The concept of brownfacing

I am not blond and blond people are relatively rare here. Redhead even more so. Anyway, I will just assume the people I know are just already tanned and I never noticed and the pale people are pale because they can't tan.

edited 23rd Aug '12 8:59:21 AM by Heatth

@Shima: I'm one of the weird blondes that tans. I can stay out in the sun all day with no sunscreen, get a mild sunburn, and it'll peel off and I'll be really tan. When I was a kid I had the total surfer look going on, with the sunbleached hair and dark tan.

edited 23rd Aug '12 9:02:53 AM by DrunkGirlfriend

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

It is more common in Northern climes where the sun isn't so constant and people aren't outside so much. It's also more common among people of more Northern European background which the demographics of your country skew away from.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

^ This: Scandihoovian paleskins often can tan to a beautiful deep gold. Irish paleskins tend to be burners. They go from pasty-white to boiled-lobster red with nothing in between.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

So, while we're talking about altering physical characteristics for the sake of a costume, how do you guys feel about this blog post?

I'm not sure if it's offtopic or not, but I think that it's related enough because the author compares it to blackface.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

Well, having known several drag queens, I don't think that they'd accept the basic premise that drag "is an overt expression of contempt for women in general and trans* women in particular." Context of the drag is everything. While contempt can certainly be one of, or part of the reasons a guy does drag, so are a lot of other things. To say that all drag is inherently contemptuous in origin and nature is to use a brush broad enough to paint all of Nebraska in one pass.

edited 23rd Aug '12 10:12:15 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I guess that what I'm wondering is; If changing your skintone to suit a character is bad, regardless of context, does that mean the author has a legitimate point in that crossdressing to suit a character*

is bad, regardless of context? If not, what's the difference?

edited 23rd Aug '12 10:23:16 AM by DrunkGirlfriend

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

I don't agree that changing your sex or your skin tone to fit a character is bad any more than putting on a wig is. Notice that no one gets up in arms about any of the other cosmetics. There are people who project their own prejudices and insecurities onto others. Those are the people who tend to be most up in arms about these sort of things. People who aren't comfortable in their own skins so they can't see how anyone else could be either.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Context is important. Not all "change skin tone to match character being played" is inherently bad, nor is it as connotation-neutral as some of us would like it to be.

And to that point, @Heatth, I had not noticed before that you're in Brazil, which is a different context than the US for this sort of thing. That may explain some of our talking past each other.

Saying that someone is "offended for the sake of being offended" comes across as equivalent to the "you're too sensitive" argument, putting the onus on the offended person for their emotional reaction.

Clearly, these cosplayers do not mean to upset anyone. But if I flail my arm out blindly without checking to see if anyone is in arm's length, and I whap their nose, my lack of intention doesn't mean I didn't actually hit them.

So context is important, but people still shouldn't do it because others might find it offensive?

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

On one hand, yeah, it can be construed as rather offensive. On the other, people who really like a franchise or series or whatever are going to cosplay as their favorite characters. It's a great thing that POC and minorities are main characters in stuff more often these days, but we live in an age of comic and video game conventions, so there's going to be some clash of priorities/beliefs.

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

More that they should be aware of why other people might be offended, and thus less likely to compound the issue by getting defensive and using tone-deaf arguments.

It sounds to me that the "brownfacing!" accusers and that anti-drag tumblr post make a similar mistake: turning a possibility of offensive meaning into "definitely always offensive".

Also, I feel that there's a lot of an attempt to appropriate the struggle of black people against racism by other groups fighting other oppression, and that appropriation sometimes takes the form of treating things as exact analogues when they're not. In this case, it's the perceived need to find an equivalent to "blackfacing" to get offended about, totally ignoring the reasons why blackfacing is offensive, which is the history behind it and how it's been used.

