Victoria’s Secret came out with their annual “What is Sexy?” list this week, and women of color basically don’t make the cut. Out of the 20 women named to the list, only two weren’t white.

Sexiest Actress – Charlize Theron

Sexiest Legs – Stacy Keibler

Sexiest Bikini Body – Annalynne McCord

Sexiest Summer Style – Blake Lively

Sexiest Summer Hair – Ashley Benson

Sexiest Smile – Jessica Chastain

Sexiest Eyes – Jennifer Lawrence

Sexiest Lips – Amanda Seyfried

Sexiest Curves – Amber Heard

Sexiest Sense of Humor – Emma Stone

Sexiest TV Cast – Pretty Little Liars

Sexiest Mom – Beyonce

Sexiest Songstress – Britney Spears

Sexiest International Import – Diane Kruger

Sexiest Summer Glow – Olivia Wilde

Sexiest Cyber Star – Elin Kling of StylebyKling.com

Sexiest Up & Coming Knockout – Elizabeth Olsen

Sexiest Tweeter – Kristen Bell

Beyonce took “Sexiest Mom” and Pretty Little Liars‘ Shay Mitchell, whose is of Filipino descent, was named in the “Sexiest TV Cast” category along with her three castmates–so technically she’s only 1/4 “sexy.”

The rest of the women on the list are predominantly blonde. Not even brunettes could catch a break.

[The 2012 What is Sexy? List]

There’s Hannah’s Puerto Rican coworker (played by Selenis Leyva) at her new temp job who 1) wears large nameplate earrings to the office, 2) tells Hannah she’ll “get used to” being sexually harassed by their boss Rich, 3) doesn’t see the point in speaking up about the sexual harassment–particularly because their boss buys them gifts–and 4) says “sassy” things like “That’s a hella different. A hella different,” in case we didn’t process ALL THE OBVIOUS SIGNS that she is, um, a hella different from Hannah.

Then there are the nannies Jessa, a newly-minted childcare worker, tries to “organize” on the playground. There are four of them, one in every flavor: black, brown, yellow, and ginger (the inclusion of the ginger manny was hilarious, actually). On IMDb, the nannies are credited only as “Jamaican nanny” and “Tibetan nanny.” (No listing for the “Latina nanny,” played by Angelic Zambrana.) At first, the nannies mistake Jessa for a young mother, which leads to this conversation:

LATINA NANNY: You’re the babysitter? I thought for sure you was an actress with some baby.

JESSA: No, I’m just like all of you.

When Jessa says “I’m just like all of you,” it’s a wink to the audience, because she so obviously isn’t. Jessa, too, is a hella different from her coworkers–those nameless nannies and, in the case of “Tibetan nanny,” speechless, too–and her attempt to unionize them is supposed to seem patronizing and naive in that well-meaning, white liberal, white guilt sorta way.

This bit of awareness vis-à-vis race and difference–which, admittedly, was refreshing–doesn’t change the fact that GIRLS has a race problem. At first, the problem seemed to be how whitewashed its version of New York was. After episode 4, it’s clear the problem is the show doesn’t know what to do with characters who aren’t white, which is perhaps why it defaulted to a Small White version of itself in the first place. (And why it should consider returning there.)

Like the black homeless guy in the pilot episode, the people of color who appear in “Hannah’s Diary” function as props, plot devices, and foils…for the white leads. Hannah and Jessa’s coworkers are one-dimensional, which only throws Hannah and Jessa’s three-dimensionality into starker relief. Hannah and Jessa’s coworkers are familiar types we’ve all seen before–the nameless, identity-less underclass of New York–and their stereotype-y un-realness only makes the white girls’ “realness” seem all the more staggering, realness for which the show has been endlessly lauded thus far by its admirers.

