#whitewashing in tv shows

[imperiuswrecked]

I NEVER want to see people say "but they COULDN'T cast an Actor of Color for a Character of Color because they couldn't find an actor to play the part!" As a defense for TV shows/Movies whitewashing a character ever again.

If a casting director could find a damn near carbon copy of an actor to portray said actor in his younger years, then a casting director can find anyone. I didn't even know this actor existed before the gay vampire show. This proves that if studios really wanted, they would.

So anybody in this day and age still defending whitewashing under the excuse of "studios not finding anybody" is stupid and dumb. Do you think big studios like Disney don't know when they're whitewashing characters of color? Do you really think they're just smol little beans trying to make fun movies by erasing characters of Romani, or etc (insert whomever they whitewashed here) heritage?

It's a casting director's JOB to match the actor to the character. If they aren't doing it properly, then they're a bad casting director. If studios executives are choosing to whitewash characters then know it's either on purpose or they don't think it's important enough to cast to character, and at that point I no longer give a fuck about whatever show/movie they are making.

Seriously it's embarrassing to watch you people defend whitewashing, it makes you look stupid.

(Note: I have nothing against the actors from Interview with the Vampire, I'm just using them as an example that there's so many actors out there and studios should always find the right person for the job.)

[that-sure-is-a-person]

Just had a worrying thought about show only fans attacking fanartist who drew/ draw book/musical anabeth.

[eightopals]

About Murderbot and Casting

This topic is heating up with the news of the planned Murderbot TV show.

I should know by now that 80% or more of fans don’t bother actually checking out anything authors say about the appearances of characters in written works. Instead, they just cast whatever actor they fancy at the moment, regardless of that actor’s looks. (It’s not just Murderbot. I’ve seen tons of bad fan casting for properties like the Lymond Chronicles as well.)

I’m talking about canon descriptions and clues to appearance, like specifically ethnic names.

Folks, it’s pretty plain that the majority of the Preservation Aux people are various shades of brown. There’s a great post here on tumblr that goes into the origins of their names:

I have an impression, though, that for a lot of people, these are just made-up science fiction names. They haven’t had the warm, fuzzy experience of recognizing a character’s name or other ethnic identifiers and thinking “she’s like me!”

Quite aside from Ratthi’s name, Wells said in her LiveJournal blog that “Ratthi is super hot. We're talking Sendhil Ramamurthy levels of hot.” OK, that’s not in the canon work. But she’s the author, dudes.

It’s bad enough that the series is proposing very northern European-looking Alexander Skarsgård as Murderbot itself. Watching folks try to whitewash the rest of the cast too is painful.

OK, rant over, back to the usual stuff.

[nombinary-snax]

https://deadline.com/2024/02/murderbot-series-david-dastmalchian-alexander-skarsgard-apple-1235840683/amp/

He plays GURATHIN????? He STARS opposite Murderbot?

No. Mensa stars opposite Murderbot. A brown woman stars opposite the genderless construct.

Also, I'm pretty sure Gurathin is described in text as dark-skinned and fan art often shows him as having the darkest skin and they cast a pasty white dude to play him.

Fuck. OFF. Apple.

[inquisitor-apologist]

what do you mean by sabine being white?

Ok, I was exaggerating in the prev post, she’s not actually white in Ahsoka.

But she is super whitewashed. Here’s Sabine’s family in Rebels.

[Image ID: A screencap from Star Wars: Rebels of Alrich, Ursa, and Tristan Wren. Alrich is a middle-aged Human with an unclear, likely Southeastern Asian, ethnic background. He has a disapproving look on his face, and his hands are spread out, palms down. Behind him, Ursa Wren is standing, looking rattled. She is a middle-aged Human woman, who appears to be Chinese. Holding her is their son, Tristan Wren, who has dark skin like his father. He appears slightly angry. End ID]

They were all killed off in Ahsoka for no apparent reason. But they were there, and by all accounts she should look like them in live action, right?

Sabine’s played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo, who is not at all Southeast Asian, not at all dark skinned, and half white. But like, as long as she looks like Sabine in Rebels, right?

Uh. Here’s Sabine in Rebels, next to Sabine in Ahsoka:

[Image ID 1:An image of Sabine Wren from the endcard of the Rebels finale. She is a half-Chinese, half-Southeast Asian Human woman with dark skin, brown eyes, and shaved violet hair. She is looking straight ahead, with a slightly anxious look on her face. Imsge ID 2: A picture of Sabine Wren in Ahsoka, played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo. She has notably paler skin than Rebels Sabine, brown eyes, and dark magenta hair in a pixie cut. She is looking at the camera, with a relaxed, confident look on her face. End ID]

They really don’t look that similar. It’s pretty obviously lightwashing/whitewashing there—Sabine is clearly paler and more white-looking than she is in Rebels.

