Why is it OK for whites to have nose jobs and not blacks_Why are blak nose job a

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   Helga123posted 14 years ago

   Why is it OK for whites to have nose jobs and not blacks_Why are blak nose job a huge deal and a
   
   controversy- Blacks are called Michael jackson, Jackson Five, Latoya etc.Why so much controversy
   
   

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2. 61

   wingedcentaurposted 14 years ago

   I don't know that black folks having cosmetic surgery is particularly controversial, in and of itself. Its just that in the case of the late Michael Jackson, he seemed to take it to an extreme, in which he seemed to set out not only to make himself look "better" but to entirely remake himself racially. That's what a lot of black folks seemed to think. There is a strong suspicion of this in the sectors of the black community -- which may have dissapated somewhat with his untimely death.
   
   But I must caution you, Helga 123, this is an issue of some sensitivity to black people. During the Jim Crow era in America there were some very light-skinned blacks attempted to "pass" as white in order to escape the marginalization, discrimination, and institutional oppression that was clearly aimed at black people after the abolition of formal slavery with the Civil War and the Reconstruction period -- there was still something called debt peonage for a long time after that in the south, but that's neither here nor there for our purposes.
   
   During the middle teens and early 1920s, the so-called Progressive Era, looks very different from the perspective of black people, as this was the period the greatest number of lynchings of black people were carried out -- with body parts of the condemned being cut off and sold for souvenirs, and families sitting beneath the gallows, picknicking as this was going on, having photographs taken and sent around as post cards, etc.
   
   So, there was an understandably strong motivation for blacks who could to "pass." Many black people saw this sort of thing as a "betrayal" of the "race" (as you know race is a cultural construct with no scientific basis -- mankind is one!).
   
   So its not just the nose job with Michael Jackson. Its also the apparent skin lightening. Now I saw an interview he gave in which he claimed to have a skin disease (one his whole family seemed to contract...) which caused his skin whitening. But I've seen people (both of color and white people) with the skin disease that removes pigment and they never, ever lighten in such a uniform way as Jackson did.....
   
   Anyway I hope that historical background puts the matter into perspective for you.
   
   Take care.

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3. 81

   Wayne Brownposted 14 years ago

   Honestly, I don't think it is about blacks or whites having nose jobs.  For example, I could care less if Michael Jackson had a nose job...that's his perogative.  At the same time, since Jackson was a public figure, it became very difficult to overlook the butchering of his nose by the doctors.  I am not blaming the doctors totally in that I am sure that Jackson demanded the work be done.  But, the bottom line here is this, be he black, white, or Chinese for that matter, he took it too far and turned an otherwise acceptably attractive image into something that was like a sideshow attraction.  I think that is more the issue here.  WB

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