The trouble with face-painting
Blue Corn Comics
The trouble with people
(especially children) painting their faces so they "resemble"
Indians:
1) Indians generally considered
face-painting a solemn if not sacred act. Each pattern and color had a specific
symbolic meaning—a message about the wearer's status or goals. To ignore this
is reduce face-painting to a fun and frivolous activity—the equivalent of a
party game. It says that Indians didn't have a culture as rich and as complex
as ours—that being Indian was merely a matter of putting on the proper clothes
and makeup.
2) Indians generally applied face paint only
when they were going into combat. Moreover, face-painting—at least the kind
done in classrooms—wasn't common among all tribes. It was done mainly among the
Plains Indians and others with warrior-based cultures.
The upshot is that face-painting, like a
tomahawk-chopping mascot, conveys the message that all Indians were warriors.
As discussed elsewhere,
we generally consider people who immerse themselves in warfare—i.e., the
barbarism of death and destruction—uncivilized. See any
discussion of Islamic jihadists for an example.
In other words, a warrior is little more
than a glorified savage.
So a face-painted Indian is a warrior Indian is a savage Indian.
3) As with dressing up in costumes and
dancing to drums and rattles, face-painting is intended to convey how exotic,
strange, and unfathomable Indians were. While we were taming the wilderness and
building a great nation, the thinking goes, they were playing their silly
little games. No wonder we're the greatest power on earth while they're
relegated to the halftime shows of sporting events.
About the only people in modern America who
paint their faces for combat are football fans and other weekend warriors
(e.g., participants in paintball games). They do this to throw off the shackles
of morality and propriety—to get in touch with their inner savage. Similarly,
people who display such decorations as tattoos and body piercings
are rejecting the modern world and its staid conventions—i.e., returning to
their tribal roots.
In short, people who paint, pierce, or scar
their bodies either haven't forsaken their "primitive" customs or are
renewing such customs to set themselves apart. Using face-painting as a primary
means of conveying Indianness is also doing this.
It's a way of putting Indians in a separate and unequal category.
4) The whole concept of dressing up as
Indians, of which painting the face is part—is hugely problematical. See Tricking or Treating Indians
for a discussion of the subject.
If it isn't clear yet how face-painting is
the wrong way to convey what Indian life was like, consider the alternatives.
(Some) Indians fasted, sat in sweat lodges, or ran long distances for days. Why
don't children do any of these things to learn about Indian cultures?
Because these activities are all things we
already do in one context or another. They aren't exotic or strange enough.
They don't tell us that Indians were different than us.
That's the bottom-line message face-painting
conveys.
Face-painting in the Stereotype of the Month
contest
Ind. 4th-graders study
Indians by dressing up, painting faces
Fla. fiesta goers don
feathers, face paint to honor Indian killer
Survivor Guatemala
contestants don feathers, "war paint"
Pocahontas promo:
"Paint your face/Pitch your tee pee"
FunPic
features baby "Indians" roasting "explorer" in a pot
"Princess"
misses lipstick war paint, hopping on one foot
Belgian store sells
big-nosed, warpainted "Indian masks"
Students wear headdresses
and war paint for Thanksgiving
Baby-product firm dresses
tots in buckskins and war paint
Teacher does face-painting
to "teach" kids about Indians
