Encountering Eurocentric Beauty Ideals and Childhood Identity Formation in Collages by Deborah Roberts

Using Deborah Roberts’ photocollage works as a lens, this article contemplates the influence of Eurocentric standards of beauty and stereotypes of Blackness on identity formation as represented by the child subject. Deborah Roberts reappropriates found images and materials from magazines, the internet, and her daily life to bring attention to the historic and continued treatment of the Black body within the realm of cultural production and to the vulnerability of children to the resulting conditions of objectivity and suppression. Theories of intersectionality highlight that women and children are susceptible to multiple layers of oppression as part of a minority race and subordinated gender.[1] Roberts’ focus on children brings attention to another regularly overlooked layer of subjugation and bias, as young people’s identities are in a highly developmental state that is often the most susceptible to ideas promoted by the masses. By emphasizing and subverting the original intentions of her materials and reinventing them as works of fine art, Roberts gives power back to her young Black subjects.