Kissing My Employee Discount Goodbye Forever

I guess I'm just going to use this blog as a place to post old quickie papers I wrote because I don't have the ability to post in the moment. I am never taking all upper division classes ever again...until I have to. In April, this Gap Kids ad went viral and I don't know why I read the comments section to anything. Because I'm secretly a drama queen? It is incredible to me that people really think that the above photos are the same pose. Let me break it down: little Black girl as arm rest is not standing in a power pose like little white girl as arm rest. No one cried foul about the black and white photo because little girls of color are already perceived as unladylike, they can't be organic bendy yogis. But I digress. People really believe that a two-term Black President equates to a post-racial society. If anything, white supremacy has become more overt and identical to the postbellum South. Anyway, here is a short essay that will possibly cement my inability to return to Gap Inc.:

Fall into the Crap

A week has passed since the Gap issued their “apology” for offending the Twitterverse with their ED by Ellen ad depicting the head of a Black girl’s as an armrest for a white girl. Having dedicated five years of my life to the Gap along with a lumbar strain that has since curbed my amateur bowling career, the viral nature of this story filled me with disbelief. While the Gap likes to pride itself as a progressive company, their non-apology (we’re sorry if you’re offended) speaks to lazy corporate management, lackadaisical public relations and unethical ad tactics. In an attempt to engage my former coworkers via Facebook in a conversation surrounding race representation and the historicity of Black stereotypes, the dominant discourse for defending the image in question as “not a race issue” was rationalized through reverse-racism theories, anecdotes by the vertically challenged, and the fact that the armrest and resting arm happen to be sisters through adoption. I am continually awed by the belief of a contemporarily post-racial society, or that white supremacy is only recognizable in white cone-shaped hoods with eye holes, by white nationalists with YouTube channels, and by observing the attendees of Donald Trump rallies. Upon realization that the dialogue was not going to evolve into focusing on the role that photographers, style directors and ad executives play in constructing body narratives, I stopped contributing to the conversation.

Forty-two pages into Between the World and Me, a specific passage made me mad again at the Gap and mad at the individuals who were unwilling to consider how racist the ad is: “’White America’ is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies. Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining).” The disgruntled retail employee in me is finding difficulty in believing that the Gap is clever enough to pose a Black girl in the style of a somber lawn jockey among a trio of organic white yogis-in-training for a collection of clothing intended to empower girls as a sly nod at framing Black girlhood as subservience. This is the same Gap that published an article in the company’s monthly newsletter citing Kanye West’s name-dropping of the retail chain in the song “Spaceship” as a compliment. It is as if no one was available to review the lyrics before sending the final draft to the printer:

“If my manager insults me again, I will be assaulting him

After I fuck the manager up, then I’m gonna shorten the register up

Let’s go back, back to the Gap

Look at my check, wasn’t no scratch

So if I stole, wasn’t my fault

Yeah I stole, never got caught

Take me to the back and pat me

Askin’ me about some khakis

But let some black people walk in

I bet they show off their token blackie.”

Simultaneously, white supremacy’s pervasiveness in print media is to the extent that the un-woke consumer has grown accustomed to racist aesthetics. Whether it is Lebron James as King Kong to Gisele Bündchen on the cover of Vogue, or the calcification of Kerry Washington on the cover of Adweek: body autonomy for people of color is not a thing.

I also think that Gap Inc's P.A.C.E. program is a farce. Empowering women of the Global South while still utilizing sweat shops to produce mediocre clothing? Ok. Imperialism remixed with white liberal feminism at its finest. Well, there goes my chance to re-break my back for $10-something an hour. Bye, Felicia.