Madison Avenue scrambling to find young black Obama girl look-alikes. Don’t already have any in stock. Um, isn’t that racist?
Madison Avenue is scrambling to adjust to a new era, when the most admired people in America are a black family. To reflect this reality, talent scouts are on the hunt for models who look like the Obama children, Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10. “People are looking for girls who resemble them,” says Charlie Winfield, the head booker at FunnyFace Today. Tali Lev, an agent with the Gilla Roos agency, keeps links to her “Sasha” and “Malia” model lists on her desktop for easy access. “Photographers even want them for their portfolios.” Marlene Wallach, president of Wilhelmina Kids & Teens, says the First Daughters are tough subjects to match. “It’s a very specific age and a very specific ethnicity, so there aren’t that many girls that would necessarily fit the bill.”
Let’s count the ways that this is sooooooooooo WRONG:
- Suddenly showing interest in young black girls, only because the President of the United States is finally black, means that Madison Avenue has NOT been interested in showing girls with this ’specific ethnicity’
- Apparently, 40 million blacks in the US aren’t enough impetus for Madison Avenue to have already hired young attractive black girls
- Finding themselves desperately searching for Malia and Sasha look alikes, they speak as though the Obama girls are discovered treasure, which means they have not up until now actually valued girls like this, so they have to go hunt for them.
- Saying that the Obama girls are a specific ethnic look that is ‘tough to find’ means Madison Avenue hasn’t spent even one moment around the millions of exuberant young black girls across the country
- However, desperate to make a buck, retailers and Madison Avenue want to now monetize the Obama girls. They didn’t honor the existence of girls like Malia and Sasha but now they want to make a buck off them, gosh darn it!
Wrong, wrong, wrong. So cheap. So cheezy.
To be so BLATANT about it in a New York Magazine interview and be almost giddy about the ’search for Obama girl lookalikes’ means the agents and retailers and advertisers do not even understand that they’ve been thumbing their nose at this ‘marketable type’ all these years.
Beanie Babies had the gall to sell two dolls names “Sweet Sasha” and “Marvelous Malia.” But Ty Inc. spokeswoman Tania Lundeen insists the 12-inch dolls are not named after the first daughters. They picked the monikers because “they are beautiful names,” Lundeen tells The Associated Press. Beanie Babies wants us to believe that they happened to choose two very unique names and suddenly sell them as ethnic dolls? Everyone wants to make a buck off the ‘latest style’ and Madison Avenue suddenly thinks ‘black is in’.
Do they not see the multi-colored rainbow of skin colors across America? Don’t they think that non-whites have money and are worthy of mirroring in advertising? Any way you look at it, they sound either behind the times by a few decades, out of touch to the actual color of most Americans (non-white) or they are unconsciously racist.
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