"My features are completely ethnic"
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A supermodel declaring "My features are completely ethnic" is less a confession than a counterpunch. Naomi Campbell came up in an industry that sold a narrow, Eurocentric template as "classic" beauty, then treated everyone else as an exception, a trend, or a risk. In that context, "completely" does real work: it shuts down the polite dilution that fashion often demands (exotic but not too much, different but still legible to white gatekeepers). She's not offering a softened, market-friendly identity. She's drawing a hard line around what cannot be edited out.
The phrasing is also slyly confrontational. "Ethnic" is a loaded, industry-coded word: it typically means "not the default", a label whiteness rarely has to carry. By adopting it and pushing it to an extreme, Campbell exposes the category's absurdity. If features can be "completely ethnic", then the term isn't descriptive; it's political. It's a reminder that the fashion gaze doesn't simply see faces, it ranks them.
There's pride here, but also strategy. Campbell isn't just talking about herself; she's arguing for an aesthetic legitimacy that was routinely denied to Black models through casting, lighting, makeup, and editorial narratives. The subtext is: stop pretending my success requires erasing what you first marked as other. She flips a marginalizing label into a statement of authorship, insisting that the so-called deviation is the point, not the obstacle.
The phrasing is also slyly confrontational. "Ethnic" is a loaded, industry-coded word: it typically means "not the default", a label whiteness rarely has to carry. By adopting it and pushing it to an extreme, Campbell exposes the category's absurdity. If features can be "completely ethnic", then the term isn't descriptive; it's political. It's a reminder that the fashion gaze doesn't simply see faces, it ranks them.
There's pride here, but also strategy. Campbell isn't just talking about herself; she's arguing for an aesthetic legitimacy that was routinely denied to Black models through casting, lighting, makeup, and editorial narratives. The subtext is: stop pretending my success requires erasing what you first marked as other. She flips a marginalizing label into a statement of authorship, insisting that the so-called deviation is the point, not the obstacle.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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