“Waging a Battle for First Class Citizenship”: Black Women, Beauty Advertisements, and the Horror of Inequity

Abstract

Set in 1950s Chicago, episode 5 of horror and sci-fi series, Lovecraft Country, followed Ruby Baptiste, a full-figured and dark skinned Black woman. Because of her race, Ruby was unable to get a job. However, after she ingested a magic potion that painfully transformed her into a thin White woman, the hiring manager of an upscale department store offered White woman Ruby a supervisory role. Passing as a White woman allowed Ruby to experience life free from the limitations of segregation and discrimination. Ruby’s experiences led the researchers of this work to wonder: could this episode be a dramatization of Black women’s real experiences in 1950s Chicago? Analyzing beauty advertisements in the Chicago Defender, we noticed that many beauty products advertised to Black women, focused on the equality and social mobility that beauty could provide Black women. The findings of this research unpack how a new ethnic identity, cleanliness, and first-class citizenship were advertised to Black women under the guise of beauty.