Sepia Fashion Show
Sepia Fashion Show - meaning Summary
Fashion and Class Tension
The speaker mocks middle-class Black women who adopt fashionable airs while hiding humble origins. Through vivid, colloquial voice and ironic phrasing, the poem exposes pretension, social climbing, and the memory of domestic labor that undermines their glamour. The speaker refuses complicity, preferring authenticity to borrowed style, and uses humor and moral scolding to challenge class affectations and to remind readers of the real lives behind polished appearances.
Read Complete AnalysesTheir hair, pomaded, faces jaded bones protruding, hip-wise, the models strutted, backed and butted, then stuck their mouths out, lip-wise. They'd nasty manners, held like banners, while they looked down their nose-wise. I'd see ‘em in hell, before they'd sell me one thing they're wearing, clothes-wise. The Black Bourgeois, who all say “yah” when yeah is what they're meaning, should look around, both up and down, before they set out preening. “Indeed,” they swear, “that's what I'll wear when I go country-clubbing.” I'd remind them please, look at those knees, you got at Miss Ann's scrubbing.
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