The effect of the Cosmetic Industry on the Consumption and Inclusion of Women in the American Mainstream

Even centuries ago, during the days of the famous Cleopatra in ancient DEgypt, women were finding ways to create cosmetics and using them to enhance their beauty and levels of physical attractiveness, sexuality, and femininity. Thus, the consumption and use of cosmetics is not a new phenomenon, however, there is a heavier focus on cosmetic consumption in some parts of the world over others. America’s cosmetic industry reinforces American many American ideal. The commitment of many American women to create and/or enhance their facial beauty has only become exasperated and turned into an American mainstream cultural addiction. The consumption of cosmetics by women in American culture reinforces and corresponds with the American ideals of freedom, individuality, and choice.

Today the cosmetics industry in America yields over twenty billion dollars per year.  Everyday, women in America are bombarded with advertisements attempting to sell individuals products that supposedly enhance their appearance, thus creating a perceived “better life” of new confidence, ability to attract a mate, increased opportunity to get hired, and so many other promises. The makeup industry has surged and profited tremendously in the last thirty years.

According to Kathy Peiss, the use of cosmetics represents a Western style individualism and autonomy. Two examples she presents are in the case of the Taliban being forced out of power in Afganhistan, in the 1980’s and 1990’s when the Chinese government instituted new economic reform, communist rule ended in Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union dissolved” (Peiss 101). Peiss uses these examples to explain that often in many countries that experience a new type of economic, social, or political reinvention, the consumption of American beauty products is not too far behind. In areas of the world that were once ruled by totalitarian control, where women were not given the opportunity to exercise much physical individuality, the introduction of a new, more liberal regime tends to open the opportunity for women to partake in a new focus on cosmetics and facial individuality and enhancement. Of course, the cosmetic industry does not define the role of women in American society. American women are not obligated or forced to partake in the consumption of cosmetics, however there does seem to be a link between the use of cosmetics for creating and enhancing creativity and individuality and the American ideals of individualism and expression.

A link does appear to exist between the consumption of cosmetics by women in the United States and the glamorized ideals of American freedom and individualism. Peiss explains that for decades, “Americans have exported images of glamorized, sexualized female beauty-images of a healthy and exposed body, made-up face, and direct and inviting expression…selling beauty became entangled with a set of ideological positions that supported the larger political and economic goals in the United States…freedom, democracy, and modernity were signified by an image of artificially enhanced female beauty, youth, and glamour” (Peiss 101).  Peiss makes an interesting connection between American ideals and values and their physical representations in young, beautiful, glamorized images of women. While those images are often tagged as trivial and overlooked, there does exist an important American ideological link between the two.

The idea of beauty and facial attractiveness brings forth a state of comparison. In the American culture, where people work towards individual and personal growth, achievement, and enhancement, in the field of cosmetic enhancement and usage, many women believe that the use of cosmetics will increase their personal beauty, thereby positively affecting other areas of their life; increasing their level of belonging and inclusion in the American mainstream. The cosmetic industry in America capitalizes on the American focus and argumentatively, American obsession, with beauty and youth.  Society has a tendency to rank those deemed as less attractive as lower on the social hierarchy than those viewed as more universally attractive.

The term beautiful usually encapsulates a combination of inner and outer physical beauty. The outer beauty component is generally based on a scale of health, youthfulness, symmetry, and complexion. Those companies in the cosmetic industry have spent billions of dollars figuring out people’s physical insecurities and how to market particular products as the “solution” to those insecurities. Regardless of the decade, or even the century for that matter, people will always want to feel included in the mainstream and a part of the American culture. If the American culture uses the consumption of cosmetics as a means of expressing its stance on individuality, glamour, and youthfulness, women will continue to consume cosmetics.

I think that the cosmetic industry was created in response to the changing roles of perceptions of women in America. For a long time in American culture, women were told to stay in the household. The woman was placed in charge of the maintenance and upkeep of the house and the domestication and upbringing of the children in the home. As women became allowed to enter a different sphere of the culture, and allowed to make more public appearances and actually emerge into the workforce, there was an increased focus on personal improvement and individuality.

