Brown Beauty: Color, Sex, and Race from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 25 September 2018
Publisher: New York University Press

Between the Harlem Renaissance and the end of World War II, a complex discourse emerged surrounding considerations of appearance of African American women and expressions of race, class, and status. Brown Beauty delves into how the media created a beauty ideal for these women, emphasizing different representations and expressions of brown skin. Haidarali contends that the idea of brown as a "respectable shade" was carefully constructed through print and visual media in the interwar era. Throughout this period, brownness of skin came to be idealized as the real, representational, and respectable complexion of African American middle-class women. Shades of brown became channels that facilitated discussions of race, class, and gender in a way that would develop lasting cultural effects for an ever-modernizing world.

Building on an impressive range of visual and media sources—from newspapers, journals, magazines, and newsletters to commercial advertising—Haidarali locates a complex, and sometimes contradictory, set of cultural values at the core of representations of women, envisioned as "brown-skin." She explores how brownness affected socially-mobile New Negro women in the urban environment during the interwar years, showing how the majority of messages on brownness were directed at an aspirant middle-class. By tracing browns changing meanings across this period, and showing how a visual language of brown grew into a dynamic racial shorthand used to denote modern African American womanhood, Brown Beauty demonstrates the myriad values and judgments, compromises, and contradictions involved in the social evaluation of women. This book is a significant contribution to the study of race, gender, and media, offering a fresh perspective on the complex relationship between these three domains. It will be of interest to scholars and students of African American history, culture, and media studies, as well as those interested in broader debates about beauty, representation, and identity.

Weight: 662g
Dimension: 153 x 228 x 32 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781479802081