A Bra of a Different Color

§  This column is sure to offend someone, somewhere. But, even if you begin to think it offensive or even racist, please give it the benefit of the doubt and read all the way to the end!  §

Although my personal skin color might best be described as a very pale peach-tone, my casual race description is “white”. Now, I am no more the color of typing paper than a black person is the color of the night sky. But, there you have it. I’m “white”; others are “black”, while those of Asian descent have often been offensively labeled “yellow”, despite the fact that their skin tones have nothing to do with a daffodil. Native Americans aren’t the color of stoplights, either! “Yellow” and “red” are ridiculous descriptions of skin tones, as are white and black.

Perhaps that’s why I found it difficult to understand an article I read several years ago complaining about the dearth of appropriately-tinted brassieres for women of color; an article that claimed this lack was due to racism. My reaction to this was my oft-repeated, “Huh?” Being Vintage myself, I’d grown up in an era when all bras were white. Stark white. Typing paper white. Bleach white. That’s it. Period. No other choices. And those stark-paper-bleach white bras no more closely matched my pale peachy pale skin tone than they matched the flesh of any woman of any race. When lingerie departments finally began to stock bras in a shade they titled “nude”—now that was racist!–I bought one, and found that it, too, came nowhere near to resembling my skin tone. It was nothing at all like my nude “white” skin.

Confusing me even more was the fact that, at the time I read this article (about a decade ago), I didn’t possess a single bra that resembled any skin color. I owned a bras in bright red, ink black, pale blue, steel grey, and a final one in pale pink. Some might think that last shade came in somewhere close to my skin tone, but, no, not even close. When I dressed in the morning, I matched my bra to my clothing, not my skin. I’d never in my lifetime had a bra that matched my skin tone, and I thought nothing of it.

But from the tenor of the article, I could see that this lack mattered a lot to many women of color, since they were resorting to dying their underwear with tea and coffee. As this problem was genuinely important to so many women of color, I wondered, why was the author not presenting it as a fantastic business opportunity? Rather than broadcasting suspicions of covert racism, she could, should, have been suggesting that the manufacturing community jump on the solution like a Venus fly trap snapping up an insect.

But complaints like those of that long-ago editorial are why (although I try my utmost to identify and divest myself of any behaviors associated with racial prejudice) I sometimes find myself bewildered by seemingly minor situations escalating into accusations of racism. Back in the days when Crayola named its peach tinted crayon “Flesh”—that was racist! Calling a beige bra “nude”—definitely racist! But when every woman in the Western world, be she black, white, brown, red, yellow or Martian green, had to wear a bleach white bra, that wasn’t racism; it was sheer idiocy on the part of the (probably male) manufacturers.

Today a woman of color can sometimes locate a bra in her shade, and occasionally my not-so-lily-white self can find a skin-tone bra, too. But we can each make the best of an irritating situation and chose a clothing color, not a skin shade, for our brassieres. We can also send strident complaints to the manufacturers, dye our lingerie, or, as I have done for so many years, just shrug and deal with it.

But–and this is me trying my best to walk in another’s shoes–having been born with “white” skin, I’ve had little cause to experience racism, except for one glaring childhood incident (see the post Amosandra, 06/01/2018).  If I had frequently endured the dehumanizing experience of genuine racial discrimination, would I not be more inclined to suspect racist intent at every juncture—even in something as minor as the shade of one’s underwear?  Yes, I must admit it; probably so.

Having been born with this peachy-pale skin of mine, I shall also probably never know. But I will conclude by saying that all my brassieres are currently in a shade called “Champagne”. It’s a sort of ivory yellow beige. It’s nowhere near my skin tone. Instead (having learned a lot over the course of my 65 years), these bras are comfortable. And that’s why I don’t really give a damn what color they are.