So, no Sabine isn’t white in Ahsoka but she is very whitewashed. That was my point, sorry for the confusion.

[hesgomorrah]

evidently bonanza has grown on me a lot but pernell was right on literally all points lmao the scripts ARE clunky ben IS weirdly controlling of his three adult sons and they DO really need to stop doing brownface

[orphybia]

Ah... to see a bunch of adults throwing a tantrum on the internet just because there's a poc playing a white character on a show ... But excuse me. Where were y'all when Hollywood was whitewashing originally poc characters?? I bet those same people weren't complaining when Scarlett Johansson played a Japanese. Or Tilda Swintoon played a Tibetan. Or Johnny Depp played a Native American.

[mitochondriaandbunnies]

Further thoughts about The Outcasts (1968), once again under the cut for length and discussion of 60's TV racism

I did a little digging and found out that apparently both of the lead actors spoke repeatedly about the like, moral and ethical importance of the show and that that they both felt it was really something they both had to do-- I think everything I read confirmed my suspicions that the show was absolutely made with the best intentions, and it's just a question of whether it managed to meet those intentions with fidelity.

Otis Young talked about how there really was nothing else on TV that wasn't racist and yet addressed racism with honesty (versus just "let's all just hold hands and get along" or ignoring the lived experience of Black characters), and the man named one of his sons after his character from the show. He talked about how he was allowed to be angry without ever being an "angry Black man" stereotype, and that that's part of why he was hired-- other actors who auditioned pulled their punches with regards to the anger and hurt a former slave would carry.

Don Murray talked about how Jemal was a necessary and important role model for American children of all races, and fought the network over the so-called cancellation due to "violence," stating straight out that the show was cancelled for its themes. His character's racism gets called out and his growth is halting and sometimes painful, and Murray thought it was an important enough role that he left film-making to work on TV again, something that was considered a career-killer.

Both of them asked for script changes to make their dialogue both more realistic and to avoid casual racism, and got them. Apocryphally, a network executive admitted that the show was canned because it was "too angry--" and frankly, thinking of in the historical context of both westerns (this was only 2 years after The Good the Bad and the Ugly-- deconstruction of the Good Cowboy myth hadn't totally penetrated TV yet-- and both Jemal and Corey are occasional killers constantly at odds with the law) and in the context of TV in general (the call to reduce violence post RFK assassination), it makes a lot of sense.

The extent to which this context makes the overall premise and Corey as a character palatable (or even tolerable) to you fully and completely influences the extent to which it's a recommendable watch. I think if Corey had a different background, I'd actually be shouting its praises to the rooftop-- with each passing episode I'm more impressed by the writing and direction and the show's willingness to directly address how the history of the United States is built on racism. And I get it, to some extent, why they decided to go for the "most extreme" possible foil for Jemal, but it's a lot to ask of your audience to swallow a man who owned people as one of your heroic leads. Again, knowing that the actors thought this was the right choice for unapologetically addressing racism softens it a little, but doesn't fully absolve that writing choice. (Especially as Jemal and Corey are clearly starting to genuinely care about one another-- I can buy Corey realizing he was wrong and learning how to be a better and less racist person via friendship, but it's a little harder to puzzle out an in-universe reason why Jemal is like 'my good buddy, the guy who four years ago would've have thought of me as property.' If you can suspend your disbelief/accept the 60's optimism about everyone's ability to unilaterally forgive and grow, their growing friendship is actually quite well done-- the actors play their burgeoning trust, false starts, lingering resentment, and reluctant but genuine enjoyment of one another's company well. It's... a lot.)

[petermorwood]

More on pre-electricity lighting.

Interesting to see this one pop up again after nearly two years - courtesy of @dduane, too! :->

*****

After experiencing a couple more storm-related power cuts since my original post, as well as a couple of after-dark garden BBQs, I've come to the conclusion that C.J. Cherryh puts far too much emphasis on "how dark things were pre-electric light".

For one thing eyes adjust, dilating in dim light to gather whatever illumination is available. Okay, if there's none, there's none - but if there's some, human eyes can make use of it, some better or just faster than others. They're the ones with "good night vision".

