The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
14 — Wednesday, December 9, 2020 
statement

T

his September, Netflix announced 
that it would start streaming the film 
“Cuties,” a French film directed by 

Senagalese-French director Maïmouna Dou-
couré, and the Internet went wild. “Cuties” is 
a coming of age film following an eleven-year-
old girl who uses dance to explore her identity, 
against the ideals of her conservative family. 
The film has been critiqued for hypersexual-
izing young girls, as multiple characters under 
the age of twelve are depicted making sexually 
suggestive gestures throughout the movie. A 
rush of Netflix subscriptions cancellations fol-
lowed, and the backlash was so strong that a 
Texas grand jury indicted the film for “promot-
ing certain lewd material of children.” 

Some, however, defended the film, saying 

that many people were missing the point. The 
film was not a promotion but instead a com-
mentary on the hypersexualization of young 
girls in today’s society. It was lewd, by nature, 
forcing us to have a conversation about the hy-
persexualization of young girls, especially dur-
ing the age of social media, which was another 
common theme throughout the film.

This was the first time in my life that I have 

heard such an in-depth and purposeful conver-
sation (albeit a short-lived one) about 
the hypersexualization of young girls, 
especially girls and women of color. As I 
reflected further, I started to realize how 
much this culture of hypersexualization 
has affected my own perception of my 
body as I grew into it as a young girl and 
a woman of color today. 

This hypersexualization of women 

of color is deeply rooted in our coun-
try’s history, dating all the way back to 
the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colo-
nization. Professors LaKisha Simmons 
and Andrea Bolivar from the Women’s 
and Gender Studies at the University of 
Michigan introduced me to the historical 
contexts of the fetishization of women of 
color. 

“There was a concerted effort to de-

fine whiteness as proper humanity, and 
part of that definition involved what 
makes one a man and what makes one 
a woman,” Simmons explained in an in-
terview with The Daily over Zoom. “And 
so you see, these conversations kind of 
intertwined with what we might say are 
excuses, or colonization, and stealing 
both land and human bodies.” 

There is concrete evidence for this in 

the writing accounts of early European 
colonizers and slave traders. In a 1997 
paper, Jennifer L. Morgan, professor of 
social and cultural analysis at New York 
University, wrote, “Writers who articu-
lated religious and moral justifications 
for the slave trade simultaneously grap-
pled with the character of the female Af-
rican body — a body both desirable and 
repulsive, available and untouchable, 
productive and reproductive, beautiful 
and Black.” 

Postcards with pictures of naked In-

digenous and African women on them 
were even sent back to Europe to entice 
men to come to settle in the New World. These 
writings and postcards had a cynical underlying 
intention. 

“They’re trying to justify access to bodies, 

whether for labor or force for sex and justi-
fied various forms of violence,” Simmons ex-
plained. “So on the one hand you have to say 
that these are not regular women like the ones 
back home, right? And then on the other hand, 
you’re also saying that they’re somehow extra 
desirable.” 

As a Latina myself, I was interested in what 

led to the hypersexualization of Latinas spe-
cifically. In an email interview with The Daily, 
Bolivar gave me valuable insight on the history 
of hypersexualization of Latinas in the U.S. 

“Scholars have argued that Latina women 

are constructed as hypersexual and overly ro-
mantic in order to distance them from, and thus 
bolster, the white heteronormative family and 
nation,” Bolivar said. “Racialized/sexualized 
stereotypes also justify violence, including sex-
ual violence, against Latinas, and other women 
of color.” 

East Asian women also experience hypersex-

ualization. Like other WOC, they are exoticized 
and fetishized for their looks. They are stereo-
typed as being submissive, a justification for ac-
cess to their bodies. 

This issue is further complicated when we 

look at the intersectionality between being a 
woman of color and in the LGBTQ+ commu-
nity. Bolivar, whose research allows her the op-
portunity to work with transgender Latinas in 
Chicago, explained the challenges faced in this 
overlap of identities. 