One of the reaseons that cosmetics are so widely sought after by female consumers in America, is because there are so many choices presented. Every woman in the United States is different. Women have differing needs, desires, and goals of the look that they want to achieve for themselves and express to the outside world. Women in America have options in what brand, size, color, or product that they are interested in trying or purchasing. Cosmetics are also a wonderful tool in the melting pot culture that is America because they can be used to enhance the natural beauty of women of various skin types, tones, and facial structures. The vast majority of the United States is a nation of immigrants. People come from all ethnic backgrounds, and thus facial features and perceptions of beauty are not all the same. The wide variety of options in the American cosmetics industry takes note and takes advantage of the many differences in women’s faces in the United States, which allows the makers and producers of these products to make more profit and allows women to exercise their individuality and freedom of choice by offering many different types of options.

Even in a time of economic recession in America, the cosmetic industry is an industry that does not suffer tremendously. Women still go out and purchase cosmetics despite economic hardships that may be occurring in the household.

 

 

Works Cited

Kathy Peiss. Educating the Eye of the Beholder: American Cosmetics Abroad

Daedalus, Vol. 131, No. 4, On Beauty (Fall, 2002), pp. 101-109

Desensitization of Emotions in Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone

    Participation in the Vietnam War was an extremely controversial issue in the minds and hearts of many Americans because of its many moral implications and discerning views on the necessity of the US’s involvement, however the most greatly affected by the war were the young men who left their homes in America to risk their lives for an issue that many of them did not feel that strongly supportive of or connected to. In Tim Obrien’s If I die in a Combat Zone, the readers are introduced into some of the personal memoirs and experiences of Tim Obrien and several of his fellow American soldiers in the Vietnam War. The reader learns first hand accounts of the use of vulgar and crude curse words and sexual language, the sometimes cold and heartless behavior towards what many soldiers referred to as the Vietcong, and the first hand experiences with death. The soldiers’ isolation from home in a far away foreign land, coupled with doubt in the necessity of US involvement in the war, and exposure to the everyday loss of life of friends and compatriots, left many soldiers feeling desensitized, disconnected, and disillusioned.

            In Tim O’Brien’s As I lay Dying, O’Brien discusses some of the lessons that he has learned as a soldier who has been to war and returned from this  “wrong war,” or a war that he and many others feel America should not have participated in.  O’Brien says, “Now, war ended, all I am left with are simple, unprofound scraps of truth. Men die. Fear hurts and humiliates. It is hard to be brave. Dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell in Vietnam, …. Some men thought the war was proper and others didn’t and most didn’t care…(O’Brien 31).  O’Brien’s retrospective quote of the ‘sum of lessons that he learned in war’ are not positive statements on the bravery of men and the sacrifice of life for one’s country, or the honor that he felt participating in the war. The lessons that he shares are dry, perhaps even insensitive sounding to an individual who has not ever participated in war or particularly this Vietnam War. O’Brien also brings up the issue of the soldier’s divisiveness on the necessity of the war. Some men thought that the war was proper and righteous, others didn’t, but he makes sure to add in the fact that most didn’t care. Even that final statement seems one of cynism, mental and emotional fatigue, and speaks to the desensitized and disconnected emotional state of many of the American soldiers who fought in the war.

On the outside looking in, a person would most likely assume that if you are fighting in a war, one way or another, you are going to take a personal stance on whether or not you agree with the war and its “cause” and moral implications. For an individual to sacrifice his/her life, deal with the fears of being a target in a foreign land, work in the difficult and oppressive conditions of war, see so many lives lost and not “not care” if the war is wrong or right, most likely means that person has past a point of sensitivity and concern that would allow him/ her to care. If someone is fighting in a very different foreign land, seeing many atrocities in front of them, and dealing with the implications of completely losing their innocence, naivety, and maybe even trust and hope in the system and in America for sending them to this place, it may become rather easy for that person to lose faith or concern in a lot of areas.

Through Obrien’s commentary on the lessons that he first learned joining Alpha Chapter, the reader is able to gain a little insight into the desensitizing nature of the war. Obrien explains that, “that no one in Alpha Company gave a damn about the causes or purpose of the war. It is about dinks and slopes, and the idea is to simply kill them or avoid them. Except that in Alpha you don’t kill a man, you “waste” him. You don’t get mangled by a mine, you get ‘fucked up.’ You don’t call a man by his first name – he’s the Kid or the Water Buffalo, or if the fellow is disliked, he’s just Smith or Rodriguez” (O’Brien 84). In this passage O’Brien addresses the desensitization and depersonalization that the soldiers experience or learn while in Alpha chapter. The first important part of the passage is that O’Brien explains that no one in Alpha chapter cared if the war was right or good. Which again, reflects on a certain distancing from emotion or emotional concern with morality and belief and pride in country or cause. The company refers to the Vietnamese fighters as dinks and congs.