Consider how this dynamic plays out in Sunday’s episode. Hannah’s Puerto Rican coworker tells her to dump her bad boyfriend; Hannah finally works up the nerve to dump her bad boyfriend. (It should be noted that another coworker, played by GIRLS writer Lesley Arfin of the now-infamous Precious tweet, chimes in with similar advice, and though Arfin is white, her character is a class stereotype, with her regional accent and weird ideas about nutrition.) Of course, confronting her bad boyfriend only makes the bad boyfriend want Hannah more.

Jessa, meanwhile, in imagining herself to be some kind of Cesar Chavez for disenfranchised New York nannies, loses track of the children she’s been hired to look after. This should be a disaster–if she were brown, the plot would demand she be deported–but it magically works to her advantage, deepening the bond–and ratcheting up the sexual tension–she’s developing with the married father of those children.

Even with the addition of some ethnic characters, GIRLS is still a white world, people of color just live in it–interchangeably, anonymously, and when there’s a need to push the narrative along for the leads. Because only white people, apparently, have “real” stories.

[HBO.com: "Hannah's Diary"]

I know just the man to play Chong in the biopic

But that was nothing, I’m guessing, compared to what Chong’s Hardass Asian Mother did to him next, when she found out her son was “doing the drug.”

[LA Times: DEA apologizes to student left unattended in cell for 5 days]

Only after spending $1.5 million on an online ad campaign that featured Ashton Kutcher speaking in a stereotypical Indian accent while in brownface, and having it go viral in one day but not in a good way did snack company Popchips finally realize that brownface just isn’t cool any more.

Welcome to the year 2012, you dumb fucks.

[NYT: Popchips Pulls Ashton Kutcher Ad Over Charges of Racism]

The Japanese American National Museum has launched The Remembrance Project, an online “living museum” which commemorates the 70th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066. That order made it possible for the US government to relocate Americans with Japanese ancestry to internment camps during World War II. [Remembrance Project]

Chinese American Cultural Night 2012, an annual event produced by the Association of of Chinese Americans at UCLA, will feature the story of Vincent Chin, along with musical and dance performances. Free tickets to the event, which is Saturday, May 12, will be available starting Monday, May 7. Non-UCLA affiliated folks can send ticket requests to tickets.cacn@gmail.com. [CACN]

Annie’s father, Tom Clark, described his daughter’s other abilities to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“Annie has always been very, very determined, very self-sufficient in dressing herself and feeding herself,” Mr. Clark said. “She can ride a bike. She swims. She is just determined that there’s nothing she can’t do.”

Her father said she also types on a keyboard and uses an iPod Touch with no difficulties.

Man, do I feel like a lazy jerk right about now.

[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: First-grader without hands wins penmanship award]

New research is out showing African American and Asian American women react differently to racists. Basically, black women are more likely to confront racists directly, while Asian women are more likely to poison them with disgusting-flavored jellybeans. Or something like that. Here’s a summary of the research, as described in The Atlantic:

PROBLEM: Previous studies have demonstrated variations in the way people of distinct cultures communicate and manage conflict. Do their reactions to racial slurs differ as well?

METHODOLOGY: Researchers Elizabeth Lee and José Soto asked Asian and black American women to talk to another person online using an instant messenger. The conversation partner was a research assistant trained to make either a racist comment, such as “Dating [blacks/Asians] is for tools who let [blacks/Asians] control them” or a rude comment unrelated to race. The subjects then took part in a supposedly unrelated taste test, for which they chose a jellybean for their conversation partner. The jellybean flavors available ranged from delicious (e.g. cherry, lemon) to “bad-tasting” (e.g. earwax, dirt).

RESULTS: The African-American participants were more likely to directly respond to their racist partners than the Asian-American women, who preferred to retaliate in secret by not giving the good jellybeans.

