Two thoughts on Purple People

[browngirl]

This should be a polished essay, but I'm so tired my eyes keep unfocusing, so rather than never writing this down while waiting for the right moment, I've jotted this pair of linked thoughts.

One of the many things I noticed about this trio of splendid cosplayers is that the Princess Bubblegum has not tinted herself the same skin color as the character she's complying, but the others have: PB is pink, and while she's a pretty unnatural pink, still, many real people are various shades of pink. I found myself thinking about the recurring discussion of cosplay and skin color, and that it makes sense to only change one's skin color to one that's not seen among actual people. Painting oneself purple is an obvious costume but painting oneself brown skirts too close to the historical awfulnesses of brown face; presumably, in the Star Trek universe, one might not paint oneself purple anymore and probably won't paint oneself green, since purple and green people are real in that ficton.

There's probably a bunch of sensible essays out there about this -- I've only just begun exploring the world of cosplay. I was just thinking this and thought I'd make a note.

Speaking of sensible essays, I found this essay on "Invoking strangely colored people". Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I've seen someone say something that boils down to "It doesn't matter if you're White or Brown or Purple, if we all stop Talking ABout Race and Ignore It all racism will Go Away..." I could probably make bail if the next time I heard such a statement I went ahead and smacked the person making it. I don't know what I hate more, the idea that POC cause racism by refusing to forget who we are, or the blithe manner in whcih someone who doesn't have to deal with racism declares that because they don't none of us do or should.

[People do this about other forms of bigotry too, but that's another post.]

Ah, purple people. Where's the Purple People Eater?

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i lost a friend (nex0s) over whether i was going to do patchwork skin to play unity from skin horse. ended up doing dr tigerlily jones in my natural skin shade.

long story short: history gets in the way of art sometimes, sometimes there's no pleasing people, and there's no good reason to try to avoid giving offense, but sometimes you may find you've done so anyway.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

My sympathies, and I do hear you. *sad smile*

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Purple people unite!

[kshandra]

I will never forget the day I met up with supersniffles for a mutual birthday dinner, and this fellow we walked past was quite literally shrieking at the top of his lungs "OMG! YOU'VE GOT PINK HAIR - AND YOU'VE GOT PURPLE HAIR!"

Re: Purple people unite!

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I wish there was a safe pill that would let someone do the "Black Like Me" bit. (In fact, I've often wished I could do exactly that, just to find out how widespread it is. Of course, I also realize it wouldn't be really *real* because I'd know I could stop taking the pill.)

A lot of people just don't get it, and can't believe the level of hatred, of bigotry, and of just plain stupid prejudice that are out there. They think that the really heavy stuff must be in the past. They don't get how current it is, because they don't have to.

I can only imagine how hideously aggravating that must be.

[vass]

Not just because you could stop taking it.

Would the pill be generational? Does it affect your parents' and grandparents' experience of racism as well as your own, and how much funding was allocated to your school district and how many industrial pollutants you're exposed to in childhood, and whether the GOP is trying to actually disenfranchise people in the area where you live because they know people with your skin colour live there and historically vote Democrat?

Fortunately, there is a way you can find out how widespread racism is, and it doesn't involve taking a pill. You can listen to Black people and believe their accounts.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Re: generational stuff, the point I made (and I believe the point of the book's experiment) was not about those things. It was about how people would respond differently to just the change in skin tone, nothing else.

That's what people who say "black, white, purple, green with blue polka dots" miss, I believe. They think if they were to suddenly suffer a freak accident that turned their skin dark (and maybe changed their hair), well, they wouldn't suffer all that much.

If it happened, if they lived it, such a person might understand that although skin color shouldn't matter, it *does*, and you can't understand *how* it does until you pay attention.

Fortunately, there is a way you can find out how widespread racism is, and it doesn't involve taking a pill. You can listen to Black people and believe their accounts.

You can hear facts from that. You can't get a gut level understanding of it.