This depersonalization may make it easier to kill or see another as an enemy or target as opposed to a human being with emotions, family, and concerns. Or the depersonalization of the oppositions’ names and classifications may make it easier to not have to confront issues of whether or not the war is right or wrong or for a righteous cause.  Another issue O’Brien rings up in this passage is the terminology used by the soldiers when someone gets mangled by a mine. To lose an arm, a leg, or both arms and legs, to have your face disfigured, or ultimately for someone to lose a life due to a land mine is tragic, unfortunate, and upsetting. By referring to the event as getting “fucked up” as opposed to referring to it with more sensitivity, attention to the tragic emotional components, and the unfairness and inequity of having something so terrible happening to a person again can be viewed as an emotional distancing or gradual desensitization and disillusionment with the tragedies of the Vietnam War.

Finally in the passage, O’Brien discusses the issue of a man’s name when he is killed. Rather than saying “John Doe” or whatever a man’s actual name was to refer to his death, the company used generic nicknames for men who were killed. This is the ultimate example of the dehumanizing and emotionally destructive nature of the consequences of the Vietnam War on many of its American soldiers. To refer to a dead compatriot, someone who you went to training with, or fought side-by-side with, or shared stories and fears with, to be killed, and to refer to him as Water Buffalo or Buddy Barney requires a lack of a certain emotional chip, that of sensitivity and connection to human. This seems to have been a result of the many terrible and tragic events that the soldiers witnessed during their tenure in Vietnam in the War. It appears that after seeing so much hardship, destruction, chaos, sadness, and death, one must either self-destruct or become extremely hardened by their environment and circumstances.

Many of the events that O’Brien describes in the novel speak to the dehumanizing and desensitizing nature of the Vietnam War on many of the American soldiers. The desensitizing led to a group of individuals both old and young alike who returned to the U.S. after their stint of service in the Vietnam War, lost, disillusioned, and disconnected with other humans, with any sort of faith in their government and in their country, and with major divisive issues of whether or not the war in which they had just risked their lives was righteous or unnecessary. 

The Effects of Visual Medium in Creating a Shared American Identity During the New Deal Era

    In the 1930’s in America, visual media was being used to foster a new and heightened sense of a shared American culture. Through photos, movies, documentaries, more visual newsreels, radio, and other mediums, politicians were able to begin to shift and manipulate the ideas of what it meant to be an American and all of the connotative notions that accompanied that. In Warren Susman’s The Culture of the Thirties; Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he highlights the idea that through the clever use of medium and visual stimuli, Roosevelt was able to escalate his presidency to a new level. While not everyone in the United States was literate, mostly everyone could see photographs or watch visual media. Paired with Roosevelt’s powerful rhetoric, the use of visual media was able to propel his ideas of a new “hard working,” New Deal America into the minds of the mainstream American public.

            There are several images that work as powerful compliments to the semantic messages of a vision of a New America that Roosevelt works to create throughout his presidency. In Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Common Wealth Address on September 23, 1932, Roosevelt uses carefully crafted language to create a contrast or a foil to his ideas of a new and improved America by first addressing the overall sense of fatigue and depression suffocating the country, in the core of America’s economic states. He says,

“Sometimes, my friends, particularly in years such as these, the hand of discouragement falls upon us. It seems that things are in a rut, fixed, settled, that the world has grown old and tired and very much out of joint. This is the mood of depression, of dire and weary depression.

But then we look around us in America, and everything tells us that we are wrong. America is new. It is the process of change and development. It has the great potentialities of youth and particularly is this true of the great West, and of this coast, and of California” (Commonwealth Address).

 

In this passage, Roosevelt first addresses the “problems,” or the “issue,” which is that America is facing a depression and needs change and needs improvement. He uses the words change and development in the same breath while talking of potential, youth, “the great West.” These words begin to create images linked to the created American ideals of expansion, unchartered frontier, the Western frontiersman, the idea of which had been socialized to be viewed as the great American hero, and new possibilities.  The words used to lay down the ideas of Roosevelt’s New Deal were complemented by photographic images taken by Wilfred Mead of men employed and working under the auspices of the New Deal.

