Pleasure Politics: The Cult of Celebrity, Mullatticity and Slimness

Abstract

In contemporary culture white upper/middle-class celebrity women’s ‘race’ aesthetic power continues to be shown in the bone which juts out of the skin, physical frailty and psychic vulnerability. However, Black-white ‘mixed race’ women continue to represent sexual desire through Sable-Saffron Venus’s curves, or assumed physical/ psychic sturdiness and reproductive vigour. This chapter looks at the Black, lighter-skinned celebrity body in the UK placed as thin (Thandie Newton) or representing a voluptuous but flat-stomached slimness that is not size 0 (Alesha Dixon and Beyoncé) in order to show that there is always already a corporeality of white class and gender related to thinness, to visible bone but that this is not exclusive to white women. The discussion questions how the Black-white ‘mixed race’ celebrity woman’s body extends transracially through British advertising.