Think, for instance, of how little you can see of your unlit bedroom just after you've turned off the lights, and how much more of it you can see if you wake up a couple of hours later.

There's also that business of feeling your way around, risking breaking your neck etc. People get used to their surroundings and, after a while, can feel their way around a familiar location even in total darkness with a fair amount of confidence.

Problems arise when Things Aren't Where They Should Be (or when New Things Arrive) and is when most trips, stumbles, hacked shins and stubbed toes happen, but usually - Lego bricks and upturned UK plugs aside - non-light domestic navigation is incident-free.

*****

Here are a couple of pics from one of those BBQs: one candle and a firepit early on, then the candle, firepit and an oil lamp much later, all much more obvious than DD's iPad screen.

Though I remain surprised at how well my phonecam was handling this low light, my own unassisted eyes were doing far better. For instance, that area between the table and the firepit wasn't such an impenetrable pool of darkness as it appears in the photo.

I see (hah!) no reason why those same Accustomed Eyes would have any more difficulty with candles or oil lamps as interior lighting, even without the mirrors or reflectors in my previous post.

With those, and with white interior walls, things would be even brighter. There's a reason why so many reconstructed period buildings in Folk Museums etc. are (authentically) whitewashed not just outside but inside as well. It was cheap, had disinfectant qualities, and was a reflective surface. Win, win and win.

*****

All right, there were no switches to turn on a light. But there was no need for what C.J. describes as stumbling about to reach the fire, because there were tinderboxes and, for many centuries before them, flint and steel. Since "firesteels" have been heraldic charges since the 1100s, the actual tool must have been in use for even longer.

Tinderboxes were fire-starter sets with flint, steel and "tinder" all packed into (surprise!) a box. The tinder was easily lit ignition material, often "charcloth", fabric baked in an airtight jar or tin which would now start to glow just from a spark.

They're mentioned in both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". Oddly enough, "Hobbit" mentions matches in a couple of places, but I suspect that's a carry-over from when it was just a children's story, not part of the main Legendarium.

Tinderboxes could be simple, just a basic flint-and-steel kit with some tinder for the sparks to fall on...

...or elaborate like this one, with a fancy striker, charcloth, kindling material and even wooden "spills" (long splinters) to transfer flame to a candle or the kindling...

This tinderbox even doubles as a candlestick, complete with a snuffer which would have been inside along with everything else.

Here's a close-up of the striker box with its inner and outer lids open:

What looks like a short pencil with an eraser is actually the striker. A bit of tinder or charcloth would have been pulled through that small hole in the outer lid, which was then closed.

There was a rough steel surface on the lid, and the striker was scraped along it, like so:

This was done for a TV show or film, so the tinder was probably made more flammable with, possibly, lighter fuel. That would be thoroughly appropriate, since a Zippo or similar lighter works on exactly the same principle.

A real-life version of any tinderbox would usually just produce glowing embers needing blown on to make a flame, which is shown sometimes in movies - especially as a will-it-light-or-won't-it? tension build - but is usually a bit slow and non-visual for screen work.

*****

There were even flintlock tinderboxes which worked with the same mechanism as those on firearms. Here's a pocket version:

Here are a couple of bedside versions, once again complete with a candlestick:

And here are three (for home defence?) with a spotlight candle lantern on one side and a double-trigger pistol on the other.

Pull one trigger to light the candle, pull the other trigger to fire the gun.

What could possibly go wrong? :-P

*****

Those pistol lanterns, magnified by lenses, weren't just to let their owner see what they were shooting at: they would also have dazzled whatever miscreant was sneaking around in the dark, irises dilated to make best use of available glimmer.

Swordsmen both good and bad knew this trick too, and various fight manuals taught how to manage a thumb-shuttered lamp encountered suddenly in a dark alley.

There's a sword-and-lantern combat in the 1973 "Three Musketeers" between Michael York (D'Artagnan) and Christopher Lee (Rochefort), which was a great idea.

Unfortunately it failed in execution because the "Hollywood Darkness" which let viewers see the action, wasn't dark enough to emphasise the hazards / advantages of snapping the lamps open and shut.

This TV screencap (can't get a better one, the DVD won't run in a computer drive) shows what I mean.

In fact, like the photos of the BBQ, this image - and entire fight - looks even brighter through "real eyes" than with the phonecam. Just as there can be too much dark in a night scene, there can also be too much light.

*****

One last thing I found when assembling pics for the post were Folding Candle-lanterns.