            William Mead’s photos of Americans working under the New Deal added to the mythmaking of Roosevelt’s language and ideas. In one Mead photo, a young man is depicted. The man is probably no more than nineteen or twenty years old. The boy looks strong, physically built. He has no shirt, he wears only a pair of black sturdy, durable denim jeans, a hat on his head to shield him from the son, and a pair of sturdy tight fitting, protective gloves. In the young man’s hand there is a large block sledgehammer. In the background a bit of a tree can be seen allowing the reader to understand that this man is outside. He stands tall and upright with his feet a little more than shoulder width apart as if ready to soon strike the sledgehammer. From the picture many audience members may have linked this young man standing so tall and proud working on a New Deal project, with Roosevelt’s mythmaking ideas of America as a place to work hard in a collective effort to make the country better and more developed, a more industrialized nation of tools, construction, new buildings, and roads, and a place where hard work can bring satisfaction and prosperity. In the photo the young man does not look at all as if he is in despair. He looks tall, proud, capable, and strong. Mead’s visual image helps to capture what Roosevelt discusses in his Commonwealth Address by encapsulating a moment in time, a candid and real moment of a “New Deal;” and a New America, which is to be progressive, developed, industrialized, strong, and proud.

            Roosevelt’s Commonwealth Address was a tool used to create a sense of shared “American” ideals. A new sense was born of Americans having a common and unifying commitment towards certain ideals. One of the most important aspects of this New America for Roosevelt was a commitment of the American people to work and to toil. Roosevelt believed that if American were able to capitalize on this new increased surge of technology and industry during the Industrial Revolution. In his speech, he says,

 

“So began, in American political life, the new day, the day of the individual against the system, the day in which individualism was made the great watchword of American life.

 

It was in the middle of the nineteenth century that a new force was released and a new dream created. The force was what is called the industrial revolution, the advance of steam and machinery and the rise of the forerunners of the modern industrial plant. The dream was the dream of an economic machine, able to raise the standard of living for everyone; to bring luxury within the reach of the humblest; to annihilate distance by steam power and later by electricity, and to release everyone from the drudgery of the heaviest manual toil.

 

To be made real, it required use of the talents of men of tremendous will and tremendous ambition, since by no other force could the problems of financing and engineering and new developments be brought to a consummation” (Commonwealth Address).

 

Roosevelt uses the words talented, having will, and ambition, to discuss the necessities in people that will work to create this “New Deal” a possibility and a reality. These are ideas are highlighted by Seymour Fogel’s photograph, entitled Industrial Life. In the photograph the colors used are vibrant and bright oranges, blues, and yellows; colors of hope, progress, and liveliness. The image depicts five men working in different capacities and using different skills. One of the men appears to be working on a medical experiment. He thoroughly examines a specimen under a microscope and uses his free hand to write about his observations. Another man in the photo is examining some sort of construction map or layout plan for a potential new building or geographic layout. In the back of the photo a strong, muscular, man pulls back on the levy of a machine.  The final two men in the photo, one wearing blue denim overalls, a white long sleeved shirt, and a black cap look and one wearing hard, sturdy boots and jeans, look to be working on the plans for building a railroad track.

Seymour’s picture so vividly encapsulates the spirit of the New Deal ideals that Roosevelt addressed in his Commonwealth Address. These men are showing a well-rounded set of capabilities, intellectually and physically. They all seem to be working together. The images of the machines, the tools, the sciences lab equipment, and the buildings seem very deliberately placed and geometrically configured.  The objects are made of metal, glass, brick, and wood, and the viewer is really able to get a feel of a united building project. This idea of unity and construction during the New Deal is not intended to be confined by it literal elements, but Roosevelt worked to create a sense of building that transpired the sole imagery of building roads, damns, and buildings; Roosevelt used words and imagery to create a sense of building the economy, building American collectivism and unity, building a space and mindset for a more involved and hands on government, building stronger bodies, and building stronger men.

Susman’s theory of the power of new medium to promote and disseminate ideas, proved to be particularly relevant in connection to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ideas of New Deal social liberalism.  Susman argues that,

“The photograph and the film changed the nature of cultural communication in America…the thirties brought home the impact of the image created by the photograph in a more universal way.”

