Racist Plastic

When one walks into a retail store, the first thing they see is probably a large, plastic, fake human wearing clothes. It sounds strange when you describe it like this, but these mannequins are the norm at the front of every store. What I've never thought of is the color of the mannequins, until I went into the Nike store last week.

Right when you walk in, there are two mannequins reppin' Duke and OSU basketball jerseys. Notice that the mannequins have high muscle definition, as well as having black plastic skin. Once I saw this, I was astonished at how blatantly obvious the stereotyping of that mannequin was: attempting to label all basketball players as looking like that. Then, after doing some research, I found it was really stereotyping, just honest portrayal. Of the 24 members of the Duke and Osu basketball teams, there are a combined 6 white people. Considering 60% of the U.S is white, yet only 25% of the players on these teams are white, this store was just being truthful.

Lots of questions popped into my head when I saw the mannequins. I began to think of how many times I have seen a white mannequin wearing a suit, compared to a black one. On the walk back to the car, I saw countless white mannequins wearing suits, and not a single black one. Once again, is this stereotyping or honesty? I read while researching my junior theme that 95% of CEO's are white. If every store tried to accurately portray the majority through each one of their mannequins, every sports mannequin would be black, and every business one would be white. What an awful way of segregation.

Other questions I thought of are: Maybe because I live in a white-dominant community, all the mannequins are white. Maybe if I lived elsewhere I would see more diversity in suited mannequins. I also thought about it from an advertising perspective. No matter what color your skin is, basketball fans like good basketball players. And the majority of these good players are dark-skinned and very strong. The stores are just trying to model what is seen on television, not stereotype all basketball players. I think this whole controversy could be avoided if all stores did what Addidas does: blue and pink mannequins.