Do lesbians hate black women?
A ByronCrawford.com Special Report
A few weeks ago, I brought you 'bags the story of how Maxim put together a list of the 100 Hottest Women in the World that had its share of issues. A lot of people took issue with the fact that Lindsey Lohan was ranked the number one hottest woman in the world, but there was also a minor controversy having to do with the overall ethnic makeup of the list. If I remember correctly, there were only about six black women on the list despite the fact that black people make up something like 12 percent of the population - maybe a bit less now that there's so many Mexicans in this country.
Which brought up a number of issues: Would the list suddenly have been not racist had there been 12 black women on the list? As a white magazine, though I don't believe it's specifically designated as such (but come on), is Maxim particularly obligated to put any black women on its list, especially since there are magazines like King and Smooth that serve the "urban" demographic? And if they're going to include mixed race black women on the list, shouldn't they have to include two for it to count as one whole black woman?
The thing is, I don't think anyone could claim to be that surprised by the allegedly backwards nature of the Maxim list. I mean, Maxim is primarily read by the kind of cracka-ass crackas who could give a rat's ass about a woman's feelings regardless of her race. Why should they include India.Arie on the list so as to make some progressive statement about black women's hair when the truth of the matter is that India.Arie's hair is fucked up-looking. Yeah, I said it. I was kinda surprised though to see that the list put together by the lesbian website AfterEllen is arguably hardly any more progressive than the Maxim list.
Don't get me wrong; it ain't that bad of a list at all. Though it purports to be a list of the kind of women that lesbians find hot, rather than the d-bags who read magazines like Maxim, it's hard to argue with any list whose top 10 includes Natalie Portman and that broad that Tony Soprano took peyote with out in Vegas after he wacked Christopher. If anything, the list might skew a few years older and, at least in some cases, a bit chubbier than the Maxim list. One thing you'll notice though is that there's arguably less black women in the top 10 of the lesbian list than there was in the top 10 of the Maxim list, which was cause enough for some feigned outrage in progressive circles.
I say arguably because the top 10 of the lesbian list includes Jennifer Beals, who I believe was generally thought of as a cracka-ass cracka back when she had a career, but is apparently black in the same way that Mariah Carey is black. But it's entirely possible that the dykes who put together the AfterEllen list had no idea of this. (I think I only read it in a Jet magazine back in the mid '90s.) Which would pretty much make their top 10 entirely non-black, for all intents and purposes. You'll recall that inexplicably popular R&B space alien Rihanna was the token chocolate in the top 10 of the Maxim list.
So, again, what gives? Obviously I don't read any teh ghey magazines, but you'd think that a list put together by lesbians, in response to a controversial list put together by Maxim, would make it a point to be that much more progressive (read ethnic). After all, I thought that teh ghey people were automatically more progressive than us straights on account of their acceptance of the disgusting nature of teh ghey male sex, not to mention teh ghey men's various attempts to purposely spread the AIDS virus. But obviously there's some sort of disconnect here, no?
(Note: For what it's worth, lesbian black women are some of the scariest-looking people you'll ever meet in life. They wouldn't be on my list either. I'm just saying.)