 

“…Certainly, it is possible to suggest that the newly developed media and the special kinds of their appeal helped reinforced a social order rapidly disintegrating under economic and social pressures that were too great to endure, and helped create an environment for which the sharing of common experience…made the uniform demand for action and reform more striking and urgent.”

 

“From the very outset of his Presidential Campaign in 1932, Roosevelt showed himself fully aware of the power of symbols.” (Susman 159)

 

            As Susman addresses, Roosevelt was no fool to the importance of symbolism and imagery. In combining his linguistic choices of description and imagery with more visual mediums, Roosevelt was able to galvanize Americans to move towards a mentality of seeking change, new efforts, progress, and development. The core ideals of the New Deal were realized in part by the success of the message and the effectiveness of the mediums and channels used to propagate those messages. Through that, a shared identity was created. A new set of “American” values, ideals, and traditions became not just spoken upon, but internalized, and shared. Without the availability of more visual media, it may have been a lot more difficult for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ideas of social liberalism to be realized or accepted by the general American public.

The Power of Education and Entrepreneurship in the Upward advancement of African Americans in the Era of Jim Crow

Long after slavery was officially abolished, strong sentiments of racial superiority and inferiority still continued on in the minds of many Americans. Racial tensions and discrimination were still ablaze, however African American individuals were being granted slightly more freedoms than they had in the past.  While slavery was no longer legally permitted in the U.S., Jim Crow Laws were created to maintain the racial hierarchy of white supremacy in America. The majority of white Americans consented to or were in compliance with Jim Crow Laws and the separation of black and white facilities, housing units, restaurants, schools, and much more. Despite the constant realities of oppression and demeaning words, treatment, and behaviors, many African Americans and immigrants, both groups that were often treated as second-class citizens, found a way to mentally and emotionally rise above a potential anger for this situation and converted those feelings into pride, honor, and faith. Many refused to be kept down by these unequal and oppressive circumstances and instead turned towards education and entrepreneurship to move forward and get ahead. Examples of a focused energy on entrepreneurship and education can be extracted from Kathy Peiss’s “Making Faces: The Cosmetics Industry and the Cultural Construction of Gender, 1890-1930.” Frederick Douglass’s “Why the Colored American is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition”

Being lifted from the emotional, mental, and physical confines of slavery, African Americans were given a new sense of hope, determination, and drive. Despite the end of slavery, the issues of oppression and subjugation did not desist. The fight became a matter of resisting the oppressive nature of the Jim Crow laws.  Rather than stay mentally oppressed, many African Americans began to feel more empowered by these changes in circumstances. And so formed a “new negro,” or  anew mentality of thinking about the way in which he/she fit in society. Frederick Douglass addresses the new mentality of African Americans looking to better themselves and rise up in “mainstream American culture,” even though the mainstream American culture was that of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Douglass explains in his literary piece, Why the Colored American is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, the contradictory messages of opportunity and equality in the United States America, saying,

“… Is just now, as never before, posing before the world as a highly liberal and civilized nation, and in many important respects she has a right to this reputation. She has brought to. They have said to him "you are a poor Negro, be poor still," and "you are an ignorant Negro, be ignorant still and we will not antagonize you or hurt you." But the Negro has said a decided no to all this, and is now by industry, economy and education wisely raising himself to conditions of civilization and comparative well being beyond anything formerly thought possible for him. Hence, a new determination is born to keep him down. (Douglass 745).

 

Douglass as well as many African Americans recognized the possibilities for forward movement and upward educational, economic, and social mobility. Rather than allow others to dictate how they should act, feel, speak, dress, or sound, many African Americans and immigrants took matters into their own hands and recognized this changing time in the nation’s history as a way to rise up.

Douglass discusses the hardships that the black American community faced with the initial traumas of slavery and being sold as a commodity; a good; a product working under a master who had “supreme and absolute power” over the individual with no law/laws that protected the slaves from being abused, whipped, hung, beaten, or killed. Douglass addresses the steady accusations that African Americans are guilty of theft and other crimes, including the raping of white women by African American men. Douglass brings these issues to light to reiterate the fact that many efforts were made to disenfranchise the black man and the black family. But he stresses the importance of not giving up and giving in, saying “

   “What the Negro has to do then, is to cultivate a courageous and cheerful spirit, use philosophy and exercise patience. He must embrace every avenue open to him for the acquisition of wealth. He must educate his children and build up a character for industry, economy, intelligence and virtue. Next to victory is the glory and happiness of manfully contending for it. Therefore, contend! contend!” (Douglass 745).

