Dear White People Signifiers

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One of the signifiers of race in Dear White People was modeled by Coco. An black aspiring actress, Coco begins the movie with straight hair and more proper attire. Coming from a ghetto town, Coco does her best to hide where she came from in order to gain status and be considered a higher class student. After witnessing the attention that others had when joking about race, she decided to take a new persona in order to achieve her goal. At the Garmen party she appeared to be dressed white, donning a blonde wig in attempts to make the statement that she can participate in the racial fun by becoming something that she is not, but might secretly want to be. By the end of the film Coco backtracks, having wavy hair and wearing more comfortable clothing …show more content…

The camera shows pants and panties on the floor, as well as black heels and condoms. These together signify a sexual act between opposite genders.

In the first few scenes of Dear white People, Sophie Fletcher enters with many classic feminine signifiers. Her dress is embellished with lace, along with the popular peter pan neckline. Lace is commonly associated with weddings and other high class fancy dresses. Her earrings are small and round, signifying the dainty pearls that are often tied to wealthy women. Sophie's hair is also put up, to be sure and show off the round gold earrings and small necklace, something that high class women also seem to do to in order to look sore sophisticated and put together.

2. Coco very much embraces the idea of Whitening. From the beginning she does her best to resemble a white look by having her hair pin straight, possibly foreshadowing the bombshell blonde look that comes later. When someone discovered in an interview that she was “from the hood”, she immediately stated that there was nothing hood about her. Then, in her video that goes viral, Coco states that those white girls who tan are becoming darker than she is, which isn’t that dark. The higher she climbs up the social latter, the more she does her best to look white. She hangs around the higher class white crowd, giving her opinion of the Dear White People radio show, and eventually decided to fully dress white at eh halloween