The ugly duckling, a story everyone heard as a kid about a little duck that was born a gray color, different from his brothers and sisters who were yellow, mocked and ridiculed and then thrown away by his mother to live in shame by himself. The story goes on to say that the duck was hated by everyone he came across, then as time went on, the duckling grew and everyone saw it’s beauty because the ugly duckling turned out to be a beautiful white swan. Everyone read this story as children, nobody thought much of it and just took away the idea that hating someone else because they are different is wrong. But looking back, a single thought resurfaced in my mind when reading this fable, why is it that for the duckling to be beautiful he had to be white?
Why is it that something so little as a children’s story should be talked about and called out on the racism it underlines? Because these are the books that children learn important values and critical thinking from. The way our brains assimilate things comes over time with experiences and stories; little kids will learn that to be liked you must be white and this does not only prolong hate from white people to people of color but it also creates insecurities in children who are from different racial backgrounds.
This kind of subconscious white-washing happens frequently in the media and can be seen not only in kids stories or tv shows but on teenage and adult entertainment. The connotations behind things are not noticed because it is extremely normal in our world to see people change, especially physically in order to fit in with society’s beauty standards. TV dramas where the protagonist is a girl, fat and “ugly”, before having a complete body transformation that the handsome man falls in love with occur all too often.
It happens on teenage television too, when nerdy girls are never love-interests unless they undergo beauty transformations with shopping sprees and learning how to do their make up. When it comes to race on teen media you could most likely count the amount of black or other ethnical background protagonists on one hand.
Magazines and media publications often photoshop POC celebrities so that their facial features and skin color cater to white audiences.
Above we see quite a popular photo of Gabourey Sidibe, who’s skin was photo shopped on the cover of the magazine in order to look lighter.
Another example of this is a cover of Elle where Aishwya Rai’s skin is evidently photo shopped to the point where she thought about suing. These examples correlate with the problematic ugly duckling fairytale by offering the idea that those with socially-deviant features have to change themselves to be accepted by society.
Children pick up on their surroundings, including discrimination and prejudiced thoughts. It becomes a subconscious way of thinking even when parents teach them the opposite of things. Stop prolonging this way of thinking where everyone has to fit a box and do the impossible in order to be in with what is the norm.
