Oh, now I get it
These here ladies are Circassian Beauties, which are a flavor of sideshow freak and not actual ladies from a place called Circassia.
Step back. People from Circassia were believed to be the most beautiful and whitest of all the white people. The reputation starts in the late Middle Ages, when the women were prized in the slave markets of Russia and Turkey. They were regarded as ideals of feminine beauty. A Circassian slave bore Cosimo de Medici (the founder of the Medici dynasty) a son. By the 18th C, “Circassian” was a marketing slogan for beauty products.
In the whimsical Victorian proto-science of race, Circassians were regarded as the white race at its purest. Circassia is in the Caucasus Mountains. Yes, dear readers, this is when white people were first called Caucasian — even though, probably, very few of our grannies were from Circassia — and it stuck.
That ‘fro thing, though? That’s pure PT Barnum. By which I mean the actual Phineas Taylor Barnum, who incorporated fuzzy-headed white ladies into his freakshows. God knows why he thought that worked as an explar of white people nonpareil. I guess his prototypes didn’t look exotic enough with regular white people hair.
Anyhow — funny old world! — about the time the Circassian Beauty became a standard sideshow attraction across the US of A, the Russians were busily genociding the actual Circassians. Ha! Ha!
More about Circassian Beauties. Wikipedia. The blog I stole the picture from. A post from this interesting blog.
You reckon this is what Rachel Dolezal was going for? Because she got a lot closer to this than that other thing.
p.s. To anyone who thinks our Rachel really, truly thinks she’s black? Straight blonde hair doesn’t like to do that thing. Once a month or so, Rachel has to go into a beauty salon and request a root darkening and the kinkiest perm in town. What we used to call a bad perm.
p.p.s. You know, for less than a hundred bucks at 23andme, we could nail what her parents are made of. Come to think of it — considering what’s at stake with hiring quotas — shouldn’t we insist candidates for race-based jobs be routinely DNA tested for ancestry?
p.p.p.s. Nah. A DNA test would show Bruce Jenner is a man, so that’s out.
June 17, 2015 — 9:33 pm
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