“They challenge cisgender notions about 

gender, the body, and the relationship between 
gender and the body, and they challenge the 
gender binary — all of which are foundational to 
personhood and membership in larger society,” 
Bolivar explained. “As a result, their bodies are 
objectified, fetishized, and hypersexualized.” 

At the inception of the country we know of 

today as the United States, those in power — 
white, land-owning men — were creating sys-
tems and a culture that inherently served to dis-
empower WOC. In fact, colonizers associated 
African and Indigenous women with wildlife to 
justify the inhumane treatment of these groups. 

“Hypersexuality is associated with animail-

ity, so claiming that they were hypersexual 
bolstered the association with animals, which 
of course justified genocide and enslavement,” 
Bolivar wrote. “We, as a nation, have inherited 
that reality, but have yet to reckon with it. BI-

POC and BIWOC have inherited this trauma in 
our bodies.” 

These systems continue to exist today and 

have a lasting impact on the women of color 
living in the United States. For example, the 
U.S. gender wage gaps disproportionately af-
fect women of color. For every $1 a white man 
makes, Latina/Hispanic women make $0.54, 
American Indian and Alaskan native women 
make $0.57, Southeast Asian women make 
$0.61, Black women make $0.62 and Hawaiin/ 
Pacific Islander women make $0.68. This ineq-
uity makes sense, considering the systems that 
exist were built to the benefit of whiteness and 
maleness, viewing those of color as “others” or 
exotic beings existing in a completely different 
category.

Women of color today are also more prone 

to experience acts of domestic and sexual vio-
lence. Black women experience intimate part-
ner violence at a rate that is 35 percent higher 
than their white women counterparts. Trans-
gender women of color are also a group very 
vulnerable to this abuse. A 2012 study showed 
that 61.5% of victims from hate violence homi-
cide were women, many of whom were trans-
gender women. 

“It is incredibly important to recognize 

violence against trans women of color,” Boli-

var said. “That is the first step in combating it. 
However, at the same time, trans women of col-
or have become associated with death, which is 
dehumanizing and dangerous.” 

As far as standards of beauty are concerned, 

women of color still exist in a dichotomous 
space where we are both disgusting and desired 
at the same time. This weird place of fetishiza-
tion is fixated on all forms: from our hair tex-
ture to our curves to our accents. We are con-
stantly “othered” and outcast in the workplace 
or in school, but we are simultaneously consid-
ered the most beautiful women in the world.

Growing up, I subconsciously felt this tug of 

war inside of me. I am Dominican and Danish, 
existing in two different worlds with two very 
different standards of beauty. I was raised in 
New York City, in spaces that were predomi-
nately white, where I was seen as different 
from many of my peers. When my Caribbean 
curves began to form, changing the shape un-
derneath my dance leotards, and as my breasts 
and hips grew, stretching the fabric of my favor-
ite clothes, a sense of shame began to creep in. 
When I walked down the street, the male gaze 
became more aggressive — more like a hungry 
stare. I began to dissociate from my body. 

I did benefit from many privileges in my 

Dominican culture because I have glimpses of 
European features: light brown skin, hazel eyes, 
“good” curls, a curvy physique, a European last 
name. My POC peers would reach for my curls 
and gently tug to test if my hair was real. They 
would ask me to look into the sunlight so they 
could observe the golden specks in my hazel 
eyes and see if they were just contacts. I would 
be told that my brown skin made me look taína, 
the Indigenous people of my country, which is 
the utmost compliment in Dominican culture. I 
was made to feel beautiful as if I was a uniquely 
and meticulously handcrafted piece of art. 

At the same time, I was told that many of the 

things that made me beautiful in my Domini-
can culture were ugly in the white spaces I ex-
isted in. White peers of mine would ask if they 
could feel my boobs or if I could flash them, 
as if they had never seen a woman with curves 
before. They would assume that I slept around 
often and asked about my sexual experience, 
but would also say that I would get more atten-
tion from guys if my skin was a lighter shade. 
It is in these spaces that my white peers felt 
entitled to my body: to critique my shape, to 
ask me personal questions about my sex life 
and to touch me. It’s as if I have been walking 
down a tightrope my entire life, teetering be-
tween being beautiful by some and undesirable 

by others. 

