Better Lives Blog 1
Despite my general interest, I have focused most on the topic of diversity and therefore took big interest in the Representation lecture held by Teleica Kirkland, a fashion historian and the founder of the Costume Institute of the African Diaspora (CIAD).
Before diving into the lecture and the reading materials suggested for the topic of diversity, I have made a little research on Teleica Kirkland and found her ambition and her achievements in understanding the history and the culture of the African Diaspora highly inspiring.
My specific interest in this topic mainly has its roots in the fact that I’m a woman of mixed background, having grown up in different countries with different beliefs, cultures and languages. Early on in life I have noticed that I’m not well represented in mainstream media. This becomes especially apparent to me when I think back and remember trying to shave my Mediterranean/Middle Eastern skin tone off of me. This had happened because of my fair skin Austrian class mates telling me to “rub the dirt off my skin”. How would I know that this wasn’t normal? I was playing with blonde Barbies, seeing fair skin and so called “perfect” women represented in every possible media outlet I was exposed to growing up. When I started to befriend more people of different backgrounds, I started to notice that there were groups of people having it even worse that I was having it. My confidence and belief in myself were nonexistent and I was deeply feeling for the struggle of others.
Diversity and representation have become buzzwords today but still remain undervalued or misunderstood. Teleica Kirkland explained this quite well by criticizing Eurocentric or better said Monoculturalist ideologies but she also made it clear that a lack of representation isn’t the only problem of racist media. Misrepresentation, too, results in having people feel less desirable or unaccepted. This can take place by either adding to racist stereotypes or by raising the image of a “model minority” leading to people adapting to these standards to the point of assimilation and identity loss.
Not only can I relate to this since I was forced to give up my ethnic identity to be accepted around my European friends but I also couldn’t stop thinking of bigger examples of misrepresentation. Just recently I have seen a video made by an African American woman begging other African American women to “elevate out of the broke ghetto mentality” into a “classy version of themselves”, while it shouldn’t be relevant at all since “the ghetto” is a culture in itself and people should have the right to be however the like to be.
The lecturer’s advice is to have open conversations to create understanding of one and other.