Bella (bell hooks )

bell hooks is probably one my absolute favorite writers. I first encountered her work in my freshman writing course Race, Class and Gender. I was fascinated that she did not capitalize her first or last name, a statement meant to neutralize herself in the world. Her name is no more important than anyone else’s name…why should it be capitalized? Her writing captivates me and I hang on every word. In her essay titled “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance”, she discusses the modern world’s obsession with race, difference, and ‘Othering each other’. She argues that we have no other way of understanding the universe than by understanding what we are not. Race has become not only a source of difference, but rather a source of entertainment. She writes, “The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling…withing commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (hooks 366) Our obsession with the ‘primitive’ sheds light on our ‘nasty fantasies’ hidden beneath white supremacy, namely, our obsession with the Other. She says that difference is seductive, a spicy, sexualized distraction for the white bread and butter people in American modern culture. We will take the Other, distort it, mute it, make it “whiter” and then regurgitate back into the culture as a more ‘acceptable’ form of Other. This version has been swept clean, Americanized, polished to perfection. Think of famous ethnic singers or actresses: Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Halle Berry. These women are successful, beautiful, and different. They have a claim to ethnicity that my Northern European heritage is not truly able to claim. They are seen in society as “Others”. However, they all have one thing in common-they are light skinned. They have lighten the color of their hair, straightened out any curls or give-aways to “Nappy Roots”. They have had plastic surgery to make their noses smaller, lips bigger, eyes rounder. Everything about them is manipulated. We accept them in society because they are no longer Other…they have become Us.