Chris has a pretty decent tan in that picture how is that brownface?

Lets remember that white supremacy is a thing. For centuries white people have been profiting from racism and the Othering of people of color.

Now even within whiteness a racial hierarchy is present, the working class were always looked down on for having tanned skin. You’ve probably seen this in evidence as classism and elitism. But nowadays the only white people who spend significant time outside are athletes, gardeners and some contractors in positions of authority over PoC.

If he had built up to a natural looking tan like in the second photo for years,

I wouldn’t have had as big of a problem about this. However, throughout the film he gets mysteriously darker.

Dark enough so that this:

is his coloring throughout the rest of the film. Here’s where its brownface w/r/t Chris Pratt. Now you may ask yourself what does it matter? White people get tans at tanning salons all the time.

The problem is that in the movie there’s a huge difference between how these parts are cast. The only people of color are men, two of the lighter skinned men are in relative positions of power. Masrani the park owner is a wealthy billionaire and he’s killed off. Wu is the lead geneticist that well I won’t spoil it for you but he’s cast in a racist “sneaky Asian” role. The only other man of color is Barry, who’s a black man. Now he’s a subordinate of Owen’s.

Remember what I said about white men always being in positions of authority over men of color? Well even though Masrani was a man of color and v wealthy he isn’t spared like Hammond was in the original movies. Several men of color actually are killed onscreen as well as other people. As for men of color portrayed as good? Only Omar Sy’s character Barry. Keep that in mind for the next part.

There are several white women in the film, 3 to be exact. Zero women of color with speaking lines. So not only is the film not good for representation of PoC we still have the problem with the fake tans that Chris Pratt adopts for the film.

Back to the 3rd picture (second pic here) as you can see any white person who’s got naturally light hair tanning that much is basically risking skin cancer. Because I’ve grown up with several white people as friends I can tell you that even at age 25 my friends who spent a lot of time outside due to being athletes and gardeners had to watch out for the threat of skin cancer. Even then my best white friends couldn’t achieve Chris Pratt’s color.

You really think Chris Pratt took the time to tan naturally??? No of course he didn’t. He used a spray tan. And here spray tan is the key, because it denotes that he couldn’t reach that color on his own. Look at any of his candid pictures or his most recent episodes on Parks and Rec and you’ll see that he’s back to somewhere between his original pale white and his somewhat tanned look. Never again as dark as last picture.

Here’s a popular pic that’s currently circulating:

Thats his natural color after being a movie where he’s required to be outside that much. Its the brown face in the movie because PoC cannot be that color naturally without being stereotyped as, an, “illegal immigrant,” “criminal” or the slur “beaner,” Yet he can adopt that color that he does and everyone writes it off as acceptable because its part of his role. It isn’t natural tho, he had to get it sprayed and applied.

Any time a person of color tans we gotta worry that we’ll won’t be as acceptable to white people. Most women of color I know refuse to tan because we’re always trying to get accepted by white people and adhere to white standards of beauty. (This is a separate issue entirely and its racialized misogyny/internalized racism when we police ourselves). The point is white people can pretend to have our skin while simultaneously being racists towards us. So why should white people get to have our skin at all?

Basically tans are normalized for white people and they don’t gotta worry about being stereotyped as a criminal, or illegal immigrant or countless other slurs. To profit off the use of such heavy tanning is doing brownface.