Fashion, Agency, and Empowerment

Performing Agency, Following Script

Annette Lynch, Katalin Medvedev, Annette Lynch, Katalin Medvedev

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781350058286
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Fashion Design

Fashion has always been strongly linked with the politics of gender and equality. In this global and interdisciplinary collection, leading authors explore the relationships between the dressed body, fashion, sex, and power, with an emphasis on the role of dress in both reinforcing and challenging social norms. Covering a range of geographic and social contexts, the book explores the role of fashion in empowering both individuals and groups to create transformation and change. Taking us from the performance of black dandyism through stylized hats, to the use of challenging dance forms and male-inspired dress by female South African dancers to express independence and equality, to ways in which recent Bond Girls have challenged traditional gender binaries, the book provides a crucial entry point into discussions of fashion as an empowerment strategy. Fashion, Agency, and Empowerment encourages the reader to critically examine the cultural and social impact of sexual objectification, as well as to consider personal and shared narratives of self-objectification and repression. With chapters ranging from the iconic self-fashioning of Princess Diana to a discussion of sex, power, and cultural constructions of masculinity, Fashion, Agency, and Empowerment provides crucial insights into global fashion, political structures, and social life.

PART ONE

FASHION AS CHALLENGE AND EMPOWERMENT

1

THE BEAUTY DIVIDE: BLACK MILLENNIAL WOMEN SEEK AGENCY WITH MAKEUP ART COSMETICS (MAC)

Jaleesa Reed and Katalin Medvedev

Introduction

There will be many times in a black woman’s life in the United States when she is informed, overtly or covertly, that her worth as a human being is similar to what the Anti-Slavery Society propagated in 1833: “Put slaves on the payroll to make them ‘doubly valuable’ to their masters and thus end slavery while saving capitalism.” Racist practices serve to remind black women, and women of color in general, that they are only as valuable as the labor and entertainment they can provide. Micro-aggressions perpetrated both by individuals and institutions affect the black population daily; black women are vilified, for instance, in several ways, from welfare policies to media portrayals among others (Crenshaw 1991). The matriarch, mammy, and Jezebel stereotypes are so pervasive that one would be hard-pressed to find a black woman immune to such disparagement. These insidious stereotypes, however, have also influenced black women’s idea of beauty when it comes to color, creating a color caste system (Henderson 2015), in which a black individual with a pale skin tone is considered more attractive, and hence more desirable, than one who has a dark skin tone. But black women are not without agency—despite mainstream efforts to marginalize them, they have pushed back to get to the center and cultivate their own spaces in social, political, and economic spheres. One of the avenues they rely on to take charge of their self-expression and presentation is through the use and consumption of cosmetics.

Black women turn to cosmetics as a self-fashioning device in a social and economic context where the White Beauty Industrial Complex (hooks 1992) constantly reminds them that their skin, hair, body, and overall external appearance are not worth any attention and they do not warrant investment in product development because of what the black body represents to the mainstream in historic and economic terms. During slavery, whiteness used as the benchmark of hierarchical (beauty) standards branded the black body as more abject and less estimable. Consequently, black women struggle to make their mark in a dominant white capitalist culture that has set standards of beauty that does not align with communities of color by taking a strategic interest in cosmetics. So much so that today black millennial women rarely ever leave home without at least a small amount of makeup (see Figure 1.1).

The authors of this study began to pay closer attention to black millennial women’s special relationship with the Makeup Art Cosmetics (MAC) brand in 2013 when black megastar Rihanna’s RiRi collection for the brand was launched. To find out why black millennial women were drawn to MAC and the shopping experience in MAC stores, the authors conducted twelve in-depth interviews with young black women focusing on exploring the reasons for their special attraction to the MAC brand and the ways their use of MAC products influenced their self-perception and representation.

MAC is a prominent brand in the cosmetics marketplace. Globally, the cosmetics market is worth $460 billion (Research and Markets 2015) with a projected 6.4 percent growth by 2020 (Research and Markets 2015). Following the money shows that the White Beauty Industrial Complex not only spends an exorbitant amount of money on molding and entrenching white-normative standards of beauty, but it also functions as a systematic tool of racism to uphold the social construction of race as a regulatory norm. The beauty industry is governed by white standards; it is not a matter of finding them, but of identifying them. Many scholars have written about white women’s relationship with beauty (Wolf 1990; Hamilton, Mintz and Kashubek-West 2007; Cain 2008), but few have explored black women’s use of cosmetics as a potential outlet of agency. Although “beauty was the first racism” (Arogundade 2000: 9), black women’s relationship with cosmetics and beauty are a comparatively recent point of contention. Therefore, this study adds a new layer to the existing literature by examining why exercising agency in the cosmetics marketplace has special significance for black millennial women.

Figure 1.1A black millennial woman applying lipstick.

Courtesy Paper Boat Creative, Getty Images.

