Yesterday, as I was writing about Constance Jablonski’s blackface-with-a-random-Black-baby shoot, deja vu struck. Hard.

I was all like, “Is it that this chick looks like ‘fro’d out Claudia Schiffer on the cover of Stern Fotographie? Like French Vogue‘s shoe-polished Lara Stone? Al Jolson freaking “My Mammy”? Marsha Ambrosius?”

Then it hit me: Under the frankenlights of an ignorantly conceived and poorly executed photo shoot, the ruddy Frenchwoman Jablonski and a dark brown, Senegalese-American superstar by the name of Gaboure Sidibe are about the same complexion—chestnutty, with newborn baby poo undertones. Fashion magic!

Pantone, MAC, Sherwin-Williams: If you’re looking for a color-branding specialist, I’m available.

a White model named Constance Jablonski. A Black child. Grass, ostensibly African grass..

This is a swipe from a recent Numéro magazine shoot. The French model, Constance Jablonski, usually looks like this:

Constance in her natural habitat

Now, if you’re a pedestrian size 8-to-10 like me, you may not have heard of Numéro before. According to its website, what may look like litter pan liner to you is actually an “international” magazine that offers “an avant-garde view of the worlds of fashion, art and luxury.”  Apparently, “both today’s icons and tomorrow’s master talents” contribute to Numéro.

In comparing the magazine’s stated mission to the clichéd, colonialist-porn pictured above, I got confused. I hate being confused. So for my own clarity, I jotted down a few questions:

1. What is Constance doing in this picture? Why is she wearing an afro wig circa Foxy Brown and brownface circa Soul Man?”

2. Why is that baby standing in dried grass damn-near naked when Constance is layered and aggressively accessorized?

3. Of the 17 covers crawling atop Numéro‘s homepage, why is there a White person on every single living, loving, motherfucking one? And of some 60 back issues for sale, why are there just two people of color on the covers? I mean, the White woman with bangs, the White woman in orange eyeshadow, the White woman in green eyeshadow, Kate Moss in turquoise eye shadow, the White man with black fishnet on his face, the White dude spitting water into the air, and Jude Law are perfectly lovely. They are. But doesn’t this seem strange to the current icons and future masters and avant-garde-y people of all stripes who rabidly consume high fashion and images of it?

If I come up with some sensible answers, I’ll let you know.

Aiyana Stanley-Jones and Our Confused, Grieving Hearts.

Save the babies.

RIP Aiyana Stanley-Jones and Je’Rean Blake.  Justice and peace for these children’s families.

I don’t have expertise or on-the-ground observations about the sexual violence or other conditions sisters are facing in Haiti’s post-quake tent cities. But some people do. Go to this site–please–to find out more.

A strong black woman is a woman who expresses a lot of fortitude, a deep wealth of caring and a lot of persistence—those can be seen as noble qualities. [But] they were used against us during slavery and I think they continued to be used against us by the white community and by black patriarchy. You can extort a lot of work from people who subscribe to the notion that they are strong and invulnerable. (Emphasis mine.)

What I love about this quote: She defines, in plain language, what the Strong Black Woman identity embodies. Then she places those positive, sensible and HUMAN traits within the perverse parameters of slavery, white supremacy (my term, not hers), and black patriarchy (her term, not mine; still sorting that out, will track back in another post). Good ish.

It starts at about 33.01.

Juxtaposed with the preceding segment–an interview with Simeon Wright, who witnessed the August 28, 1955 kidnapping of his 14-year-old cousin, Emmett Till–my and Jimi’s exchange sounds so silly and cynical. To borrow a phrase from Raiyshe, a commenter from the Precious post, my spirit feels dirty.

I hope Jimi’s does too.

If you don’t have time, this is my favorite part of Lacewell’s painstaking critique:

“But even if we accepted the simplistic framing of an extant marriage crisis offered by the program, Nightline was stunningly simplistic (even for mainstream media) in its response to the issue. The solution offered most frequently in Wednesday’s conversation was familiar: professional black women need to scale back expectations. Black female success is an impediment to finding and cultivating black love. Hinging heavily on humor and black female desperation, like so many other conversations, articles, and news programs before it, this conversation missed the opportunity to offer a thoughtful analysis of structural, sociological, historical and political realities that serve as an impediment to fruitful partnerships between black men and women.

For example, the panel failed to address the reality that black boy infants are significantly more likely to die in the first year of life than are black girl infants, creating an immediate gender imbalance. The panel did not address the devastating effects of urban violence or mass incarceration on African American communities. The panel did not mention the systematic nature of inadequate educational opportunities for black boys or the continuing realities of employment discrimination effecting black men and women. These structural realities have an enormous impact on the shape and function of families.”

JEAH! Erudite. Thorough. Idiot-proof.

Sadly, I kept falling asleep.

The part I did see featured a very unmarried Hill Harper using Barack Obama as an example of the Black Everyman’s potential—you know, the stuff Sisters of the Big Shoulder Pad Tribe ignore because they’re too busy chasing upper middle class pipe dreams and Sapphiring out on blue-collar brothers.

Anyway, I was gonna wake up early and watch it online then do a catchup post. Except I was working on a bill-paying, old media assignment–about what men like in bed. (Ha!)

So now I’m  too late. Everything good to say about this essentializing, divisive, ahistorical, overly general fra fra has been said by the Crunk Feminist Collective and the Facebook pop-Womanist massive.

One teeny scrap I can’t resist riffing on:

The headline for the online version of the broadcast reads like this:

Nightline Face-Off: Why Can’t a Successful Black Woman Find a Man?

Sparks, Sincerity, Sass Fill Atlanta Auditorium in Seventh ‘Nightline Face-Off.

I understand the impulse to abuse alliteration (see?). But if you’re using the odious “sass” in reference to Black women–financially successful or otherwise–you don’t need to be selling ad space on our backs. Keep our romantic lives, our hair, our sexual health, our income, our weight, our desires, our souls, our fate out of your greedy, hype-riding mouths. You don’t really mean us well. So just stop it.