ESSAY Category

The Rose That Grew From Madison Avenue: Adidas, Powerade and the Marketing of Derrick Rose

…late-capitalist economic practices…led to deindustrialization and the decline of black urban communities in the post-World War II United States [and] also produced the black basketball star as a commodity and an object of desire for mass consumption…  (Gitanja Maharaj:1997, 98). The Coca-Cola owned sports drink brand Powerade’s 2015 advertising campaign centers around the duel taglines […]

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Serena Williams vs. Maria Sharapova: We Have NOT Come a Long Way Baby

ri•val a person who is competing for the same object or goal as another, or who tries to equal or outdo another; competitor. a person or thing that is in a position to dispute another’s preeminence or superiority. ‘Beauty? To me it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning […]

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THE ULTIMATE TROPHY: What the Phenomenon of Sports WAGS tells us about Sexism, Race and Beauty

“In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.”                            -Tony Montana (Scarface) WAGS (Wives and Girlfriends) is an acronym coined by […]

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THE EMPRESS HAS NO CLOTHES: Beyoncé and The Quixotic Search for a Black Feminist Icon

On December 13, 2013, the Black “IT” girl of the millennium Beyoncé released a surprise visual album entitled Beyoncé, consisting of 14 new songs and 17 videos exclusively on iTunes causing an instantaneous digital frenzy and creating a record for digital album sales. Tulane University professor and MSNBC talk-show host Melissa Harris-Perry, declared that the […]

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DREAMING of a WHITE PRINCE: Town & Country’s Top 50 Bachelors

So Town & Country Magazine just published its list “of the most notably eligible men in the universe right now.” Being that this magazine is Town and Country, one should not expect to see any profiles of working-class blue collar guys. The list is an outstanding celebration of elitism, privilege, whiteness and inequality. Perhaps the […]

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