We talk about how we think, believe, suspect Michael Jackson treats children. We don't talk about how WE treat child stars. Child stars are abused by the culture. And what's more treacherous than when the rewards of child stardom issue from the abuse?_x000D_ Child stars are performers above all else. Whenever their triumps, they are going to make sure we see everyone of their scars. That's the final price of admission.
So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the societal perceptions of race and gender, emphasizing how they affect self-image and identity.
Margo Jefferson's quote highlights the intricate relationship between societal views and individual self-perception, particularly for black individuals and women. It suggests that the ways in which our bodies are seen and judged by the world influence our personal experiences and identities, shaping how we navigate through life and how we express ourselves. This observation points to the broader implications of systemic biases and the importance of challenging and reshaping societal narratives.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about body positivity and self-acceptance.
More from Margo Jefferson
All quotes βI think it's too easy to recount your unhappy memories when you write about yourself. You bask in your own innocence. You revere your grief. You arrange your angers at their most becoming angles.
Depression is so treacherous - it can be so alluring as well as punishing. After all, it's yours and yours alone - no one else can interfere with it.
I found literary idols in Adrienne Kennedy, Nella Larsen, and Ntozake Shange, writers who'd dared to locate a sanctioned, forbidden space between white vulnerability and black invincibility.
Black Power was really a major challenge to the social privileges and structures of the kind of privilege that I had grown up with. That whole belief... that you will only be able to advance if you are perfectly behaved, if you present yourself as what white people would consider an ideal of whiteness... all of that just began to burst open.
Like dancers with choreography or actors with scripts, jazz singers could take material that was known, even loved, then risk interpreting and revising it. They could conceal even as they revealed themselves. Inflection, timing and tonality were their language, at least as much as words.
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