{"id":704,"date":"2008-05-01T20:21:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-02T01:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/05\/01\/american-idol-who-gets-to-have-ethnic-hair\/"},"modified":"2010-11-23T22:35:02","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T03:35:02","slug":"american-idol-who-gets-to-have-ethnic-hair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/05\/01\/american-idol-who-gets-to-have-ethnic-hair\/","title":{"rendered":"American Idol: De-Ethnicizing Syesha"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here at Sociological Images, we&#8217;re interested in how our standards of beauty are based on a European (that is, light-skinned and straight-haired) ideal. See <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/04\/25\/fair-and-lovely-skin-lightening-cream-ad\/\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/03\/20\/white-as-beautiful-black-as-white\/\">here<\/a> for examples. A reader pointed out that Syesha Mercado, a contestant on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanidol.com\/\">American Idol<\/a>, has been progressively de-ethnicized.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a photo of Syesha from early in the competition:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/05\/1.jpeg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/05\/syesh.jpeg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/05\/syesh.jpeg\" alt=\"syesh.jpeg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here is a photo of her from this week (end of April):<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/05\/top11syesha.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-2\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><\/a><br \/>\nAm I the only one who thinks she looked prettier before?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/05\/top11syesha.jpg\" alt=\"top11syesha.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>However, the stylists have thus far let the white kid keep his dreads:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/05\/jason_c.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-3\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/05\/jason_c.jpg\" alt=\"jason_c.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thanks for pointing this out, pj!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here at Sociological Images, we&#8217;re interested in how our standards of beauty are based on a European (that is, light-skinned and straight-haired) ideal. See here and here for examples. A reader pointed out that Syesha Mercado, a contestant on American Idol, has been progressively de-ethnicized. Here is a photo of Syesha from early in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[251,55,2089,778,285,1760,1757],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hair","tag-gender","tag-gender-beauty","tag-intersectionality","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","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\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29345,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/29345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}