Historical context

While black women historically have been disenfranchised in the realm of beauty, they did manage to fashion an “identity” more than 400 years ago when the first African women were brought to the United States (Gilroy 1993). This identity of family and motherhood, however, was shaped in an environment of oppression and servitude (McKittrick 2006) and the core demands of slavery and the sexual exploitation of black women overshadowed any interest or desire in beauty. Still, black slave women made sure to educate their children on the power of self-definition and resilience (Collins 2000). They also taught their children how to care for their bodies or manage their hair with homemade concoctions (Gates, Jr. 1995). Such maternal lessons instilled the importance of (re)presentation for social and personal acceptance, which became more relevant after slavery ended.

By the turn of the twentieth century, black culture already had a more meaningful relationship with the cosmetics industry (White and White 1998). Black women started to pivot to the cosmetics industry to achieve a sense of independence (White and White 1998). Instead of looking to a future of domestic servitude, they became entrepreneurs and manufacturers of beauty products for other women, like Madame C. J. Walker. Black women’s beauty consumption thus evolved in a personal setting where buyers were persuaded on product knowledge and quality by a business owner. In fact, the business owner’s reputation was just as important as product performance. The products were also sought after because they were made to cater to black women’s specific needs. Madame Walker, a cosmetics entrepreneur and the first African American millionaire, for example, always emphasized that her products were not meant to help black women assimilate to white beauty standards (White and White 1998), but to support black women’s desire to control their appearance.

Although the lingering effects of servitude did not cease to affect the relationship between beauty and the political identity of black women (Gill 2010), over time, black women’s use of cosmetics was no longer strictly subject to the expectations of the mainstream society. While some internalized white beauty standards, many used cosmetics to express their identity “with the same freedom to construct their appearance that whites were allowed” (White and White 1998: 188). By the 1960s and 1970s, blackness was temporarily redefined by the Black Power and civil rights movements, and black self-love through the declaration that “Black is beautiful” reached its peak.

While black communities have successfully emerged from slavery and Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation, and their statuses have improved after the Civil Rights Movement, to this day, they must prove that “Black Lives Matter.” Black Lives Matter is a necessary ideological and political intervention in a world where black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise (Black Lives Matter 2016) as the rates of incarcerated black individuals continue to surge (M. Alexander 2012) as do cases of police brutality against them (Lantigua-Williams 2016). Consequently, the black population continues to live a life tainted by double consciousness (Du Bois 1903), trying to reconcile its own identities with the standards of the dominant culture.

Black millennials and the cosmetics marketplace

Millennials, a generation with many internal contradictions, spend considerable time, resources, and energy on enhancing their appearances. This is also a basic expectation of them by the current image- and social-media-driven cultural milieu. Because black women’s looks continue to be subjected to scrutiny, their spending and consumption of cosmetics becomes significant. While some black millennial women use facial contouring to create the perception of thinner lips or narrower noses to approximate mainstream beauty standards, others use cosmetics to define black beauty on their own terms. Either path requires high cosmetics expenditure. No wonder “black women spend 80 percent more money on cosmetics than the general market” (Smith 2009). These statistics naturally make corporations actively pursue the black dollar, which, in turn, provides an opportunity for black women to renegotiate their relationship with the beauty and cosmetics industry on their own terms. Despite this, an identity built on internalized racism is not regarded by the beauty industry as requiring major financial investment in the promotion of beauty aids for this segment of the population; instead, under capitalism, a black woman’s place in society can simply be reinforced by upholding white beauty standards.

Black women today are stratified into groups, making it easier for industries to tap into their buying power and consumption habits. Targeting black women, like any other market segment, reveals a penchant for stereotypes. Take, for instance, the cosmetics industry’s insistence on categorizing women into shades of “beige” and “cinnamon.” Ironically, almost every mainstream makeup brand has seven shades of beige—sand beige, natural beige, medium beige, golden beige, honey beige, fresh beige, true beige—but only two or three shades for darker skin such as “mocha” or “cappuccino.” Even if a black woman is actually a shade of “beige,” she should be looking for her shade in “mocha” or “mahogany,” both suggesting a black tint, which reveals a real scarcity of suitable and affordable cosmetic products and targeted advertisements for black women of different shades.

Some people may consider cosmetics to be an insignificant aspect of how black women experience oppression, but this is precisely how oppression works; it operates both on macro and micro levels (Frye 1983). The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2017) defines “oppression” as the means to crush, burden, reduce, and immobilize a group of people. Institutional systems maintain oppression and systematically sustain it through power dynamics. Over time, systemic and systematic oppression is internalized, working its way inside the body by constricting and immobilizing movement, both physically and mentally (Frye 1983). Consequently, oppressed groups are affected not only by social, political, and economic structures of oppression, but also by internalizing its effects in their everyday life.

Black millennial women’s affinity for MAC

Millennials report feeling more pressured to look good all the time, compared to other groups of women (Mintel 2017). While post-slavery black women are increasingly accustomed to using cosmetics as a means of enhancing their self-presentation, preferences for various brands of beauty products continue to show class and generational differences. For example, compared to black baby boomers, black millennials are more likely to want to experiment with their looks or use higher-end brands, as suggested by our informants. They tend to change hairstyles and hair colors often, and consciously use particular cosmetic brands to fashion an image of their liking.

Millennials also possess in-depth brand and product knowledge because they are technologically savvy and highly commodified. O...