I've been designing more and more characters for the tween t-shirt line, and I have a question concerning my recent creation: is it racist the way I used this little black (or mixed?) girl to illustrate the word "Loquacious"?
In my client's "educational word" line of shirts, Loquacious means "very talkative", and the definition of the word is printed on the back of the shirt. (Other shirts from this series feature little girls next to other words, such as "Humanity", "Clandestine", "Capricious", etc.)
The thing is, I want to represent all types of little girls in my designs, without seeming overly PC. I've depicted girls with different skin tones for the different shirts, and this "Loquacious" character ended up being black. My client thought, out of her word series, this word would be cute to use with a black girl. I suppose she felt the word would easily lend itself to a little black girl's name. But is that racist - or hip in a ghetto fabulous Lil' Kim's reprazented kind of way? Even though "Loquacious" may sound a little "Bronx", I think my character looks much more Upper-West-Side-Cosby-ish. I created two designs for this shirt, as you can see above, because we were worried that using a black girl for this design might rub some people the wrong way. What do you think? I certainly didn't mean for it to be an issue...I just like drawing these sweet, sassy little characters.
3 comments:
Come'mere Loquacious! Yea, that has a ghetto ring to it. I like the two choices that you used. I would hope that some of the t-shirts she wants you to design would have a little black girl on it...for that matter where the little asian girls?
Ah, don't get me started...anyway
J, love the look, did you get the inspiration for that cute black girl from another cute black girl that you know...hmmm?
LW
You should make the Loquacious girl Asian-- to counter the stereotype of the quiet, passive Asian female. And to show that Asians can, and should, pronounce the letter "L".
laughwhore - you bet! Doesn't she look familiar? And yes, I'd like the designs to be all-inclusive, so I'm going to push that when I can.
(^_^)
hey young world - You guys are brilliant. I'll see if I can make her a little Asian girl. Seriously. Thank you so much for this suggestion. Your reasoning is genius, Zo, and FUNNY! I'm SERIOUS!
You need to be a character writer for television.
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