The results of that study (full PDF here) sound pretty stereotype-y to me, and one contributing factor could be that of the 34 Asian American female participants–all undergraduates at a “large public university”–almost half of them (47%) were born outside of the U.S. Contrast that with the African American participants, of whom only 13.9% were born outside of the U.S. These researchers also conducted a second study published in the same research paper that found “Asian women were more likely than Black women to say they would not respond directly to a racist comment.” In this study, 65.2% of the Asian participants, also undergraduates at a large public university, were born outside of the U.S. as opposed to only 6.3% of the black participants. Can you lump 2nd generation and 1.5 generation Asian American women together in a study like that?

I dunno. Kind of hung up on the variables that presents. And the fact that there are people who actually eat “earwax” and “vomit” jellybeans voluntarily out there in the world.

[UPDATE: In the notes at the end of the study, the researchers state that they found no difference between the results of the American-born Asian women and the foreign-born: "Given the large percentage of Asian participants born outside of the United States, we conducted our principal analyses separately for U.S. born and foreign born participants and found no differences in the results. Therefore, we present the findings for the combined group throughout." There goes my theory. Still, there's something about this study that's the wackness. Discuss.]

[PSP Bulletin: Bitter Reproach or Sweet Revenge: Cultural Differences in Response to Racism]
[The Atlantic: Study of the Day: Blacks Confront Racists, Asians Prefer Quiet Revenge]

This is all part of Coca-Cola’s “Open Happiness” ad campaign, which will soon be introducing huggable Coke machines throughout Asia. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I probably just need to hug a machine and get some free diabetes in a can to feel better, amirite?

[via Gawker]

[Forbes: Coca-Cola Introduces Gesture Based Marketing in Singapore]

Light skin is still prized in Asia for a number of reasons that have to do with longstanding notions of race, class, and gender. Good thing then, that there’s a booming market for skin whitening creams, many of them manufactured by Western companies! And good thing the companies who make these creams also make commercials, because quite a few of them–beyond their creepy, disturbing premise–are kinda hilarious.

1. Skin Whitening For Young Girls

There’s this commercial for SkinWhite Teens, produced by Filipino company Splash Corporation, a skin whitening product designed specifically for young girls:

Even creepier was the viral video contest SkinWhite introduced as part of its ad campaign, which asked girls to hold a bottle of SkinWhite Teens like a mic while singing “Brand New Me.” The winner was promised a spot on a TV show. Here’s a sample audition video:

MESSAGE: The song states it all too clearly–white is “right.”

2. Skin Whitening For (Almost) Curing Gayness

This commercial was also targeted to the Philippines, but the product’s made by Pond’s.

MESSAGE: White skin is so powerful it can even make The Gay straight.

3. Skin Whitening For All The Single Ladies

The next commercial is also from Pond’s and part of an ad campaign that sells skin whitening through a soap opera-like series of spots where Girl-Gets-Boy only after she “lightens up”:

MESSAGE: The only way to be loved is to have white skin.

4. Skin Whitening For Men

Men, as it turns out, are not exempt from the pressure of skin whitening. The Indian-owned Emami Group, which makes a product called “Fair and Handsome,” claims it’s manufacturing the only skin whitening cream for men:

“A fair complexion has always been associated with success and popularity. Men and women alike desire fairness, it is believed to be the key to a successful life. Well for women the market is loaded with fairness cream but for men there has not been a single fairness creams [sic].”

Fair and Handsome’s commercial below features Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan. Who knew you could light a match off of dark skin? Seems kinda handy, if you ask me:

MESSAGE: How can we get men to develop the same skin whitening-neuroses as women? We have products to sell.

5. Skin Whitening For Your Vagina

And last, but not least, there’s skin whitening for your lady bits!

MESSAGE: A dark-skinned vagina leads to a joyless, sexless existence.

Stay tuned for a dick whitening cream! I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

[HuffPo: How White My Valley: India's Skin-Whitening Obsession Reaches the Final Frontier]

But please–and by “please” I really mean, for fuck’s sake–don’t show us you care by loving us long time.

If the Asian? Latino? dude in this pic did not exist, it would be necessary to photoshop him

[Big League Stew: Yu Darvish recovers after shaky start for Rangers]

Thanks, Dean!