 

Douglass understood how important it was for African American individuals and their allies to recognize the injustices in America a supposed land of freedom and equality, but not fall victim to those injustices, stereotypes, and efforts to disenfranchise the community, but rise above them. Much of that mentality came from a sense of faith and hope that existed for many all throughout four hundred years of slavery and continued onward through Jim  Crow laws. Douglass addresses the unfairness of having to fight for basic human rights that should be rightfully granted to all people, white, black, immigrant, or native born. He uses empowering words of strength and courage to speak upon this reality, saying,

“That we should have to contend and strive for what is freely conceded to other citizens without effort or demand may indeed be a hardship but there is compensation here as elsewhere. Contest is itself ennobling. A life devoid of purpose and earnest effort, is a worthless life. Conflict is better than stagnation. It is bad to be a slave, but worse to be a willing and contented slave.

 

   We are men and our aim is perfect manhood, to be men among men Our situation demands faith in ourselves, faith in the power of truth, faith in work and faith in the influence of manly character. Let the truth be told, let the light be turned on ignorance and prejudice, let lawless violence and murder be exposed. ” (Douglas 746).

 

Frederick Douglass as well as many other African Americans conditioned themselves to attack injustice, oppression, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination not with outward anger and violence, but through faith, hope, promise of betterment, and a drive and motivation to persevere and accomplish social mobility through education and entrepreneurship.

One demographic that really took advantage of entrepreneurship in a new and developing market were African American women in the beauty and cosmetic industry. According to Kathy Peiss, “many beauty parlors, drug stores, and departments stores refused to locate branches in black neighborhoods” (Peiss 383). Furthermore, many companies did not make products that were geared towards African American women which left quite a void.  That market had a void which needed to be filled. One infamous female African American entrepreneur who capitalized on this opportunity for growth and advancement was Madame C.J. Walker. C.J. Walker understood that there was a lack of hair care products for African American women. Being that African American women typically have naturally kinkier hair than their white counterparts, different oils, creams, relaxers, and products needed to be made and marketed to address those differences.

Furthermore, the white racist culture worked to degrade and minimize the beauty of African American women, and equated the natural kinkiness of their hair to ugliness or inferiority. In response to those views and the desire for many African Americans to become assimilated and to feel included in mainstream American culture, a large trend in black appearance was hair straightening. Peiss explains that some black entrepreneurs in beauty and hair care exploited these ideas and sentiments in their marketing. For example, Madame C.J. Walker ran a full page ad in a 1928 newspaper marketing her products saying “Amazing Progress of Colored Race – Approved Appearance Responsible” (Peiss 383). While some may have viewed these advertisements and sentiments that one had to straighten their hair to have an “approved appearance” as a form of “selling out” from the black community and trying to “become more white,” at this time, there were only a limited number of options that would allow blacks to slowly become integrated into a “mainstream American” culture. The reality of being a minority group in a majority culture, is that more often than not the group that will be forced to conform to certain elements of the dominant culture is the minority group. Despite having to conform to certain elements of Whiteness, the increase in entrepreneurship created jobs for more African Americans, increased wealth and capital for man African Americans. Having door to door sales agents increased mutual support and connection in the communities (Peiss 383). Beauty salons became places of a community, support, and friendship. The opening of new shops and salons by African Americans in African American communities increased capital and wealth in black neighborhoods.

In this time, many African Americans refused to allow others to dictate their progress, circumstances, or opportunities, so they capitalized on the tools and power of education, community, and entrepreneurship to move forward and make progress in a very oppressive system of Jim Crow laws and subjugation. Through their continued perseverance, they were able to create opportunities for upward economic and social mobility as well as work towards furthering their position in “mainstream American society” by changing many Americans views of some prejudices and stereotypes that they may have been holding towards the black community and their allies.

The Power of Education and Entrepreneurship in Upward Advancement in the Jim Crow Era

Thesis Ideas for Paper

Barack Obama's messages of accessibility, modernity, and optimism were manifested in the fashion choices of the first family on January 20 at the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Swearing In. The colors that they wore were bright, new, and optimistic.