Angry
Creamsicle, Comrade Cheetolino, Mango Mussolini, Agent Orange - they are just
some of the nicknames that Donald Trump has acquired along his presidential
road. Trump may ethnically identify as “white”, but his skin is categorically
and scathingly portrayed as orange.
When Trump
was elected in 2016, succeeding former president Barack Obama, I recall
references like “orange is definitely the new black”. At the same time an
allusion towards the popular Netflix series along with a bold discuss race,
colour here functions being an important type of satire. Which satiric usage of
colour has persisted throughout Trump’s presidency. His recent UK visit
witnessed the orange baby balloon and orange-faced protesters continuing this
entirely force.
A lady
demonstrates during Trump’s visit to Scotland. Lesley Martin/PA Wire/PA Images
My
specialism is definitely the background of tanning, therefore i find this
specific type of humour fascinating. It’s striking that Trump’s complexion,
more than anything else, has prompted such a degree of derision.
Fake it to
really make it
Orange is really
a colour by using these comedic value since it is impossible, disingenuous:
this is a mark of artifice. Tanning enthusiasts talk about achieving a
wholesome “glow”, looking “bronzed”, and one’s (implicitly and necessarily once
white) skin “browning” in the sunshine. “Fake bake” would seem, and is also
marketed as, the safer substitute for true contact with the sun’s Ultra violet
rays, which we realize may cause cancer.
But the
issue is it remains exactly that: fake. The colouring is really a dye, on the
skin’s upper surface layer, not really a natural alteration of pigment embedded
deeper inside the cells. Unlike red lipstick, violet hair dye, or blue eye
shadow - that are also clearly “unnatural” aesthetic additions and colour
modifications towards the human face - the orange fake tan (or serious overuse
of bronzer) is widely considered unacceptable within popular culture. Natural
growth of skin “phototypes” will not include orange being a colour “value”
about this light-dark spectrum.
Less a
subtle browning when compared to a fluorescent face plant, we discover the
color funny because it’s an all-too-obvious applied coating that fails to
convince anyone of natural pigmentation. Orange will not be bronze, not brown,
not black (and not is going to be). It really is laughable, therefore, since it
is a mark of failure, an action of mimicry gone wrong. Put simply, orange isn’t
“of value” to us since it isn’t a “value” being a skin colour whatsoever.
Agent
Orange. Antwon McMullen / Shutterstock.com
And allow
us to remember why it exists to begin with. This is a normalised belief in
white Western culture that dark skin will be envied, that altering (however
temporarily) one’s original colour by darkening it several shades along the
colour line can make it look more beautiful, healthier, sexier, younger. This
is actually the case for women, especially young white women in the united
states and UK, in addition to men, not least male bodybuilders.
It’s no
surprise, then, that Trump believes altering his natural skin colour will
improve his appearance and, hence, feeling of self. The belief inside a
“healthy tan” has been in existence because the early twentieth century, and
will continue to drive tourism equally as it drives the tanning bed and fake
tan industries.
Getting
beneath the surface
I’d debate
that there exists something serious about Trump’s orange face - something
seriously interested in the superficial. Scottish artist and writer David
Batchelor argues that colour continues to be feared and marginalised as
trivial, as artifice, as “other”, through the entire background of Western
civilisation. He terms this “chromophobia”, describing the prejudice against
colour as operating two ways:
Within the first, colour is created to
become the property of some ‘foreign’ body - normally the feminine, the
oriental, the primitive, the infantile, the vulgar, the queer or even the
pathological. Within the second, colour is relegated towards the arena of the
superficial, the supplementary, the inessential or even the cosmetic. In a
single, colour is considered alien and for that reason dangerous; within the
other, it really is perceived merely being a secondary quality of expertise,
and therefore unworthy of significant consideration. Colour is dangerous, or it
really is trivial, or it really is both.
Fake tan,
fake news. Manutsawee Buapet / Shutterstock.com
Like his
combover (his baldness suggesting lost youth and virility) or his sourpuss
pouts (lost composure under intense media scrutiny), Trump’s orange skin is
really a target of ridicule - of the man enthusiastic about vanity yet marked
by indications of failed masculinity. But there exists danger here, too, for
they may be implicitly indications of weak and worrisome leadership, of the man
uncontrollable of his appearance and maybe, by extension to his opponents, his
country.
The
reference to Trump as “Agent Orange” is especially relevant. Utilized by the
united states military within the Vietnam War to eliminate foliage, this
chemical also contained the carcinogen, TCDD, which seriously harmed many local
inhabitants as well as their future unborn children. For artists like Busta
Rhymes, Trump is envisioned being a dangerous weapon or force of destruction
that threatens global peace.
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