Despite my pathetic post this a.m., some work was actually completed today. I was able to articulate this theory that has been rumbling upstairs (upstairs, as in my brain, not the second floor, where the only rumbling is a 4 year old who REALLY does not want to go to school).
Here's the theory: Homi Bhabha is a thinker who writes about postcolonial theory. He describes the relationship between the colonizer and colonized as "like, but not quite." In other words, the colonized (ie of darker skin than the colonizer) is suppossed to replicate the appearance of the colonizer. But the colonized cannot do a particular good job at this since, of course he (or she) can never be white. This is what the colonizer intended: his authority is in part based on the idea that there will always be a difference between the colonizer and the colonized. Bhabha is a genius and I am sorry to have to be so reductive but this is the best I can do at this hour.
I am using this theory to articulate women's relationship to visual media. We can model ourselves after the women we see in magazines but we can never quite look like her. And that is the point: she will always be thinner, taller, prettier with nicer hair and better skin. Since her image is impossible to achieve, we will keep buying magazines in our neverending attempt to look like her.
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Lily likes to talk about things being like but not quite. She sees a picture of a giraffe and says, "what is it? its a horse!" and I say "It looks like a horse, bu its a giraffe." And she says, "its like a horse, but its a giraffe"
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