Making Curriculum Pop

I thought this was a VERY high interest argumentative essay and teachable op-ed from The Washington Post ....

How the Kardashians exploit racial bias for profit

TV personality Kim Kardashian and rapper Kanye West attend the Israeli-American designer Alber Elbaz Spring/Summer 2015 women’s ready-to-wear collection for fashion house Lanvin during Paris Fashion Week on Sept. 25. (Reuters/Gonzalo Fuentes)

As you surely know, last week Kim Kardashian posed — naked — on the pages of Paper Magazine. The stated goal? #BreakTheInternet.

Most cultural critics rolled their eyes and cried stunt. But the Kardashians aren’t just trashy. They’re dangerous—actively exploiting and reinforcing racial and gender biases that bite us in the ass.

Kim Kardashian’s picture is an almost exact replica of a 1976 portrait, also shot by photographer Jean-Paul Goude. The original version features Carolina Beaumont, who is black. The portrait was published in Goude’s book called, ahem, “Jungle Fever.”

Both images harken back to even more offensive representations of black women, particularly of Saartjie Baartman — the “Hottentot Venus” — a black woman with a large rear end who was violently exploited as a sexual object in a traveling “freak show” during the slave trade era.

For centuries since (and likely before) black women and their bodies have been smeared by stereotypes of hyper-sexuality simultaneously displayed and denigrated, their individuality and self-determination suppressed by the whims of the white male gaze. Goude, a white man, embodies this exploitative obsession. “Blacks are the premise of my work,” he said in 1979. “I have jungle fever.”

Read the whole op-ed HERE.

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