ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at Black women’s online resistance to racial cosplay/blackfishing by two Instagram beauty influencers, Emma Hallberg and Aga Brzostowska. As they performatively produce Black beauty – light skin, hairstyles, small waistline, “thick” legs, big bottom, bigger lips – whiteness remains master signifier as racial home and site of privilege. Racial cosplay/blackfishing is “race transing.” That is, the translation of Black looks and transformation of the white body by a Black mask for racial deception as these beauty influencers attempt to extend their reach to Black consumers while not interrupting white supremacist privilege, or the aesthetic, political, social, skin, and affective value of whiteness remaining integral to white bodies. “Transing’-while-white” has been resisted by Black women on twitter and YouTube asserting racial authenticity, critiquing racial capitalism’s white co-optation of Black economic, cultural, and social capital, and questioning the white supremacist psyche attached to racial cosplay/blackfishing.