They were used from about the mid-1700s to the later 20th century (Swiss Army ca. 1978) as travel accessories and emergency equipment, and IMO - I've Made A Note - they'd fit right into a fantasy world whose tech level was able to make them.

The first and last are reproductions: this one is real, from about 1830.

The clear part was mica - a transparent mineral which can be split into thin flexible sheets - while others use horn / parchment, though both of these are translucent rather than transparent. Regardless, all were far less likely to break than glass.

One or two inner surfaces were usually tin, giving the lantern its own built-in reflector, and tech-level-wise, tin as a shiny or decorative finish has been used since Roman times.

I'm pretty sure that top-of-the-line models could also have been finished with their own matching, maybe even built-in, tinderboxes.

And if real ones didn't, fictional ones certainly could. :->

*****

Yet more period lighting stuff here, including flintlock alarm clocks (!)

[eroguron0nsense]

Garp, Fascism, and Parental Failure

Garp is truly one of the most interesting One Piece characters for me because of the extent to which his dogged, relentless devotion to a fascist system–and the supposed "order" it promises to uphold in the face of anarchy or rebellion–perseveres no matter how many times it fails him and his son and his grandsons. He's fully aware of the deep-seated corruption and atrocity, and feels some kind of moral obligation to bend its rules to protect the innocent (as we can see with his attempts to protect Rouge and Ace), but when faced with widespread femicide and infanticide, genocide, slavery and endless examples of egregious cruelty, he is unable to comprehend the notion that the system is indefensible, or that the only moral choice he can possibly make when faced with that level of atrocity is to leave and resist it. His son recognizing the inherent, inexcusable failures of the World Government and its armed enforcers–literally quitting the force to start a revolution– changes nothing. The order to slaughter pregnant people and infants at Baterilla can't convince him otherwise. The countless instances of bribery, the tolerance of atrocity from state-sanctioned privateers, everything about the history of the Valley of the Gods are all things he's aware of, and takes issue with, but never comes to the conclusion that he cannot affect positive change within a system designed for oppression. The public execution of his grandson–a prime example of the marine's fundamentally irrational, arrogant, vindictive cruelty clearly bound to blow up in all of their faces even before their Pyrrhic victory at the summit war–makes him waver, but even when confronted with this obvious, indefensible injustice against a child he raised and rescued by people seeking to murder him on live TV and desecrate his corpse as a show of power, he cannot bring himself to act against it in any meaningful way no matter how much it hurts him to leave his grandson to die. If he can't veto it, he'll stay Vice Admiral and suffer through Ace being sacrificed on the altar of fascist state control, and functionally leave Luffy for dead in the process while he's at it. He fails every single person he wanted to love–Ace, Luffy, and almost certainly Dragon–and allows himself to be reluctantly complicit in countless crimes against humanity again and again and again because he's so deeply steeped in this notion of preservation of order through state control that he convinces himself that even this disgusting, atrocious, fundamentally flawed and untenable excuse for a government is better than abolition, better than revolution, or just the act of expecting accountability or literally anything better from the systems that issue false promises to protect you. Dadan beating the living shit out of him and calling him a failure as a grandfather, as a self proclaimed defender of the people, is one of the most important scenes in the Postwar Arc because a lesser series might frame Garp as a tragic, helpless figure suffering more than anyone else due to conflict of love and duty, but One Piece refuses to whitewash his actions/inaction or allow the grief and suffering caused by systems he's complicit in to take precedence over its real victims: the D brothers.

There's so much I could say about statism and anarchism and the ways people have internalized the supposed necessity of state violence to the extent they can't oppose that violence even when it ruins them or their loved ones, but that horrible indoctrination and its devastating consequences for both him and his family are what makes Garp so fascinating to watch and so thematically/politically important to One Piece as a whole.

[xxxregulusblackxxx]

Y'all I'm genuinely so scared of the Percy Jackson TV show fans that possibly think every art of Will Solace is Percy (BECAUSE THEY GAVE WALKER WILL'S OUTFIT. You can't convince me someone in that whole cast and crew didn't see the comments of Walker looking like Will and was like "hmmm let's put him in a great flannel and jeans. PERCY WILL BE NICO'S TYPE) and are either confused on who TF Nico is or is like "why are you shipping Grover and Percy and why are you whitewashing Grover?!"

[raylaismad]

Ok I haven't made an official post about this yet but I have decided to talk about how much I hate the warner brothers company.

Number one. Most of their movies are dog shit. I will not be taking this back, some of their video games and tv shows were good and the lego movies were peak, but the rest is awful.

