Prestige, trouble, sexy, just a few of the stereotypes of a mixed raced women. Also known as a “lighty”. The Lightskin Girl explores the new fetishation of light skin women created by UK rap, and the knock on effect it has on the black community. It particularly answers the question “Does the light skin privilege have any positive effect on the mixed raced community, or instead does it make it even harder to be accepted by the black community?”. Hashtag lightskin, also looks at how this fetishation has been developed through this modern age of music.
The project aims to hear from famous UK rappers that have glorified mixed race women within their music. As well as people that have previously spoke on this topic before. For example Kimberly Mcintosh, who is a grime and hip hop enthusiast that has previously wrote blog posts on this subject. Or Lynette Linton who wrote a whole theatre production on this topic called hashtag lighty.
However “The Lightskin Girl” won’t only hear from familiar names, it will hear from the young black youth, to get to understand their stereotypes of mixed raced women. As well hearing read out social media posts about mixed raced women. And of course hearing from a variety of mixed raced women to understand how they feel about the topic. This will be to really grasp an understanding on how society is towards mixed raced women.
I have already had a commision from The Beat London 103.6FM. This is an urban community station located in North West London. It particularly suits this station as the project is surrounding the black community, and The Beat London is a black music station. As the station already has a talk show, the production will be a 15 minute feature of that talk show.
I have also researched to see whether any other black music stations have spoke on this subject which in fact they have. Reece Parkinson has previously discussed skin tone on 1Xtra talks, and this had a good response. However rather than being a discussion show, I think it would be better if it was packaged as a feature documentary.
Task | Due Date |
Contact Guests | 17th October 2018 |
Record Vox Pops | 25th October 2018 |
Record Social Media Post Examples | 30th October 2018 |
Source Music Track Examples (Montage) | 1st November 2018 |
Record Interviews | 29th October – 4th November 2018 |
Edit Documentary | 5th November – 10th November 2018 |