Blackface Research Papers

KYLIEGATE 2K15

God, I hate getting involved into huge debates. It makes me feel so condescending.

So Kylie Jenner recently uploaded a set of photos on her instagram page. As per usual. Don’t bring yourself to hate her just yet, she’s having fun. And so are her fans. Here are the pictures.

It’s pretty obvious that at first glance, they’re not your run-of-the-mill daily updates of her OOTD, photos of a sleeping boyfriend (thank GOD), or even a regular selfie. It’s a modern miracle. Instead, these seem to be from some fashion editorial or a project for another photographer, it’s still unclear. Either way, it’s highly styilised.

The photos were first captioned as “What I wish

As expected. What was surprising, however, is that instead of condemning the teen for being “just plain ugly” or “a troll”, as we’re used to from the haters, backlash was concentrated more on her skin tone. The argument: Kylie was doing blackface.

Blackface dates back to the 1840s, when Americans and Brits would paint their skins black with grease and redden their lips, to ridicule the appearance of the African slaves. It has since been considered as incredibly offensive, and rightfully so.

Upon second glance, I understood why one would make that assumption. Her skin in these photos is obviously darker than her normal, light-skinted self. And especially in a time when racial tensions are high, with riots against police brutality against POC in several states, any form of vilification is highly offensive. We can say that “Everybody wants to be black until it’s time to be black”, meaning that white celebrities freely emulate black culture because it’s ‘fun’, but when racial conflicts arise, they stand down and revert back to the security of their “white privilege”. People are still racist that

We’re all used to people getting vocal these days. What did surprise me was the initial media response. E-Online said it raised "more than just a few eyebrows", Radar called her “a magnet for controversy” and Yahoo! News said it was “viewed as thoughtless and wrong”.

Now, what I find really interesting about this is that the media chose to highlight this one instance of ‘accidental racism’ , when in reality there are other events that could be considered a lot more offensive. So why focus on Kylie?

One factor that comes into play is the intense media focus on the Kardashian-Jenner clan. With Kendall stomping every damn runway she can find, Bruce starting her transition and Kim being, well, Kim, we get a kick out of observing this eccentric family. Just a peep would get the whole world stirring.

As I was looking further into Kylie’s controversy, I noticed that the almighty TMZ stated that “Kylie Jenner pulled a Julianne Hough".

For those of you who don’t know, Julianne Hough dressed up as a character from Orange is The New Black for Hallowe’en. She went up as Crazy Eyes, a black character, skin and all.