Resumen de Image Slavery and Mass-Media Pollution: Popular Media, Beauty, and the Lives of Black Women
The ways African American women negotiate the intersections of popular media, dominant discourses of beauty, and identity are rarely explored. This study engages a constellation of literature and theoretical perspectives, exploring historical representations of African American women and the beauty messages they contain. I examine concepts of identity formation; discuss connections between difference and the politics of imagery; and investigate linkages between structural racism, mass media, and forms of cultural production. Through an interrogation of the complexities in how African American women make meaning of images of themselves, in relationship to mainstream media, I seek to excavate a set of realities known to many, but rarely articulated in academia. This account of a larger study, that utilized empirical and qualitative methods that engage Black women, across four generational groups, through in- depth interviews, a series of three focus groups/women's healing circles, and individual journaling workshops, only discusses some findings from primarily the in depth interviews. The combination of methodologies however allowed for a documentation of the ideas, struggles, and attitudes of African American women pertaining to popular concepts of beauty, identity, and politics of media. With the goal of interrupting current hegemonic narratives, this study offers an analysis of the intersection of beauty, race, and feminisms while critiquing and interrupting cultural imperialism; and aims to join with Black feminist bodies of work in developing new theories that engage African American women to reflect and acknowledge the complex and varied realities of media's impact on gender, race, sex, equality, and identity as converging constructs.
