Skin Stereotypes

Introduction

Why do your skin tone, hair length and texture play such an important role in the music video and modeling industry? I pose that question to the masses to try to understand the certain favoritism or stereotypes associated with the complexion of an individual's skin color or hair texture. This stigma fascinates me in the sense that the majority of the women in these videos or runways have a light complexion, no matter the race, and long bone straight hair. This world is becoming very biased and as far as choices with the decision of the tone of your skin determining on whether it is too dark or too light to reach the upper echelon social status or attain a job. I researched my topic using information from several scholarly journals
found on the GSU e-library. Skin color stratification is the differentiation by lightness or darkness of skin tone. There are hierarchies of skin color that go back to how the whites oppressed these minorities. This colonialism and slavery has permeated the very mind of the contemporary African American and Mexican American. The male populace prefers the fairer women with straighter hair which is quite evident in the music videos and the models on the runways. The whole dichotomy of white skin tone representing beauty and dark skin tone representing ugliness has been preached from the earlier time era of oppression to the modern day times. There is a plethora of evidence to answer my thesis and give the informative reader a different perspective on things.