So you’re scrolling down your timeline when you see a picture of a white girl in a pair vans, followed by a close up of her supple lips and her beige colored skin. The next picture appears to be a sign that says something like “thieves in the night” and the caption is likely to sound like a typical mood board cliche that says “Let’s leave this old town.”
A mood board is an arrangement of images, materials, pieces of text, etc., intended to evoke or project a particular style or concept. They have become of popular use by teenagers and have surfaced around Twitter and Tumblr. They’re cute and aesthetically pleasing. No harm in that.
But seriously, why does Eurocentric beauty standards have to invade almost everything? Representation is so important. Living in a western society, it doesn’t even shock me that popular mood board accounts don’t commonly include people of color. Everyone is on the internet now days. While it is nice and also important for us older teens and young adults to see people who look like us in these pictures, I’d like to point out the obvious- there is a pretty wide spectrum of people who use the internet, this includes younger groups like tweens. Their internet is our generation’s Game Boy or Bop It! It’s where they turn to for entertainment, like most of us do. You might think that something this minor goes unnoticed by children of color, and it probably does. But somewhere in their subconscious, they are learning that they’re not good enough. Although, with growing representation in the media, the “I’m not good enough” stigma might not be as common among today’s tweens as much as it was in our generation or in our parents generation. Despite this, I say that it’s best to be proactive and insert representation everywhere. Even if it’s something small, like a mood board.
Speaking of representation, I should point out that they don’t really include the LGBT/Queer community either. I follow some of these accounts and I’ve noticed that they insert people of color or lesbian couples in a mood board every once in while. But honestly, is every once in a while enough? With a little bit of digging, aesthetically pleasing photo’s of people of color and lgbt couples are easily accessible on websites like Pintrest, Tumblr and WeHeartIt. So why are these groups being left out of the loop?
With a little bit of digging, aesthetically pleasing photo’s of people of color and lgbt couples are easily accessible on websites like Pintrest, Tumblr and WeHeartIt. So why are these groups being left out of the loop?
Is it because the owners of these accounts find hetero, cis and white right? Or are they just too lazy to dig a little deeper into the minority side of the internet? My questions remain unanswered but I decided to take measure’s into my own hands.
I’ve created a moodboard/aesthetics account that includes people of color.
Support poc. pic.twitter.com/RNPzIHfCd2
— Aesthetics Of Color (@PocAesthx) January 13, 2016
As long as the idea of aesthetic mood boards are popular on social media, I will continue to post and expand my ideas. (My DM’s are always open if you want to contribute.) The internet is a place of self expression and it should be diverse. We should continue doing so without excluding one another. What do you say?
