Um...

I would like to continue to follow the discussion in your post, kyooverse but it's a little hard to do that when you've un-friended me and it's a friends-locked entry.

A couple of comments from there I'd like to respond to:

There's plenty of ways in which racism continues to dominate the imagery of women who are not white in these mediums. Can you perhaps think of some?

Absolutely. The use of non-white models with very caucasian features, for instance.

But that's not the overt stuff I was referring to.

i think the learning process will be speeded along if you do this work on your own, rather than expecting POC to do it for you.

I've been heavily focused on mainstream media my entire life, and I've made a point of looking at it with a socially-progressive eye. An imperfect one, to be sure, but I do have an awful lot of experience with the material in question from that angle.

And in my experience, in the last decade or so, there have been few to no overt messages describing people of color as ugly because they don't look white enough. Believe it or not, it is a topic of interest for me, so it's something I look for. But I haven't seen it. That's why I asked for examples. Not because I haven't done the homework, but because even the best homework misses things on occasion. If it is out there, I want to know about it, so I can contribute some energy to working on the problem.

The fact that you need POC to give you these examples, because you are unable to distinguish 'subtle' characterization and 'niche' marketing speaks volumes.

Given that the topic at hand has to do with overt messages in mainstream marketing from a major corporation, that is the only frame of reference that's relevant, which is why I excluded those two things.

I fully acknowledge that those messages exist in subtle form, and in non-mainstream marketing.

In fact, I would even say that the subtle messages and the ones which don't break the surface of widely-aimed media can be even more damaging simply because they're not openly acknowledged as racist. (Just as subtle sexism and sexism in women-focused media can be more damaging.)

BUT, that's entirely beside the point I was making, which is ONLY about overt messages, and the lack of outcry about them when it comes to ones about women. The same people who would never think of openly stating racist views (even if they hold them) feel no compunction about stating sexist ones. Richard Roeper would lose his job if he characterized a person of color as "ugly" for not looking white enough, but he says the same thing about perfectly normal women, and he not only keeps his job, but there is virtually no public outcry about what he said.

The point of making that statement is NOT to say that racism no longer exists or anything of the sort. JUST that we don't recognize overt sexism for what it is because we've been conditioned to accept it as normal. Obviously we still have to work on subtle racism (and that includes racism which goes beyond black v. white or Latino v. white) but I assert that overt racism is just not something you're going to find in mainstream media, because -- and this is key -- most people recognize overt racism for being what it is. That's not the case with overt sexism, and in fact, sexist messages these days are even being spun as some sort of twisted empowerment.

And that's the last I'm going to say on it. If you still don't understand, then I'm not sure what else I can say to make it clearer.

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ETA: The above comments should be attributed to ayodele

Casual reader and have no idea what I'm talking about? The spark of the matter is discussed here.