Is This Mural Offensive to Women of Color?
The more this debate rages on, the more sick and tired I am of Black and Brown people displacing their anger. This is a snippet of a piece I wrote about it for The BVX (Spinoff of AOL Black Voices):
There were some buxom women spotted on 42nd street recently. They were wearing gaudy jewelry, long fingernails and baring their wide hips and ample breasts via midriff tops and tight jeans for passersby to see. However, they weren’t prostitutes. They’re part of Sofia Maldonado’s vision for a mural created to represent females she describes as “brave, strong and tough,” but her oeuvre got “community organizers” angry.
The 26-year-old Puerto Rican-Cuban artist was commissioned by the Times Square Art Alliance to paint the mural on 42 Street between 7th and 8th avenues. Activist Tony Herbert told Fox News that the opus was an insult to Black and Latina women, insisting they should be seen holding brief cases and cell phones while another interviewee, a Black man, called the women “ghetto.” The New York City Black Professionals organized a protest demanding the artwork be taken down. But don’t we face bigger battles, like the fact that NYC school children could lose the free Metrocards they use to take public transportation? Or how about working toward eradicating disproportionate HIV/AIDS rates?
You can CLICK HERE to read my whole piece but my assessment of the situation is that I think it’s disgusting that people are protesting this mural by a young Latina woman, saying that the women look like ghetto trash. Yet, women like Gwen Stefani, Fergie and Ke$ha get away with dressing like this and in the cases of some of their music, promoting materialism but the same protesters are no where to be found. We got to do better. Really.
Category: News, Pop Culture, Reflections
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Starrene Rhett Rocque is a recovering journalist who often fantasizes about becoming a shotgun-toting B-movie heroine.Comments (3)
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- The pj’s – ‘Ghetto Superstars’ Part 1 of 3 « AVRDirect.com | March 20, 2010
Well I don’t know. The women as shown in the mural look just like many of the women we see on the street everyday. That is just the way it is.
I don’t know….sometimes art and it’s interpretation can get skewed….
for the time being I don’t think there’s a foul there…