Of course, standards of beauty shift with 

time — they are never stagnant. What was con-
sidered beautiful for women in the 1960s is not 
the same as what was considered beautiful for 
women in the 90s. When I scroll through my In-
stagram feed, I notice that the standard of beau-
ty emerging seems to be something I was once 
made to feel ashamed about: having curves. 
Namely, having a big butt and big boobs.

Enter the Kardashians/Jenners. I really do 

believe that Kim Kardashian and her family 
have made big butts and breasts more accept-
able and desirable in mainstream society. This is 
illuminating in itself: A family of white women 
using their privilege to iconize what has been 
used to stigmatize women of color for centuries. 

“It’s really about monetizing Blackness or 

whatever, but they can do it in a way that actual 
Black women cannot … It’s actually like leaning 
into your privilege as a white person to be able 
to use Black culture and style and look, and then 
make money off of it,” Simmons explained. 

But this is nothing new. The entertainment 

and music industry has a long history of hijack-
ing ethnic minority cultures for profit.

Reflecting on the scope of and my own per-

sonal experiences with this issue made 
me feel stuck. How could I possibly fight 
a problem that is both so deeply rooted in 
our society and in my internal dialogue? 

Then, while I was trying to pick out 

what to listen to for a run one day, I coin-
cidentally stumbled upon Brene Brown’s 
podcast “Unlocking us” with Sonya Re-
nee Taylor on her book “The Body Is 
Not an Apology.” The description of the 
podcast mentioned words of radical self-
love, which I reflexively rolled my eyes 
at. I have stuffed my mind before with 
one too many self-love podcasts and 
books, telling me how I can grow more 
comfortable in my own skin. Would this 
one be able to offer me anything differ-
ent? But I was going on a long-distance 
run and needed something inspiring to 
listen to, so I gave it a try. I expected 
the podcast to be cliché, filled with talk 
about ways to love yourself and to be-
come comfortable in your own skin by 
accepting yourself for who you are. 

Boy, was I wrong. 
Instead, Taylor presented self-love as 

a means of social activism. She went on 
to discuss how systems in our society tell 
so many people to dislike their bodies — 
from people with disabilities to people of 
color to plus-size people. By constantly 
putting ourselves down and apologizing 
for our appearances, we are contributing 
and upholding the same systems which 
disempower us. I had goosebumps for 
the entire hour or so of my run.

But expecting every WOC to reject all 

systems which oppress them is a tall order 
to ask. We all have different experiences, 
traumas and identities we hold that must be 
dealt with and understood. It’s a personal 
journey. So I turned to academics for per-
haps a more clear answer: I asked Bolivar 
what I and fellow women of color could do 

to walk the fine line of sexual empowerment with-
out feeling like we are being exoticized. 

“Something that felt empowering yesterday 

may feel icky today,” Bolivar said. “So I guess my 
one piece of advice would be to check in with your-
self often. And don’t hold yourself to others’ ex-
pectations about how you “should” feel, and what 
“should” be empowering or disempowering,” she 
responded. 

That’s just it. The journey into growing into 

your sexually empowered self is a personal one. It’s 
not linear, it’s dependent on circumstances, a trial 
and error. But it requires being gentle and compas-
sionate with yourself, even when all external pres-
sures and your subconscious want to do otherwise. 

I can only hope that the conversations sur-

rounding the hypersexualization of WOC don’t 
just stop with the conversations we had in Sep-
tember on the film “Cuties.” Uncomfortable 
conversations and confrontations with reality 
need to be conducted. The most empowering 
thing we can do is have those conversations in a 
way that doesn’t victimize women, instead, ac-
knowledging their positions and honoring their 
stories. 

BY ISABELLE HASSLUND, STATEMENT ASSOCIATE EDITOR

It’s time to 
It’s time to 
talk about 
talk about 
fetishization
fetishization

Read more online at 

michigandaily.com

COLLAGE BY EILEEN KELLY

