Nordstrom and Women of Color

A couple days ago, I was perusing my copy of the Nordstrom February 2011 catalogue, when I noticed an interesting phenomenon: the majority of the photographs in this volume featured models of color. In fact, of the 64 pages (including front and back cover shots) that included photographs of women, 47 of them featured minority women. I did not miss the full page spread noting Nordstrom's support of Black History Month, and the Be The Match Registry (which, by the way, is enormously generous - they're offering to support the cost of adding a new member to the bone marrow donor registry up to $75,000 - more on that in a later post) so the choice of minority models for the February catalogue may have occurred in coordination with that, but I will also say, Nordstrom does seem to make pretty consistent use of diverse models (women of color, as well as plus size models) on their website and in their  catalogues, as a rule, which I've always appreciated.

Nordstrom Catalogue, February 2011, front cover

Equity issues have been on my mind lately, as I recently attended an internal professional development/workshop at work, addressing the challenges faced by African American male students. In the past, I've mostly found myself absorbed with issues of gender equity, seeing as how racial equity issues seem a whole heck of a lot more complicated (to me, anyway), but I'm beginning to realize more and more that these things really go hand in hand. 

Nordstrom Catalogue, February 2011, pgs. 16-17

We women are familiar with the token diversity that plays out on the pages of most retail catalogues - J. Crew is one that comes to mind for me, where there is usually at least one image of an Asian model (those are the ones that pop out at me, because...well, they look like me more than the others), usually in a suit (because we're industrious like that). However, this doesn't really make me feel represented by this company or their catalogues. While recycling the same photos of an Asian model in a suit might be cost effective, and a way to claim that you're addressing diversity in your catalogue/website, it's not the same as making a real and meaningful commitment to racial equity in your company's media.

Nordstrom Catalogue, February 2011, pgs. 47-48

I'm not saying that J. Crew and other retail companies are institutionally racist, but it's not a stretch to say that there may be some structural racism* at play here. Just to illustrate, I took a look at the websites of four retailers I commonly visit - Nordstrom, Anthropologie, J. Crew, and Bloomingdales. Anthropologie's website is slightly different from the others, as most of their garments are photographed on dress forms, but they do have some styling pages that use models. I started counting the number of images that were easily accessed, that used images of models, but decided that the sample was too small to make meaningful comparison to the other three sites. I am, therefore, discounting them from this comparison. I did a count of the models of color used on each retailer's "Womens: Dresses" pages, and as of 3:30 PM PST, 2/17/11, these are the percentages of models of color utilized in each company's website:

Nordstrom had the highest percentage of minority women modeling their products, with 32 of 99 images (just their first page of dresses) featuring minority women. Bloomingdales had 17 of 96 (also their first page, when you clicked on the "view 96 per page" option), and J. Crew had a pretty poor 3 out of 145 (this is when you clicked on their "view all" option - without that option, they would have had zero models of color on their first page of dresses. Note: I did not include any dress form images in the total count of 145 for J. Crew). Now, this was a somewhat unscientific polling, if you will, since I didn't have the census information for the individual models and have no idea how the women personally identify themselves, but I think that's okay, because for the purposes of this type of exercise, it's really what the consumer is perceiving that matters.

So, kudos to Nordstrom - just another reason for me to love this company and spend my dollars there. But what about you? How do you feel about racial equity in the composition of a retailer's media? Do you personally feel under or even over-represented in fashion-related media?

*Structural Racism: The cumulative impact of racism on multiple institutions over time. It encompasses (1) history which lies beneath the surface providing the foundation for white racial advantage, (2) culture which serves to normalize and replicate racist images and ideas, and (3) interconnected institutions and policies that perpetuate and reinforce racial power disparities.