#oriental unquote sexuality that actually sort of replaces the intra english rural working class maiden vs the fragile upper class woman

[saltcherry]

my hot take on ‘can you use food words to describe skin color, especially of nonwhite people or characters’ is, you probably can do it in a reasonable way, it just depends on how racist the rest of your writing is whether is comes off as creepy. like it’s well-established in English literature to describe skin “as white as milk” and “cheeks as rosy as apples” etc., typically to describe young women or girls. the fetishistic tone is not going to hinge solely on the words chosen (of course, associations have to be considered). the real issue is that the fetishization of white women and of Black women or brown women operates differently. the words used to do it are different. the associations with sexuality are different (y do u think white women who want to assert sexuality often choose to do it by either embodying stereotypes associated with women of color or by directly appropriating aspects of nonwhite culture?). so really the challenge for the writer is not to remove all purple descriptors from their language, even stilted or outdated ones, and their associations (impossible task) but to be good enough at their craft to challenge, remake, critique, etc. those associations. like idk it seems like a very hard task and that’s why the advice is to simply remove that language! however it’s more interesting to try to grapple with language imo. and ultimately more productive because many many types of words carry associations of otherness, sexuality, prejudice, etc. when applied to nonwhite vs white people, Black vs nonBlack people, etc. the language problem can only be understood when you know this and only solved when you work at it with deep knowledge. (I guess the reason some people balk hard at “I don’t get why this is perceived as racist” over e.g. “she had skin like chocolate” is because they are lacking that deep knowledge accrued from reading a lot. related: if you don’t read a lot, and you write with that type of language, without knowledge either conscious or unconscious of those biases, will you replicate them? form new associations? is knowledge a curse, lol?

#i gotta delete this it's just a rant about context and knowledge and reclamation of language again #like the fact that no one complains about how white women can be described as apple cheeked simply bc no one even associates such things #with sexualization or fetishization of white women bc apple cheeked speaks to like hale and hearty type thoughts #and if anything that points to a sexualization across class: rural working class women with rude good health #it's an inter white problem #in literature! #meanwhile a white woman described as a fragile pale spring flower wilting in tropical heat IS being sexualized in response to a quote #oriental unquote sexuality that actually sort of replaces the intra english rural working class maiden vs the fragile upper class woman #as over and undersexualized respectively and displaces the over sexualization onto nonwhite women #in the latter case the white woman is being like protectively sexualized #the sexuality is hidden as a contrast #it's still fetishized basically but in a way that uphholds the social status of white women so it is accepted #like literally the descriptors that invoke sexuality are basically only relevant in their operation as contrats #also the fetishization of women esp nonwhite women only matters in the context of patriarchy esp white partriarchy #the problem is everyone who writes in English is subject to this paradigm #great!