I'm a man; I have no idea what it's like to face the challenges a woman faces. I can imagine it sucks, I can listen to stories, I can believe those stories, but I can't have a deep down understanding of it. I won't know what it's like to want to put on my favorite clothing and flash back to some hideous comment someone made at random while I was wearing it, and wondering if there's a connection or not; I can't imagine what it's like to be followed by a random creepy guy and not be able to ignore him, because I can't think "I can probably take him, and if I can't, he'll by-god know he's been in a fight," unless I've had some pretty significant training in how to fight; I can't imagine having someone listen to me explain some technical detail of how SQL Server works, and then explain patiently to me that, no, I'm wrong, it actually works (exactly the way I just said, but this time, a man helped me wrap my pretty little head around it).

I can only imagine those things. Listening helps, but it's not the same as living it.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

I wish there was a safe pill that would let someone do the "Black Like Me" bit.

There might be. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard_Griffin#Death_and_rumored_effects_of_Oxsoralen), "It has been erroneously claimed that the large doses of Oxsoralen Griffin used in 1959 eventually led to his death from skin cancer. Griffin did not have skin cancer; the only negative symptoms he suffered due to the drug were temporary and minor. The worst, arguably, were fatigue and nausea."

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

I believe someone pulls this trick in one of the early Tales of the City books, but I forget whether they used the same method.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

I used to teach a class called called The Psychology of Stereotyping and Prejudice. While most of the class focused on psychological theories that explain why people are prejudiced, I also wanted students to read something that would give majority students a more gut-level understanding of what it feels like to be the object of prejudice (not just racial prejudice, but also sex, age, sexual orientation, and so on).

I tried all kinds of books over the various years I taught the course, and students brushed most of them aside. "Well, that author's just weird, and that's why her life is so hard." "We passed a few good laws in the 60's, and this doesn't happen anymore." "Maybe that happens to low SES people, but it doesn't happen to middle class people, so it's really classism, not racism." Students had a LOT of reasons for discounting the experiences of various authors.

Finally, I tried Black Like Me. I hadn't used it at first because it was old even when I was teaching this course, back in the 80's, and I thought sure students would discount it on that basis. But no, Black Like Me got IN where other books bounced off. The students would listen to a white man, whereas they were skeptical about the various authors of color I'd tried. The students couldn't claim that John Howard Griffin's experiences were because of something other than color, because color was the only thing that had changed. My students didn't say, "Well, this is old, and things aren't like that anymore," even though they'd said that about any other book that was more than three years old. They were shocked and stunned and saddened.

Black Like Me could be said to use the scientific method -- vary only one thing at a time, to see the effects of that variable in isolation. The scientific method has proven itself to be a powerful tool in other contexts; it turns out to be useful in this context as well.

I used to wish that I had a magic wand or a Polyjuice potion or something, so that I could make all of my students live one month as a member of another race, one month as a member of the other sex, one month as a person over 70 (decades before they'd get there naturally), and so on. Sadly, we have to rely on autobiographies and empathy, instead. :-)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Nod. I went in to reading Autobiography of Malcolm X wanting to be sympathetic (and the book never explains how much of the Angry Black Man stereotype comes from him), but it got me in the gut, relatively early. He was in school, and everyone was encouraged to follow their career paths, or, if guided, guided to push harder, go higher, or consider stuff that was similar. Until he said he wanted to be a lawyer, and was told he should shoot for being a carpenter.

And that was the turning point for him, as he recalled it, and I really got that. Probably because if I had my brain, and had someone tell me that, not maliciously, but because he *cared* about me, and didn't want me to pursue a useless dream, I could just *see* how that would fuck me up.

The other thing that really hit home was his talking about "conking" one's hair. One line... he discussed how they all did it, they never considered stopping, they told all the new folks to do it and taught them how... and no one *ever* told them their hair looked good. That was like, *wow*. That was like, holy *fuck*. (It helped that I read Pam Spaulding writing about black people's hair in the past, though.)

