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The Vanishing Half The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But a…

Sources:
"The Vanishing Half" - Britt Bennett
"Four Women" - Nina Simone genius.com/4499366
"Black Girl Memoire" - Doechii genius.com/Doechii-blac...

and Peaches is “awfully bitter these days,” because of her parents being enslaved. Generally, they all suffer in different ways, but suffer nonetheless. This makes passing into whiteness even more alluring because it separates one from all of those forms of struggle.

documents the experiences of four women of color, all of different shades. Every verse of the song–which represents a different woman–laments a different struggle. Aunt Sarah has “pain/ inflicted again and again,” Saffronia holds guilt over how she came to be, Sweet Thing seems to be in sex work,

treated her accordingly. Jude could never get away with claiming anything other than what she was, she would always have to be the kind of girl high school boys only kissed in secret. The conclusion to this conversation can be found, largely, in Nina Simone’s song, “Four Women,” in which she

choice being understandable. But ultimately, understandable does not equal right. Stella’s experience of Mallard, and the world for that matter, wasn’t really comparable to Jude’s because even before Stella decided she was going to be white, the world still recognized how close she was to it and

intensely for her skin color in the Creole town of Mallard, and even Kennedy–her cousin from liberal Los Angeles–can’t really believe that a boy would love Jude. How tragic it must be to be considered so unlovable, your own blood can’t believe it when they see it. Again, we circle back to Stella’s

knows this better than Jude. She grows up ruthlessly bullied in school by the lighter kids and continues to be mistreated well into her adulthood. She presents to the world as unambiguously black and the consequences of that are so dire that in childhood she wants to bleach her skin. Jude suffers

the advantages of passing into whiteness become even more stark. It is relatively easy, from my position as a white woman in society, to peer in on this story and say that Desiree lived a more honorable, enjoyable life than Stella did. But realistically, it is much more complicated than that. No one

thinking her mom doesn’t even like her. She knows her mom as a secretive liar that she can never really get close to. The gains of passing into whiteness–safety, comfort, respect– are not to be understated, but neither are the psychological losses.

If we look even closer at the daughters though,

daughters. While Jude, Desiree’s daughter, may sometimes be secretive and distant–the way a young girl finding her footing in the world often is–she never doubts her mothers love and can be vulnerable with her. Kennedy, Stella’s daughter, on the other hand, spends the vast majority of her life

itself to be a new, unprecedented horror for Stella. Meanwhile, after a period of turmoil, Desiree winds up quite happy, with a genuine and loving relationship and a healed connection with her mother. The difference in their lifestyles is reflected, quite simply, in their relationships with their

about being found out. Her secret ruins her relationship with her daughter, her only real friendship with Loretta, and ultimately herself. She also finds, one day, that in her overcompensation she’s raised a little girl who calls her supposed friend the n-word when she’s angry, and that reveals

husband, lovely home, beautiful daughter, and no need to work. Superficially her lie has been successful. But under the surface, she’s paranoid, miserable, and lonely the whole time. She can’t really connect with anyone in her life because no one can ever fully know her, and she’s constantly on edge

It makes a lot of sense that Stella would feel the impulse to identify with the “luckier,” more acceptable parts of her. Yet, she finds herself regretting the decision, to some extent, her whole life. Throughout the majority of the book she is living the perfect happy ending with her wealthy

Both moving out of America and longing to look like Beyonce, because she’s lighter skinned than Doecchi, are both desperate fantasies of mitigating the harsh world of being a young, dark-skinned black woman. Being lighter is a reprieve, but being light enough to pass as white? That’s an escape.

job that she would have otherwise been rejected from.

This feeling is also talked about in Doecchi’s, “Black Girl Memoir.” In the song, she says, “when I get older I want to move out of the country so I can/ (make it go away, make it go away)/ I wish I wasn’t so dark so I could look like ‘Yonce.”

thoroughly explored. It’s not a wholly unique desire in women of color–to long for the life of a white person, to live without ridicule or race-based danger or questioning. Being white simply offers her a world of opportunities, in fact, she first decides to consistently pass into whiteness for a

They both have the ability, but their different choices showcase how drastically different the same person can be based solely on the way their race is perceived.

In the second half of the novel, Stella’s motivations for abandoning her life with her family, and her Blackness along with it, is

If the plot of Brit Bennet’s, “The Vanishing Half,” were to be boiled down to its most raw form, one of the biggest facets of it would be the complex privilege of passing as white. Stella Vignes decides at a young age to live her life as a white woman, while her sister Desiree, chooses not to.

The cultural crimes and white privilege of Miley Cyrus Miley Cyrus seems to equate blackness to wickedness and whiteness to virtue

Other Sources:
people.com/miley-cyrus-...
ew.com/music/2019/0...
allhiphop.com/news/bhad-bh...
www.bet.com/article/xmt7...
templemediainstitutions.wordpress.com/blog/
www.imdb.com/title/tt5758...

image she’s created for herself. She is still comfortable at “the top of the subaltern community” rather than “the middle of the dominant community.” I can’t help but wonder how that will shift as her children grow up and start to develop opinions on her public persona.
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Be Young" specifically writes off to this rebellious era of her life as a result of a youth’s coming-of-age. She sings, “I know I used to be crazy/ Messed up, but God was it fun/ I know I used to be wild/ That’s ‘cause I used to be young.” As for Bhad Bhabie, she seems to still be content with the

when they’re done with their phase. This exact situation can be seen in Cyrus’ rebrand once she had enough notoriety to return to her comfort zone of whiteness; she no longer needs to perform a caricature to receive attention. On her latest album, "Endless Summer Vacation," a song called "Used To

emulating–and by extension propagating–the harmful stereotypes about Black women discussed in "Passing and the Costs and Benefits of Appropriating Blackness."

The article also outlines the intensity added to these transgressions when the perpetrator has the “escape option of returning to whiteness"

Now that we’ve thoroughly examined how Bhad Bhabie and Miley Cyrus have appropriated Blackness and attempted to weasel their ways into it, we can discuss the effect of that weaseling. Both women use or used proximity to Blackness as a means to sexualize themselves and appear brash, therefore

I Want to Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year-Old Daughter Who Tried to Frame Me for a Crime!"She rose to fame by being unconventional and problematic–she was violent, sexually promiscuous, and short-tempered (“cash me outside” being an offer to the entire crowd to fight her).

a style that’s not natural for their hair.

It is worth noting that Bhad Bhabie, like Cyrus, seems to associate the Blackness she’s developed with poor behavior. The rapper was once “Cash Me Outside” Girl, getting her fame for that line on an Episode of Dr. Phil in 2016. That episode was entitled "I

Another way she’s defended herself was a claim that she can’t be culturally appropriating because she never made fun of the women whose appearance she’s copying; yet, when under fire for her braids in 2019, she berated Black women for hypocritically “glue[ing] whole wigs on [their] heads” to achieve

the feelings of Black folks or the sanctity of their culture. According to various media outlets, one of her attempts to defend herself against accusations of “blackfishing,” drew a parallel between herself and Tarzan who developed the way of the gorilla by being raised by them. What a choice!