Femininity as social organization

Author Gina Ulysse describes Jamaican society as one that privileges women of a light skin tone. The color of a woman's skin determined whether or not she was an upper class lady (light skin/white) or a lower class woman (brown and black).  The titles of "lady" or "woman" were used as tools in the social construction of femininity as the standard of creating a woman. Ulysse's compares this to Judith Butler's claim that "subjects are constructed through performance" (24). A woman is constructed through her performance in femininity. Ultimately, "they performed the manners of a higher class to be viewed as or to become less black. Thus, color was viewed as a manifestation of status and became a primary index of a person's worth" (29).

Throughout Gina Ulysse's work, I couldn't escape the illusion of the Jamaican island as a miniature microcosm of the International plain. Similar to Mohanty's text and the conversation we had involving progress and what "progress" in a nation constitutes when implying a western imperialist standard. The more "primitive" nations are traditionally black whereas the "modern" nations are considered white. In an effort to westernize Jamaica, the social positioning of women is determined by their degree of common Caucasian attributes as seen when she describes the visible and invisible ICIs. The opening of every description of a woman introduced what the color of her skin was and what that color implies about her socioeconomic status for example, "Miss. F is dark skinned and comes from a lower middle-class family. She considers herself black and is in her late fifties", and "Miss. V...is very fair skinned and would be socially classified as high-brown because of her long straight hair and freckles" (141, 143). The differentiation of class is based upon the lightness of her skin classifying women in ways such as black, brown and high-brown. However, Ulysse's makes sure to clarify that, "in reality, these colored females were not necessarily trying to be like white ladies. They occupied a space on their own as reluctant or willing concubines of white males" (31).

This level of race discrepancy among women of color is a key way to identify how internally the British imperialists had imposed a white imperialist attitude among the citizenry. The exact system that had suppressed these Jamaican women of color in the past was developed and expanded to the hierarchy of colored women as seen by colored women. These implications lead me to question what effects this has on a black woman's self identification? What about lesbian women of color who participate in butch/femme identities and relationships? Furthermore, what does this mean for a woman's sense of femininity?