Wear Clean Draws  (’coz there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

desexualizing brown women

By shag carpet bomb • Jan 23rd, 2008 • Category: Imperialism, Orientalism, Racialization, Social movements, Teh Sex, Third World Feminism, Whiteness

Last year, brownfemipower criticized u.s feminism because its rhetoric desexualizes women of color — a discourse that also exists within a wider u.s. discourse where women of color are racialized by hypersexualizing their bodies as well. And this can seem puzzling. How can both be going on? It’s also harder to illustrate, I think, because it is so tacit, so hidden, so normal for people in the u.s. to think like this.

Well, here’s a good example of using third world women as warning against the horrors that “we” could become if we don’t watch out:

[from Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook]

Women’s Wear Daily reports: ‘Clinton was to appear in Vogue as the presidential race reached high gear, but backed out late last fall before a photo shoot was scheduled for fear of appearing too alluring. … A Vogue spokesman confirmed: ‘We were told by Ms. Clinton’s camp that they were concerned if Clinton appeared in Vogue that she would appear too feminine.’ In her February editor’s letter, [Editor in Chief Anna] Wintour takes Clinton to task for being behind the times. ‘Imagine my amazement, then, when I learned that Hillary Clinton, our only female president hopeful, had decided to steer clear of our pages at this point in her campaign for fear of looking too feminine. The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying.’ Wintour continues: ‘This is America, not Saudi Arabia.

This just jarred me when I read it. Why on earth would Saudi Arabia come up? What is Wintour trying to say? Is she high, I wondered. Are the witchy-toe shoes so tight they’re cutting of circulation and taking away bloodflow to the brain? What?

And then I realized, she was saying that Saudi women have no sexuality, they are not feminine, because they are so oppressed by “their” men. And if we don’t watch out, we’ll be living under a nasty oppressive regime where we can’t be feminine women either! Whee. And all in the name of a vague, what do you call this feminism? Corporate feminism? That’s what someone called it long ago anyway.

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