Children grow up predominately surrounded with images of white people. Books, TV shows, ads, commercials, magazines, toys, cartoons, comics, movies, superheroes, everything. Seeing these consistent racial mirrors reinforces for children of all races that white is normal and ideal.
Finding books, movies, toys, and babies that feature characters that match my girls is not as simple as going to the store and picking up the first book we see. There is a lot more available now than there was when I was a kid, for sure, but it is still not normal to find a good selection of Asian, black, Native American, or Hispanic things for kids, especially ones that don’t fall into stereotypical tropes.
To give a real life example of the impact of this, there’s a scene in the movie ‘Home’ where the mom of the main character describes her daughter as having “beautiful brown skin.” Every single time KG sees that scene she gets a wistful grin on her face. No matter what we as her parents do to provide her with positive racial mirrors, it’s obviously not enough for her to have that intrinsic feeling of value in her own skin.
Society* regularly accepts that marketing’s projection of what defines beauty has a negative impact on young girls’ body image.
Society* regularly denies that marketing’s projection of what defines beauty has a negative impact on black kids.
*By 'society' I mean society in general. I know there are pockets of dissent for the former and acceptance for the latter.
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