The above ad is from a scrolling set of images that a visitor to the Brandy Melville website first encounters. Out of the ten pictures rotating through on the homepage, this is the only one to feature a girl of color. She is the lone model of color in this image as well. All of the other models in the picture are identically pale and blonde, casting the girl of color into even starker relief. Furthermore, the two blonde girls standing on either side of the black girl are wearing mostly black shirts, in contrast to the rest of the girls who are wearing mostly white shirts, a visual choice that’s purpose would seemingly be to direct focus to the girl of color.

     Yet for all her visual contrast to the blonde models, the black model does not strongly stand out as the focal point of the picture. Of all the models, she is furthest away from the camera. Furthermore, of the two subgroupings of girls, she stands clearly in the middle, yet not really a part of either. She is not engaged with her phone as the two girls on the left are, nor does she seemed to be engaged in conversation with the three girls on the right. The innermost two of this group are pictured so close together as to be almost touching, with their mouths open and smiling. The rightmost girl is also spatially near these girls and has her body slightly turned towards them. All of this body positioning seems to portray a friendly conversation between the three. Meanwhile, the two blonde girls on the left don’t appear to be left out of the chatting group, but merely contentedly engaged in their own business. The black girl is positioned squarely towards to camera (which visually excludes her from the group of chatting girls on the right) and is lightly toughing her hands together, thus also excluding her from the groups of girls on her left using their phones.

     The overwhelming presence of the white models in this ad, as well as in all other Brandy Melville ads, demonstrates what the ideal “Brandy Melville” girl is: incredibly skinny, has long hair (almost always blonde), is surrounded by friends, and is white. Following social media criticism, it seems that Brandy Melville has slowly started to include a few models of color in ads every now and then, however, as this picture and the ones below illustrate, they are not quite sure how to fit girls of color into the “Brandy Girl” formula. As it stands, the Brandy Girl model of femininity is a lenticular one….it only fairly represents a very privileged and traditional white version in which models of color necessarily take a background role (McPherson 2003). Their placement appears to be merely lip service paid to the audience’s pleas for diversity, without any effective attempt to reconfigure the Brandy Girl model.

     These are clearly not isolated stylistic choices. These spatial and color patterns can be seen in the few other official Instagram ads to feature girls of color. In the pictures below, girls of color are visibly eclipsed by white girls (who are always closer to the camera), even though they may be visibly differentiated by color of clothing or lack of an object to unite them in the activities of the white girls also in the ads. Furthermore, even when girls of color are not physically relegated to the background of an image and their femininity eclipsed by white femininity, the appropriation of their culturally specific practices/symbols by white girls denies their existence at all.