WGST 1F90 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Patricia Hill Collins, Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery, Bell Hooks

• School: Brock University
• Department: Women's and Gender Studies
• Course: WGST 1F90
• Professor: Jenny Janke

Document Summary

Narrow standards of beauty in the west: young, white, able bodied representation dominate, structure. Association with beauty and various desirable" qualities (pretty means nice, unattractive equals mean). Goal: to fit in, participate in body projects, change one"s body to meet the ideals. Consumerism buy, own, possess as a way to have power and show power. Portraying african-american women as stereotypical mammies, matriarch, welfare recipients, and hot mammas helps justify us black women"s oppression. Challenging these controlling images has long been a core theme in black feminist; thought (hill collins, 2000. Black women frequently portrayed as either asexual or hypersexual. Intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender and sexuality need ideological justifications. The portrayal of black women through the use of controlling images is a way to make racism, sexism, poverty to appear normal, natural. Anchoring and maintaining these controlling images is sexuality. Few positive images of black women in mainstream white-dominated media.