(no subject)

[cimorene]

- I've noticed that Tumblr is really white. If I were talking about its userbase, that would be okay, because of course sociologically speaking social networking sites grow via extant social networks. To put it another way, it's quite possible that only the really-really-white social network is present there thus far. (The fact that it seems to be all young anglo and francophone and Spanish-speaking hipsters supports this.) Anyway, that's one thing, but the problem is that, in its full-time reproduction of pop culture imagery, the userbase tends to whitewash pop culture even further. To take an example, images of successful young actresses and fashion models are everywhere on Tumblr, yet black fashion models are severely underrepresented, even those who are far more famous and successful than many of the white (or mixed-race or latina but styled as white) models whose images proliferate. There's a blog called "fuckyeahvsmodels" which posts a wide variety of pictures of Victoria's Secret models, but almost none of Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell, two of VS's most famous models of all time (not to mention the younger black supermodels who have walked for them in recent seasons).

+ Has inspired me to search the internet for more images of said black models and actresses starting with the ones whose absence I immediately noticed (after the success of "Telephone", Tumblr's been inundated with a fresh stream of images of Lady Gaga, who's been on tour in Australia and caught in candids most days and in on-stage snapshots most nights; but while the image stills of Beyoncé from the video are being reproduced enthusiastically, it hasn't led to a huge wave of other pictures of Beyoncé, who is one of the most successful women in American entertainment today, and whom there are plenty of images of. This is fairly contrary to the way Tumblr typically works, where buzz about current movies and tv shows drastically affects the level of picspam about people). Anyway, the plus side is that I've discovered tons more gorgeous models and my "girls" image directory is bursting at the seams.

Comments

[copracat]

"fuckyeahvsmodels"

I read that as Fuck Yeah versus Models which would have been AWESOME COOL or very, very wrong.

[troisroyaumes]

For what it's worth, I've seen a fair number of Asian fashion Tumblrs (run AFAICT by Asian-Americans) and a fair number of Japanese photography Tumblrs as well. But they may seem more overrepresented on my dashboard because of the people I follow.

[cimorene]

Yes, it's a well-represented subgenre of the fashion and music scenes on the internet, with many European white people having Loli/J&Kpop/rock blogs as well, and also Asians who live in Asia. If I were interested in those aesthetics I could probably read nothing else.