Number two, I have generational beef with the WARNER BROTHERS THEMSELVES. My great great grandfather fell into a pile of literal horseshit while working for the warner brothers company and the actual warner brothers bullied him into leaving. So yeah, fuck with my gramps you fuck with me.

Number three, THE ENTIRE MINECRAFT MOVIE SITUATION. I've never been more pissed about a movie, it's gonna be dog shit. I could go on for hours about how awful this movie looks, how it should have been animated, how it looks like AI, how the script is awful, how they whitewashed Steve, how the plot is just Jumanji, how pissed I am that they made the game a joke, but I won't.

And finally, THEY FUCKING COPYRIGHT STRIKED MUMBO JUMBO. Mumbo jumbo had the only good take on the minecraft movie out of everyone and those greedy bastards just had to do that. I don't care if mumbo likes the trailer, I hate it because of what the company did to him.

I have never hated a company more than warner brothers and if the last thing I do is take them down that just what I'll do

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/751445319499317248/httpsolderthannetfictumblrcompost75113540651

She did not "basically write fanfic about Unit 731", and that's exactly the weird sort of game of telephone that led to her being relentlessly harassed by people who had not even read the book (there were claims that it was set in WWII, because the 'Unit 731 fanfic' lie was spread so far that people only heard that and decided to jump on the bandwagon) and decided she deserved to be publicly eviscerated for it.

From what the author has actually said about her inspirations for the book, she started writing it years before she found out that the ghost stories she was told as a child by her grandfather (who lived through the occupation) were about a real, specific atrocity, rather than just broadly about colonization--which makes sense considering the only part that seems directly inspired by Unit 731 is revealed near the end of the book and is the major twist that ultimately carves the scales from the MCs eyes with respect to the enemy prince in question.

Also, she didn't 'whitewash' the Japanese, and that kind of claim is really galling because would it actually have been better if she'd based the Evil Empire on Japan instead? Would that really have gotten people off her back? (And in fact I can very easily understand why someone whose family lived through such a brutal occupation would want to get some distance in a story that is partially processing those feelings and experiences by not modeling the Evil Empire directly after the country that brutalized her own; especially since a significant portion of the story involves the main character having very complicated feelings for the prince of the Evil Empire.)

If you want to talk about the writing not being great or your belief that the author didn't achieve what she set out to, that's fine, although I gather from this ask that you haven't actually read the book, which is at minimum a prerequisite to talk with authority about how any given topic or plot point is or isn't handled. I, personally, think it's incredibly tone-deaf to police how someone else writes about their own cultural heritage and family history with oppression and colonization, and that is very much how so much of this criticism comes across, especially considering how much of it is from people who fully admit to not at the least reading the book to form their own opinions about it. And for some reason, this form of criticism seems to be aimed disproportionately at authors of color, who are given much less grace and freedom to be just kinda mid or handle things poorly than white authors.

(Just as an example, I've never seen anyone call Avatar: the Last Airbender 'basically CCP fanfic' even though the fantasy prison where political dissidents/troublemakers are tossed to be tortured/brainwashed into compliance in Ba Sing Se is literally named Lake Laogai, after the Chinese political prisons/labor camps.)

--

Yeah, that last part is the crux of it, isn't it? People need a little room to work on their craft. More marginalized creators, indie creators, and people working on media with smaller audiences are afforded less. White dudes making TV shows are afforded a whole lot. Seems like it would be fairer the other way around!

[inquisitor-apologist]

The Ahsoka show sucks so so bad. They had Sabine fucking Wren, badass Mandalorian punk revolutionary with gorgeous armor and the best hair in Star Wars. And they ruined her hair and desaturated her armor and put her in various shades of gray the entire rest of the series. You couldn’t even tell she was Mandalorian.

[nrilliree]

I almost choked on laughter today.

I saw a post on tumblr that claimed that people who don't understand Aemond's popularity are actually jealous of the fact that Aemond is exactly what fans want Daemon to be. This was my reaction: 🤨🙂😀😃 😄😂 🤣

Come on, people, let's be serious.

I know that the show villainizes Daemon (murdering his wife, violence towards Rhaenyra, ignoring his children) and whitewashes Aemond (the whole victimization of him when he was the bully), but it works in the opposite direction. It is Aemond's fans who make him a perfect and undefeated warrior, rider, loving brother and (potential) husband who, in his grayness, is angry towards his enemies and loving towards his loved ones, or whatever else they can imagine and add to the non-existent picture. A perfect, traumatized boy. This is how his fans see him, and his anti-fans see him for who he really is. If Daemon was like Aemond, he would never gain an ounce of sympathy from me. I like the book Daemon, I see what GRRM saw in him, and I still believe that the TV series Daemon still has a chance to become similar to his original (he could have been like that before certain scenes were cut out...).

