Sexual Innuendo

http://www.acfny.org/uploads/pics/natalja.jpg

When I found this image I was surprisingly not caught off guard by it at all. Although there is no headline or description of what’s going on in the picture. I was able to figure it out quite easily. How was this possible? Well, it shows a white, young, blonde, made up, woman who appears to be teasing the audience with a banana. Now, the way I interpret the image is defined by the way it presents itself, if it would have been a black, Asian, or middle eastern woman, or a man, I probably would have viewed the image much differently. If the image was of a man, I would have presumed he was gay. If the image was of a middle-eastern woman in religious dressings I would have been confused and maybe a little offended. But interestingly enough, because the image is of a white woman I knew exactly what was going on and I wasn’t put off at all by it. This is because living in western culture, I’ve been a bit desensitized to situations like this. It’s almost become acceptable to me, that a white woman sucking on a banana is nothing more than a sexual innuendo, that I’m not even offended by.

The provocative image shows a gendered/raced/classed body, depending on how you interpret different aspects of the image. The politics involved in the image are simply this: a white woman sucking on a banana, well it’s expected. It’s racy, but it’s accepted. What could possibly be wrong with that?!