White women try to "reclaim power" through #vanillagirl and #cleangirl beauty posts??

[Anonymous]

Can we all just get along?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Considering the only current household name ballerina is black, associating balletcore with whiteness seems very silly. Anyway. I don’t think any of these aesthetic trends are uniquely white. They are probably uniquely UMC, but obviously it’s not only white people who are wealthy.

Misty Copeland is celebrated because of how incredibly unusual it is for a star ballerina to be black. Ballet is overwhelmingly associated with whiteness and thinness.

Cool, can you come up with a single while ballerina with similar levels of fame?

In the mainstream view, or in the view of the ballet world? Olga Smirnova, Polina Semionova, Natalia Osipova…because I happen to love ballet, I know these names. Non-fans probably know Copeland and Baryshnikov.

Your point is asinine. I can list probably 100 figure skaters from the 1920s through today, because I am a fan of the sport. The mainstream public can probably come up with Nathan Chen, Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, and Michelle Kwan, and two of those are from a scandal and a movie.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Considering the only current household name ballerina is black, associating balletcore with whiteness seems very silly. Anyway. I don’t think any of these aesthetic trends are uniquely white. They are probably uniquely UMC, but obviously it’s not only white people who are wealthy.

Misty Copeland is celebrated because of how incredibly unusual it is for a star ballerina to be black. Ballet is overwhelmingly associated with whiteness and thinness.

Cool, can you come up with a single while ballerina with similar levels of fame?

In the mainstream view, or in the view of the ballet world? Olga Smirnova, Polina Semionova, Natalia Osipova…because I happen to love ballet, I know these names. Non-fans probably know Copeland and Baryshnikov.

Your point is asinine. I can list probably 100 figure skaters from the 1920s through today, because I am a fan of the sport. The mainstream public can probably come up with Nathan Chen, Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, and Michelle Kwan, and two of those are from a scandal and a movie.

NP. I think your point is asinine. Of course the question meant the mainstream view. That’s what fame means.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Considering the only current household name ballerina is black, associating balletcore with whiteness seems very silly. Anyway. I don’t think any of these aesthetic trends are uniquely white. They are probably uniquely UMC, but obviously it’s not only white people who are wealthy.

Misty Copeland is celebrated because of how incredibly unusual it is for a star ballerina to be black. Ballet is overwhelmingly associated with whiteness and thinness.

Cool, can you come up with a single while ballerina with similar levels of fame?

In the mainstream view, or in the view of the ballet world? Olga Smirnova, Polina Semionova, Natalia Osipova…because I happen to love ballet, I know these names. Non-fans probably know Copeland and Baryshnikov.

Your point is asinine. I can list probably 100 figure skaters from the 1920s through today, because I am a fan of the sport. The mainstream public can probably come up with Nathan Chen, Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan, and Michelle Kwan, and two of those are from a scandal and a movie.

NP. I think your point is asinine. Of course the question meant the mainstream view. That’s what fame means.

“Mainstream view” is not what sells out Lincoln Center, dingbat.

[Anonymous]

Misty Copeland = ballet is diverse
Barack Obama = the entirety of the presidency is diverse

See how stupid that sounds?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was listening to NPR yesterday while doing chores, and the "It's Been a Minute" segment came on.

They interviewed a Buzzfeed reporter, Steffi Cao, who has written that white women feel they've lost some of their political/power/beauty influence, and these #cleangirl and #vanillagirl trends are an attempt to reclaim some of that.

To kick it off, host Brittany Luse chats with Buzzfeed News internet reporter Steffi Cao about her essay, "white women want their power back: on bbls and balletcore, and the entropy of aesthetic." After scrolling on Instagram Reels, Steffi noticed that the clean girl, coastal grandmother and – most importantly – the vanilla girl trends are all ushering in a very specific aesthetic. Brittany and Steffi talk beauty as soft power and the rebrand of white womanhood.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/28/1166458384/the...that-beauty-is-power

I just sat listening, incredulous, to the entire interview. It was the most bizarre thing I have ever listened to on NPR.

For context, I'm in my mid 50s, white, and have always liked minimalist everything. Minimal makeup, minimal manicure, etc. Other than perhaps my age, I'm everything she is talking about.

Having said that, since there has been a consistent push against cultural appropriation (which she touches on with the Kardashians and Miley Cyrus), I find it puzzling that she finds negative intent[b] in just being stereotypically white. She may find it boring, but I'm not sure why she thinks it's an attempt at a power grab.

I'm 100% behind centering women of color without appropriating their innovation and creativity as my own. But that doesn't mean if white women (mostly white, because there are some women of color posting in some of these trends) are posting about oval nails, delicate jewelry, or scandi home decor, it means they are trying to erase the popularity of other great content by women of color.

So, my question to the younger, more with-it crowd here, is this idea completely off its rocker, which is how it seems to me? Or am I missing some more nuanced cultural shift here?

What chores were you doing?

lol not sure why you are asking, but:
dusting
laundry
emptying the dishwasher
putting stuff back where it belongs
weeding the front flower bed

I always listen to something while doing these types of chores. I'm out of audiobooks, so I put on NPR.