Aemond fans like to bring up this meme:

But let me make it more real:

I am equally amused by the argument repeated by Aemond fans: "Daemon and Aemond killed each other".

NO.

Daemon killed Aemond. Daemon drove his sword into Aemond's skull = Aemond died = Daemon killed Aemond. Daemon was killed by gravity, because gravity and falling at least did anything in this fight, unlike Aemond, lol. Caraxes and Vhagar killed each other, even if Caraxes lived a while longer. But seriously, stop distorting reality to make Aemond look like a bigger badass.

[ck2k18]

Whitewashing in the ml fandom and why you shouldnt do (or support) it

Disclaimer: Because I am a Black person and the characters I am talking about are Black, this post will specifically address the white washing of Black people and characters.

What is white washing? White washing in the context of fanart is when you take a character of color, usually one with brown/black skin, and either make their skin lighter, give them more Eurocentric features, or both.

Why is it harmful? To explain why this is harmful, I will use one of the first examples of fanart; renaissance paintings of ancient Greek myths. Specifically, artwork featuring Princess Andromeda. Go to your search engine and type in "princess Andromeda". Based on those images, you would never have known that in the original Greek legends, Andromeda was black. So why is she most often depicted as a white woman?

McGrath’s article was definitive in addressing three things: that all the Greek mythographers placed Andromeda as a princess of Ethiopia, that Ovid specifically refers to her dark skin and that artists throughout Western art history frequently omitted to depict her blackness because Andromeda was supposed to be beautiful, and blackness and beauty – for many of them – was dichotomous.

That quote is from this article, and I highly recommend you give it a read. When you whitewash a character, you are perpetuating the idea in the quote above. That this character you like, whether you like them because they're funny or smart or beautiful, cannot be those things and also have black features.

White washing in miraculous ladybug

The show itself is guilty of whitewashing it's own characters. For example, look at these side by sides of Alya and Max alongside their hero alter egos.

Was this done with malicious intent? Hopefully not. But intentional or not, what it says to the people watching is, "These characters cannot have darker skin and also be heroes." And if you think it's not that deep, it is. The show's inconsistencies can't be used as an excuse for whitewashed fanart, because this shit isn't okay either.

Colorism and whitewashing

I'm going to bring up colorism, because even though Max's skin is lighter in that image, he still looks black. However, that doesn't make it okay.

colorism: prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group:

Lighter skinned Black people, while still targets of racism, are closer to whiteness than darker skinned Black people, and in some cases face less discrimination. When Black people first started to appear on TV, it was generally lighter skinned ones because that was more acceptable. This article goes more in depth about colorism.

Misogynoir and whitewashing.

Misogynoir is a word coined to describe the unique hatred that black women face. It is the intersection of racism and misogyny.

People may whitewash a female presenting character but not a male presenting character. In this fandom, you see it with DJWIFI fanart. People will make alyas skin color significantly lighter than Ninos. One trait of misogyny is tying a womans worth to their beauty. When you realize that beauty and blackness were (and still are) seen as antonyms, the issue with this type of whitewashing is made clear.

Texturism and whitewashing

texturism: a form of social injustice, where afro-textured hair or coarse hair types are viewed negatively, often perceived as "unprofessional", "unattractive", or "unclean".

When Black characters were first introduced to media, aspects of them would be changed to heighten their proximity to whiteness and make them more palatable to white audiences. Black women would get perms or silk presses, and Black men would keep their hair cut short and "tidy."

Note: This does not mean that all Black women with silk presses or perms or all Black men with short hair are trying to heighten their proximity to whiteness, or do not love themselves and their hair.

Animation has a history of not representing Black hair. Nowadays, Black hair is more represented, and beautifully so. Just look at movies like Encanto and Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse or TV shows like Moon girl and Devil Dinosaur.

In Miraculous Ladybug, Max is the only character with blatantly afro hair. Nino's hair is always covered and is cut short, and Alya's hair has a looser texture. Therefore, I give fanartists a pass on that one. However, this is a good thing to be aware of anyway.

How can you help?

Don't create, support, or reblog whitewashed art.

(P.S. if anyone wants to come on this post bripnging up blackwashing, read this post of mine)