This article was originally posted on Kidpallas.com on June 19th 2014. When I first began to delve into the discourses surrounding ethnic identity and beauty, I found many of my long-held worries, fears, anxieties and discomforts given vindication and explanation. Growing up not-White, there is an ever-present awareness of what is not for you, and it is mostly everything. I knew when I opened up a women’s magazine that the make-up tutorials were not for me. A smoky eye never looked right no matter how carefully I followed instructions. Walking up to a make-up counter to find only one not-White shade dubiously named “Chocolate” or “Mocha” amidst thirty variations on Whiteness , I knew that the beauty industry was not built to cater to me. I don’t mean “me” as an individual, I mean “me” as a Black woman. It’s easy to tell a brand or product’s target audience. It’s easier to tell when you’re not it. By the time I was in primary school, I knew who the target audience was for make-up, for girls’ toys, for beauty: White women. I hadn’t, at that age, entirely figured out why that should bother me but it did. The effect...

Today, I changed the tagline of this blog from Equality, literature and style to Liberation , literature and style . The reason behind this is simple: equality should not be, nor can it be, the goal of feminism or any struggle that seeks to end institutional oppression. When discussing the feminist movement and its goals, the word "equality" is used often. Too many times, I have heard a girl assert, with no ill intent, that the goal of feminism isn't to give one gender rights over the other but rather to level out the playing field, so that both might be equal. I heard a girl say the same on Monday at a meeting of my college's Feminist Society and I heard it again earlier today. Both instances presented two principal issues: firstly, the problematic notion of achieving equality within a society that is founded upon a complex system of oppressions and privileges and secondly, the fact that, in both cases, I did not voice my opinion for fear of seeming unnecessarily difficult or impolite. Back to the playing field. Its great mountains and valleys are no small accident. The current structure of society depends upon a social hierarchy...

In 1914, a large portion of the industrial workforce was sent abroad and women were forced to fill the gap. While men donned battle fatigues and went off to war, women put on trousers and shirts and went to work. Women were forced to absorb aspects of masculinity into their gender identity during wartime as they moved into previously male-dominated industries and escaped the confinement of the domestic sphere. Yet, at the same time, men only experienced the affirmation and glorification of the hyper-masculine reality of war. Where the feminine became less practical, the masculine became more desirable. This sentiment was expressed in the "progressive" fashions following World War I. La garconne was woman reinvented. She was scorned by those who preferred the social hierarchy as it had been and adopted by the bright young things of the day. She largely dispensed with what was considered traditionally feminine. Her short hemlines and short hair were more practical - and masculine. She was loud and strong, although she was, in some ways, as impossible an ideal as the woman who had come before her. The most notable designer of the era - Coco Chanel - stole the stage from the...

Concerned parents everywhere are taking to their media outlet of choice to churn out lazily-constructed think pieces on Miley Cyrus' transformation from a former Disney star into a "sex symbol". What will they tell their children? What they are telling their audiences is to ostracise Miley Cyrus, to excommunicate her in favour of more acceptable role models. The problem with all this concern is that, in reality, it is nothing more than a poorly-veiled (if not entirely conscious) attempt to preserve gendered and racial power dynamics. Black culture, in particular, has become the antithesis of "high culture" which is, unsurprisingly, dominated by the white western elite. The equation of "black" with "base" is so ingrained that no one has to say, or even think, that Cyrus' behaviour is worrying because she's trying to channel more Lil Kim than she is Dolly Parton these days, but it is implicit in their reaction and what they consider to be "classy". Aside from the gold mouthpiece and the change in style, the hyper-sexualisation that Cyrus' new persona embodies is most often associated with women of colour, which is perhaps why people keep asking if she's trying to emulate Rihanna, but not Britney...