Racist Art: White Woman Selling Naked Oprah

The four costumes by artist and fashion designer Peggy Noland, which feature Oprah's face Photoshopped onto different-sized black female bodies, support the pervasive racism in American popular culture. The clothes provide the impression that anybody may "try on" a black woman's body in sizes "S, M, or L," all of which correspond to expectations of white beauty. This is reminiscent of historical instances in which black bodies of all sexes were on display, sometimes at open slave auctions, to be ridiculed and scrutinized before being purchased and sold under white American supremacy.

This artistic endeavor is a method to offline market naked photographs. Now, not just offline but also online, there are many methods to sell naked pics (for example, https://my.club/blog/how-to-sell-nudes-online-the-ultimate-guide/) without raising a problem or endangering yourself. As you can see, nudes are both modern art and pornographic material.

The most influential black woman in entertainment, Oprah, speaks out against the racism and sexism of these gowns. When Oprah is at her ultimate weight (size L), her pasted-on countenance transforms from being serene and grinning when she is really thin(size S) and average-sized(size M) to scared and yelling. Noland perpetuates a culture of body shame among white women toward women of color by utilizing these sizes. Oprah has faced public criticism and mockery for her weight issues, and this criticism stems from a white, Eurocentric fashion industry that determines what kinds of bodies are acceptable and how to regulate them.

With these garments, Noland invents a type of all-over, wearable blackface—a racist phenomena that reemerged this year. One such instance involves the actress Julianne Hough, who attended a party in Beverly Hills while dressed as Crazy Eyes from the television series Orange Is the New Black (Uzo Aduba). In an attempt to mimic Crazy Eyes' natural hairdo of tiny bantu-knots, Hough even made an effort to "blacken" her blonde hair by putting it into a few loose buns.

Noland has established a solid reputation for herself as a designer for well-known bands including CSS, The Gossip, Peaches, and SSION. Her ensembles work with an overabundance of color, texture, and material in a way that is light, joyful, shiny, and hipster goofy. They are shimmery, sparkly, and brilliant to gaze at for a time. Noland describes her aesthetic as "dirt meets high class" in New York. Find out what happens when you Google her name and the search engine autocompletes for you with options that are both insightful and ridiculous. Her cheeky recent dress Google Me is a custom-made event. Put it on a dress then!

The problem with the Oprah endeavor is its thoughtless, maybe even unquestioning, exploitation of images for the sake of fashion, which, although it is on the outside, speaks to what's inside. These gowns treat female bodies, particularly black ones, as commodities that are eventually destined for the trash as part of Noland's continuous "trash aesthetic." Whoever is looking, it's wrong to think thus about any woman's physique.