Are we fetishizing Lupita Nyong’o?
With an Oscar win under her belt, Lupita Nyong’o will only rise to to top. She’s being hailed for her critically-acclaimed role in 12 Years a Slave, her remarkable beauty and style and her down-to-earth charm.
But is the media fetishizing Lupita Nyong’o? One blogger thinks so. In her ope-ed piece published on The Motley Crew’s Cherish refers to coverage of Lupita as “fad-like.”
The current fad-like coverage of the Kenyan actress, overshadows the more interesting things about her background, the stuff that doesn’t get reported. True, I assumed she was a nobody until this slave narrative film, but a quick skim of Wikipedia reveals the stuff that the media isn’t all that interested in.
Black and white people, alike, are enamored with Nyong’o for what I believe, are different reasons. Blacks are proud that Nyong’o crushed it in her portrayal of Patsey and I’m personally excited that we’ve got another black woman winning major acting awards. Whites seems to be most preoccupied with Nyong’o’s exotic look and I think that’s something we, as a society, probably need to address.
In her post, Cherish highlights less talked about aspects of Nyong’o’s life. Like the fact that she hails from an affluent family of artists, doctors and scholars.
“I was pretty excited to know that Nyong’o actually wrote, directed and produced a documentary, in 2009, called In My Genes, where she investigates the how Africans with albinism experiences life in a predominately black Kenya,” Cherish wrote.
She’s also a graduate of Yale University and fluent in several languages.
How do you feel about the media’s coverage of Lupita?
Are they making her into more of a commodity by focusing on just a few aspects of her life?
Sound off below!