Blackfacing is not offensive because "OMG a white person is pretending to be black!", rather it's because of a very long history of white people portraying extremely offensive exaggerated stereotypes of black people with the intent and effect of reinforcing racism. Blackface today is offensive because of that history, and because that history isn't all that long ago at all. It doesn't have much at all to do with a notion that playing a character of a somewhat different skin tone to one's natural one is offensive.

A brighter future for a darker age.

Okay, so I guess I don't understand why it's offensive. Blackface and minstrel acts are one thing, but I don't get why people get worked up over stuff like this or this.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

Isn't is tinkerbell white? I don't get it.

hashtagsarestupid

No, the point is that it's the same woman cosplaying both characters, so therefore one of them is not her natural skin tone.

A brighter future for a darker age.

Well, that depends on what you call natural. Is going out in the sun and tanning natural? Are you not allowed to go tanning before you cosplay? That is the question.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I see.

On crossdressing: yeah I can sort of see something to the idea that drag while well meaning perpetuates harmful stereotypes of women. I have yet to hear anyone seriously make that argument however.

edited 23rd Aug '12 2:50:29 PM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

I think that these are people who just don't know what Blackface is. They don't understand why it's offensive, and they look just as ridiculous as people who go apeshit over things they don't fully understand always do.

The problem isn't in a white person pretending to be a black person, but in the ridiculous caricature of the jet-black faced, big-lipped, googly-eyed, permanently happy guy from a Plantation.

I just don't understand how people can miss those pretty important elements. It's quite an astounding leap to implicitly accuse someone of that kind of carry on when they simply haven't done anything like it.

edited 23rd Aug '12 2:48:55 PM by TheBatPencil

And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

According to what I've been seeing on the internet while looking into this, people find it derogatory because they feel like skin tone is not a costume, nor should it be considered part of a costume.

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian

To which I say get over it.

There are far more horrble, outright, and more damaging instances of racism, stereotype, cultural approperation/insensitvity, whatever you want to call it going on.

A fan trying to acurately portray a character they adore is far less dangerous than say, a racist stereotype being the only way a certain group is portrayed in the media. (Example: token Black comic relief, Hispanic pool boy, Arab Terrorist/Fanatic, etc.)

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

Well, skin colour is either important or it's not. And it's not; it's an appearance thing, ultimately without objective significance. Acting otherwise, as though it has an importance beyond what is in the eyes of the beholder, is hypocritical in this context. One can't expect people to look beyond skin colour, as I'm sure all these people do, then throw a fit when people treat it the same as hair colour. Or eye colour. Or whatever.

The people who are actually comparing this with "oppression" and historical examples that are actual oppression need slapped for their utter stupidity.

edited 23rd Aug '12 4:10:38 PM by TheBatPencil

And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

Well, if skin tone isn't a costume, then what about wigs and contact lenses - and come to that, perming or straightening your hair? Surely those would also be offensive.

Be not afraid...

I think the "whitewashing" thing is way more offensive.

It seems to be that, if you're white, you're gonna offend someone no matter what by dressing up as a fictional POC. Did you tan/put on make-up? Well skin color isn't a costume! It's a real thing and you're objectifying it! Did you not tan/put on make-up? Well you're whitewashing! You think every character has to be white, don't you?

There's no winning. It's honestly just social justice bloggers being more and more hypocritical.

Which is funny because usually, social justice bloggers are very supportive of people of various body types portraying characters outside their range in cosplay. They encourage this. But when a white person does it? Racism. And their justification for thinking this? Because it's not your fictional character to portray. It was meant for them.

I'm pretty sure the concept of Law having limits was a translation error. -Wanderlustwarrior

It does make sense for a POC to cosplay as a POC character.

Still, if we're going to institute this attitude of "white people cosplay as white characters, POC cosplay as POC characters," wouldn't that seem like a sort of segregation?

Granted, the problem could be solved if everyone just cosplayed as friggin' Master Chief or Blood Eagles/Diamond Swords or cardboard Timber Wolves, but...

edited 23rd Aug '12 6:36:36 PM by RocketDude

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel