American women are more\u00a0masculine than\u00a0white women. I&#8217;ll briefly discuss this, but I want to add a twist, too.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/InTrumpsAmerica?src=hash\">#InTrumpsAmerica<\/a> The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/FirstLady?src=hash\">#FirstLady<\/a> will be Great Again! <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Trump2016?src=hash\">#Trump2016<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2FGmMQ1bBo\">https:\/\/t.co\/2FGmMQ1bBo<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/g2SOBjFXSI\">pic.twitter.com\/g2SOBjFXSI<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 GrrrGraphics (@GrrrGraphics) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GrrrGraphics\/status\/731132987547340800\">May 13, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The block versus cursive font, the muscularity and the leanness, the strong versus swishy stance, the color and cut of their dresses, the length of their hair, the confrontational versus the compliant facial expression, and the strategically placed, transphobic bulge in Michelle Obama&#8217;s dress &#8212; you could hardly do a better job of masculinizing Michelle and feminizing Melania.<\/p>\n<p>This is a racist stereotype not only because it posits that black women are unattractive, unlikable, and even dangerous, but because it has its roots in American slavery. We put middle class white women on pedestals, imagining\u00a0them to be\u00a0fragile and precious. But if women were fragile and precious, how could we force some of them to do the\u00a0hard labor we forced on enslaved women? The answer was to defeminize black women. Thanks for keeping the stereotype alive, Ben Garrison.<\/p>\n<p>What I&#8217;d like to add as a twist, though, is about Michelle&#8217;s expression, purposefully drawn as both ugly and judgmental. Michelle&#8217;s face isn&#8217;t just drawn as masculine, it&#8217;s <em>aimed<\/em> at Melania and she isn&#8217;t just sneering, she&#8217;s sneering <em>at<\/em> this other women.<\/p>\n<p>The cartoon also places women in competition. It tells a sexist story of ugly (black) women who are hateful toward beautiful (white) women. It tells a story in which women are bitter and envious of each other, a <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/04\/18\/women-as-catty\/\" target=\"_blank\">ubiquitous<\/a> story in which women\u00a0tear each other down and can&#8217;t get along. It&#8217;s a terrible stereotype, demeaning\u00a0and untrue (except insofar as <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/07\/13\/how-objectification-of-women-makes-women-hate-each-other\/\" target=\"_blank\">patriarchal relations make it so<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>And\u00a0it&#8217;s especially reprehensible when it&#8217;s layered onto race.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many are aghast at a cartoon recently released by a well-known right-leaning cartoonist, Ben Garrison. Rightly, commentators are arguing that it reproduces the racist\u00a0stereotype that\u00a0African American women are more\u00a0masculine than\u00a0white women. I&#8217;ll briefly discuss this, but I want to add a twist, too. #InTrumpsAmerica The #FirstLady will be Great Again! #Trump2016 https:\/\/t.co\/2FGmMQ1bBo pic.twitter.com\/g2SOBjFXSI \u2014 GrrrGraphics [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2089,2098,23680,2106,778,23695,85,20068,285,23641,1760,20063,1757,23701],"class_list":["post-68894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-beauty","tag-gender-prejudicediscrimination","tag-gender-sexism","tag-gender-transgenderintersex","tag-intersectionality","tag-intersectionality-gender-x-race","tag-politics","tag-politics-election-2016","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-beauty","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-transprejudicediscrimination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/05\/5-5.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68894","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=68894"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68897,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68894\/revisions\/68897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}