Insidiously sophisticated: from blackface to blackfishing
Date
2021
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
A racist form of entertainment that persists through generations, Blackface has evolved with modernity to maintain relevancy, transforming into the 21st-century practice of Blackfishing: the process of white women manipulating their features to emulate the physical attributes and aesthetics of Black women to the point of realism. Having only been defined in 2018, Blackfishing has yet to be interrogated through a historical lens, until now. From skin color to hair, my research investigates the different forms of cultural appropriation of the Black female body and how they coalesce in Blackfishing. Applying traditional theoretical material culture studies and historical research methods, my study interrogates the historical dehumanization and fetishization of the Black female body to expose the complex lineage of how Blackface has persevered and transformed into Blackfishing. I interview other Black women and provide a space for them to argue the importance of researching the commodification of the Black female body and o better comprehend the societal effects of this practice has on this demographic. Building upon object-based research of nineteenth and twentieth-century Blackface minstrel materials, as well as digital material culture, my research demonstrates how white women draw from the aestheticism and attributes of feminine Blackness and disembody actual Black women from their humanity, dehumanizing them to simple physical features that they can pick apart and style on themselves to insidiously sophisticated perfection.
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Keywords
Blackface, Minstrelsy, Social media, Blackfishing