Dressmakers and Designers: Mending the Concept of Meritocracy in Competition TV
The hype from Fashion Week has clogged my Instagram feed and For You Page with walks down the catwalk, aspiring designers, models, and their street fashion shots, which always reminds me of the many years that I spent watching the series Project Runway. Over the years, Project Runway has gone through multiple phases and stages from being hosted on Bravo to time spent on Lifetime. And, most recently, both Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum (the series primary hosts) have migrated over to Amazon with their latest series Making the Cut.
While Making the Cut is a great show, during this time of the year I always feel a little nostalgic for the original cast. Therefore, with Season 16 being one of the last seasons with the cast originals, I wanted to return to some thoughts that I wrote about Project Runway Season 16 (one of my favorite seasons) and the series exploration of race, gender, and meritocracy through the genre of reality television/competition TV.
Some Brief Project Runway History
Ever since I was a teenager, I have tuned into the show Project Runway to watch Tim Gunn, Heidi Klum, and Nina Garcia critique the looks of budding fashion designers, as they “make it work” to their own showing at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in New York City.
While I have had multiple favorite designers over the years (shout-out to Christian Siriano, now the latest Project Runway host and PR Royalty), like Issa Rae at the Emmy’s I am generally just rooting for the Black people and the ubiquitous oh so very queer man. You see, just like in all media representations that are not primarily geared towards a Black audience, reality television includes Black people using the same diversity model as primetime TV. If you’re lucky, there are two or three, but in the case of a competition show, starting out with two or three Black contestants generally results in, at most, ending up with one by the series end.
However, we lucked out with Season Sixteen of Project Runway, and began the series with five Black contestants. In many ways, competition reality television is a microcosm of the real world. Each week I would tune in with the hope that accomplished Black contestants would win out over mediocrity and undue critiques by their shady peers who refused to stay in their lane.
And of course, Project Runway Season 16 was no different.
Waiting until the end of the season before things really started to heat-up, Season 16, Episode 10 introduced us to the Final Six contestants, and I was immediately pressed to hear confessions from a contestant named Margarita, where she states that everyone who has made it to this final stage deserves to be in the competition, except for the contestants Ayana and Kenya. She goes on to state that while the other four designers (all men, except for Margarita) have a clear design aesthetic and would be able to make a great fashion show, Kenya and Ayana simply had a “dressmakers” aesthetic that wouldn’t carry over well to the runway.
Race and Gender as Credentials for Critiquing Clothing
As a scholar of identity and media, the fact that the only two Black women left on the show were mentioned as making clothing that was not worth a fashion show was not lost on me.
Margarita tried it, plain and simple.
Specifically, the use of the coded term “dress-maker” as a critique of these two women’s design aesthetic(s) (despite the fact that I doubt that the dressmaking aesthetics of prior contestants such as Austin Scarlett would ever be used as a critique) pointed to both an indictment of not only gender, but a veiled contempt for class and clientele. When looking up synonyms for the word “dressmaker” you are pointed to the words, “tailor”, “seamstress”, and “needlewoman”.
In this sense, Margarita implies that unlike the other designers Kenya and Ayana are not professional designers with pedigree, but simply women who work on the clothing of other women, no different than your local seamstress working at the dry cleaner sewing on buttons. She states this despite the fact that both Kenya and Ayana are sitting in the same room as her, after being accepted to the same television show as her, and making it to the same stage of the competition that she is currently in.
Despite the size of this slight, a mere sentence in the context of the entire episode, I was immediately reminded of the old adage “twice as good, to get half as much” which was iconized in the above speech from the ABC television series Scandal. This adage reflects the idea or widely held cultural understanding that Black people, and Black women especially, must work twice as hard to get half as much as their peers and counterparts. Half as much acknowledgement, half as much pay, and half much as respect. However, this fact is hidden within American society, because we are constantly led to believe that we live in a meritocracy, where everyone who works hard can achieve success and recognition that reflects exactly how much work they put in, i.e. the American Dream.
This is especially apparent in competition reality tv shows where the Black person rarely, if ever, wins. Not winning is based, not on race or gender or class, but on your ability, because all the contestants have a “fair shot” from the very beginning. However, we don’t think about how beliefs around racism/sexism seep into these spaces and tweak this notion of meritocracy, mending it in ways that fix structures of oppression. By calling Kenya and Ayana dressmakers, Margarita robbed those women of their accomplishments and the work that it took them to get there by implying that they really didn’t deserve it because they aren’t real designers, like her and the other contestants.
Winners and Losers in the Competition of Life
Similar to students and staff who cry affirmative action at the mere sight of a Black person in the same space or position as them, calling Kenya and Ayana “dressmakers” and the other contestants “designers” serves to create a hierarchy between those who worked hard to get where they are, and those who are just getting by based on luck and/or diversity initiatives. Regardless of how far Black people make it up the ladder of meritocracy, that work is not recognized, because most people simply take Black people on face-value. Like Kanye says, “even when you’re in a benz, you’re still “a n***a inna coupe”.
At the same time, my point is not to declare that Margarita is racist/sexist/etc, because I honestly don’t care. The purpose of unpacking this statement is to draw attention to the ways in which even the simplest statements not only reflect how Black people are viewed within our society (despite their positionality and accomplishments), but also the material effects of these viewpoints.
While Margarita may believe that she is simply speaking to their “ability”, those comments create and demonstrate implicit biases. For me, the question also becomes: What will those words mean after the competition, in the context of the real world? How much harder will these women have to work to prove that statement wrong within, and outside of, the competition? And how much did they already have to work just to make it on tv? Are some things not just better left unsaid i.e. if you have nothing nice to say perhaps don’t say anything at all.
Unfortunately, the other contestant’s don’t get to hear the confessions while the show is being filmed, because those were fighting words if I have ever heard them. I continued to watch the episode flinging epithets at the screen as the contestants continued to doubt how “over the top” Ayana’s outfit was, or how Kenya’s dress was too simple.
Spurred on by Margarita’s statement, I cheered when the episode ended with Ayana winning for her “over-the-top” dress and Kenya being praised for her elegant LBD. Even more so, I applauded when Zac Posen turned to Margarita and stated that unlike the other designers, he wasn’t sure what her design aesthetic was, and who she was as a designer (not a good sign for someone who is expected to produce a runway show in a few episodes).
Just Another Day in Film and Television
As the episode ended, I breathed a sigh of relief, which was immediately followed by a wave of sadness as I realized the psychic toll that these moments of racism/sexism takes on you, even in the context of just watching a reality tv show.
The sinking feeling when the Black man doesn’t get The Bachelorette, the disappointment when Shark Tank says no to the Black family, or when the first contestant voted off just happens to be Black. That brief moment in time when we all thought that Moonlight had lost to La La Land.
Despite how insignificant that all of these moments might seem, as I stated earlier, film and television act as a microcosm of the world that we live in. So, if we can’t win even on the small screen, what does that say about the larger stages in our lives? Still, I hold out hope for competition reality television, and the ability of the judges to differentiate between the real designers and the dressmakers in designing clothing.
