Toni Morrison and Crystal Gayle would be turning over in their graves (if they were dead)... Or, ojos castaños=bad, blue eyeballs=good!

Talk about "eyegiene"! This takes it! I have muy orgullo for my dark brown eyes...my Raza eyes, if you pardon the relative orthodoxy. Perhaps I'm being a bit too dramatic here...maybe a tad sensitive, but I'm guessing that trustees of shallow outward appearance, or disciples of the Mein Kampf school of biology and pigment might be inspired by this troubling news post here:

New Laser Surgery Technique Can Turn Brown Eyes Blue

Erase the Black Couple! I SAID ERASE THE BLACK COUPLE: More Photoshopping Hijinks and the History of Race

Ace Boston gumshoe journalist Daphne Strassmann writes in with a link to the latest tale of photoshopping and race in cinema. Hit the image above for the story!

At Least Stalin had Expert Photographers in the Darkroom, Fox News Just Calls Up Footage Catch as Catch Can

First the Soviets with their madcap pre-photoshop editing hijinks, now Fox News... We are SO surprised.

Yet Another Chapter in the History Ethnic American Representation or Editing Blackness, Microsoft Style

Hit the image above for the AP story. The photo is here:



Here's the Huffington Post piece on it!

Updated Post from January 5, 2007 | Holy Mengele! or Cesar Chavez Rolls in His Grave on the Way to the Orthodontist

REPOST (original) "Holy Mengele! or Cesar Chavez Rolls in His Grave on the Way to the Orthodontist"

It is a given that I will be pilloried for posting this, but if we are going to traffic in comments on stereotypes, race, gender, and ethnicity, and if we are to do so with no little particular emphasis on the manifestation of these beasts in popular culture and the humanities, then we also have to come clean as well about Mexican, Latina/o, and Chicana/o figuration when it comes from our be-lab-coated hermanos y hermanas trafficking in the hard sciences.

Hence the following academic delight from The Angle Orthodontist: An International Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics authored by Martha Mejia-Maidl, Carla A. Evans, Grace Viana, Nina K. Anderson, and Donald B. Giddone (html or pdf, pick your flavor), that finds, among other things, that "Mexican Americans...preferred upper or lower lip positions to be less protrusive than the Caucasians, particularly for female computer animation images." Which may mean, among other things, that Edward James Olmos may not be dating Meg Ryan--at least not in the short term, and that Mexican-Americans have discerning taste, when it comes to visually-stimulated, fetishistic attachments to ersatz Botox-injected chicos y chicas--Miranda Martinez fans, notwithstanding.



More seriously, while said article may just be the result of test subjects confronting badly Photoshop™-mangled images, it also shows how the "hard-sciences" continue to traffic in the concretization of race and ethnicity--Eugenics may well be primed for a comeback if these wacky dentists have their way.

FINAL UPDATE

Apparently, Ryan now will soon star in a film that features a "wild" trip to Baja in search of next-wave cosmetics.

The Camera Has its Reason that Reason Will Not See

Adapting Blaise Pascal just a smidgen ("the heart has its reason, that Reason will not know"), the title of today's entry reminds us on one of the mantra's of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America: not "a picture is worth a thousand words," but its complement: "like a thousand words they lie, lie, lie." Boingboing.net is on to this today with their posting and link.



Author and Friend, circa 1996
©1996 Guillermo Nericcio García