[Anonymous]

I'm a woman of color and I find the article silly. What I guess I don't understand is the tremendous outrage it seems to have triggered here among white women. If you think it's dumb, that's fine, but what is it about this that makes white women so damn fragile about it all?

[Anonymous]

I used to listen to NPR daily, but many of their stories/segments are done through the lenses of race. And eventually I got tired it as I wanted to hear other types of news/angles. Anyway it’s such a ridiculous idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Considering the only current household name ballerina is black, associating balletcore with whiteness seems very silly. Anyway. I don’t think any of these aesthetic trends are uniquely white. They are probably uniquely UMC, but obviously it’s not only white people who are wealthy.

Saying ballet is now well-diversified because of Missy Copeland is as absurd and false as saying rap is an even mix of Black and white performers because Eminem is a successful artist. Rap is still mostly a Black medium, and ballet is still a mostly white medium.

I’m confused. If rap is mostly black, is it a problem if ballet is mostly white?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a woman of color and I find the article silly. What I guess I don't understand is the tremendous outrage it seems to have triggered here among white women. If you think it's dumb, that's fine, but what is it about this that makes white women so damn fragile about it all?

It's interesting that voicing even any opposition to an argument like this (which you yourself deem "silly") is being "fragile." That's an interesting word choice because it's not the kind of word you hear assigned to any other group of people, except maybe children (and not even all children, just girls). "Don't be so fragile about it" is a pretty classic neg against white women. Along with being shrill or hysterical.

White women are accused of "playing the victim" but we are also told, that if we do so much as vocalize a defense of ourselves in the face of criticism, that we are being "fragile" or using "white tears." The stereotype of the white woman is someone who performs weakness in order to get the protection of white men, but when white women stand up for themselves (not hiding behind white men but using their own words and argument stop advocate for themselves), they are dismissed and told to sit back down.

And that is why white women get angry about this stuff. White women absolutely have to be accountable for the role they've played, and continue to play, in white supremacy. But the fixation on white women as though we run the world (we don't) is bizarre and I think speaks to a broader misogyny -- it's easier to scape goat white women for their role in white supremacy than to actually dismantle the sources of white supremacy. It's easier to make fun of a skinny 24 year old white woman on Instagram posting about her #cleanface beauty regimen than it is to actually challenge a person with real power.

Whatever, I guess I'm just being "fragile."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a woman of color and I find the article silly. What I guess I don't understand is the tremendous outrage it seems to have triggered here among white women. If you think it's dumb, that's fine, but what is it about this that makes white women so damn fragile about it all?

Generalizing makes conversation impossible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a woman of color and I find the article silly. What I guess I don't understand is the tremendous outrage it seems to have triggered here among white women. If you think it's dumb, that's fine, but what is it about this that makes white women so damn fragile about it all?

It's interesting that voicing even any opposition to an argument like this (which you yourself deem "silly") is being "fragile." That's an interesting word choice because it's not the kind of word you hear assigned to any other group of people, except maybe children (and not even all children, just girls). "Don't be so fragile about it" is a pretty classic neg against white women. Along with being shrill or hysterical.

White women are accused of "playing the victim" but we are also told, that if we do so much as vocalize a defense of ourselves in the face of criticism, that we are being "fragile" or using "white tears." The stereotype of the white woman is someone who performs weakness in order to get the protection of white men, but when white women stand up for themselves (not hiding behind white men but using their own words and argument stop advocate for themselves), they are dismissed and told to sit back down.

And that is why white women get angry about this stuff. White women absolutely have to be accountable for the role they've played, and continue to play, in white supremacy. But the fixation on white women as though we run the world (we don't) is bizarre and I think speaks to a broader misogyny -- it's easier to scape goat white women for their role in white supremacy than to actually dismantle the sources of white supremacy. It's easier to make fun of a skinny 24 year old white woman on Instagram posting about her #cleanface beauty regimen than it is to actually challenge a person with real power.

Whatever, I guess I'm just being "fragile."

What she said.

[Anonymous]

I just read the article, and I’m sorry I did because it’s rooted in the world of Millennials/Gen Z and the world she fabricates is not part of the world I’m in. Perhaps she should get off social media, like many of us older people, and leave it to the young people to sort out. And if she was wiser, she would realize these trends come and go, and by the time you’re done analyzing them and extrapolating meaning, poof they’re gone, some other trend is popular. I don’t disagree w/ her assertion that clean girl, coastal grandma, old money vibes are white-oriented…they are indeed. But you can’t control trends, you just have to get better ones going!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Considering the only current household name ballerina is black, associating balletcore with whiteness seems very silly. Anyway. I don’t think any of these aesthetic trends are uniquely white. They are probably uniquely UMC, but obviously it’s not only white people who are wealthy.

Considering the President of the US is Black (let's pretend I'm posting in 2015), associating political power with whiteness seems very silly.

You can't be this dumb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Considering the only current household name ballerina is black, associating balletcore with whiteness seems very silly. Anyway. I don’t think any of these aesthetic trends are uniquely white. They are probably uniquely UMC, but obviously it’s not only white people who are wealthy.

Misty Copeland is celebrated because of how incredibly unusual it is for a star ballerina to be black. Ballet is overwhelmingly associated with whiteness and thinness.

Weird, I thought she was celebrated for being an amazing ballerina.