(And now I'm ever so torn, when I notice a nice afro, or some other styling that works with natural hair, I feel like saying "hey, nice hair!" if I'm sure it'll be sincere. I'm torn, because I don't tend to say things like that to random people, and is it condescending to want to provide validation?)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*nod* In a recent talk, Neil DeGrasse Tyson drew a parallel between the discouragement and roadblocks he faced as a Black youth interested in science and the discouragement and roadblocks he's seen many women face. It's utterly wrong and horribly corrosive to society for someone to look at people and decide they can't do something just because of their demographics, whatever demographics that pre-judger decides to focus their bigotry on.

*gets off soapbox, trying not to trip*

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Heh. Reference that bit above where I said I just can't quite get what it's like to be a woman, I can only imagine. But my imagination gives me some level of insight.

ED: for some reason, that last line I wrote bothers me - I was trying to say "wow, I can get a pretty vivid picture about how much that sucks" and engaging in understatement, because I do that a lot.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I was trying to say "wow, I can get a pretty vivid picture about how much that sucks"

If it helps, that's how I read it.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Thank you; I'm having a bad day, anxiety-wise, and I'm sure everything I say is coming out wrong.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[vass]

Thanks for the link to that Tumblr. It gave me a lot of opportunity for squee. I'll never get tired of how creative cosplayers are.

I particularly loved Fat Tiana kissing the frog. Just something about seeing the fat girl getting to be the pretty princess; plus Tiana's been my favourite Disney Princess since the movie came out, because she's the only one whose dream for the future (except for Mulan, who I don't remember actually having future ambitions - she just wants to get through all this and protect her family) is NOT a rescue fantasy, and her prince's arrival is kind of an unwelcome intrusion.

And the children are melting my heart. TINY DALEK CHILD. DE-AGED FOURTH DOCTOR.

AND THE MINECRAFT CHARACTER.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes! Some great cosplay there.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Cosplay fills me with joy, and, given the history of people thinking and saying "Black people aren't fannish, etc" I especially love seeing Black people cosplaying. Especially wee children. *squees in delight*

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

And those who say "I don't care whether people are purple," so typically look very pleased with themselves.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

*nod* Hence my desire to smack their fatuous faces.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

*puts the wart curse on them*

[kitty-hides.livejournal.com]

I dunno... I know personally I wouldn't have a problem with someone painting themselves white to cosplay, because there's no meaningful cultural appropriation going on there, "white" being the dominant media culture. (I also totally get why no-one would want to - I mean, why contribute to the erasure?)

BUT. I wonder if in a world where racism had been erased - like, theoretically, Star Trek - you could paint your skin a "real" colour without it being problematic?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know this young woman's reasons but I don't think I'd want to paint myself pink, given the history of what it's meant to have my skin color.

Maybe I'm failing in imagination; it would be nice to have a society deviod of racism long enough for that to work.

[kitty-hides.livejournal.com]

It would, wouldn't it? :/

[sethg]

I would assume so...

I’m both left-handed and Jewish. If some right-handed person announced that they were going to spend a day/week/month trying to use their left hand as the dominant hand, I’d be, yeah, whatevs. On the other, er, hand, Christian appropriation of [modern] Jewish religious symbology creeps me out.

I infer that if I lived in a world where left-handed people were the victims of systematic and pervasive discrimination, I would have a stronger reaction to right-handed people pretending to be left-handed.

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

Fabulous cosplay!

Good point about Princess Bubblegum. :)

That always bothered me when I was a kid. Why go out of your way to mention that you wont' discriminate against people who don't actually exist?

Love you.

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

Oh. I forgot to say that it would bother me now too, but I haven't heard anyone say it in a good while. I'd hoped it had gone away.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Maybe everyone who says that foolishness has decamped to Tumblr, which is where I found the second article, being cited in rebuttal to someone trotting out that exact statement.

*sighs and smiles and huggles you*