Quick Hit: Why are runways so white?

Spoiler: the answer is racism.

BuzzFeed invited five fashion show casting directors to talk about why almost every model we see walking down the runway are white. Some of their answers, like James Scully’s, won’t make you want to vomit: Scully’s conception of diversity is more meaningful than the common tokenism he calls out, though he seems more market- than ethics-driven. Inevitably, there are also the responses that will lead you screaming into the street.

My favorite (read: least favorite) is Barbara Nicoli’s lovely little explanation of why Asian women aren’t sexy:

It’s also true that, for example, Caucasians have a specific body type, black girls have a specific body shape, and Asian girls have a specific body shape. So I guess there are some collections where it’s more perfect for an Asian body shape because they are more flat and less sexy, in a way. Asians, they are not curvy, so to put an Asian [who’s] very flat [with a] baby body shape in a show where normally the designer knows they love sexy, beautiful, curvy girls, it’s a bit of nonsense.

You can read the full article here.

Washington, DC

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com. During her four years at the site, she wrote about gender violence, reproductive justice, and education equity and ran the site's book review column. She is now a Skadden Fellow at the National Women's Law Center and also serves as the Board Chair of Know Your IX, a national student-led movement to end gender violence, which she co-founded and previously co-directed. Alexandra has written for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Nation, and she is the co-editor of The Feminist Utopia Project: 57 Visions of a Wildly Better Future. She has spoken about violence against women and reproductive justice at campuses across the country and on MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, ESPN, and NPR.

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com.

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