Ok, so I partly have a Romani (not romanian) family background, so I'm not entirely comfortable with this kind of un-official genre, the "Sexy Gypsy Girl" paintings, that became quote popular in the 19th century until way into the 20th. Romani people have been discriminated against in the eastern european countries they have been living in, for like centuries.Western Europeans started idealizing them as "pure and natural country people" as opposed to the over-civilized city dwellers, and pictures of Romani farmers and their families became quite popular. Also, Romni (female Romani) were depicted more and more lewd and sexy, like the picture here. Pretty much all of these pics show very young girls in lascivious poses, showing daring cleavage and lot of naked skin. Many of these pics - not this one - are bordering soft porn. This changed the image "civilized" people, esp. men had about Romni, the stereotype of the "hot blooded, sexy gypsy" became quite dominant. ctnd.
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/ctnd. Traditionally, Romani people are prudish, and this type of depiction represents the opposite of their values. Otoh, as Romani people in general were always poor, a significant number of Romani girls were lured away from their families and trafficked into prostitution, reinforcing the stereotypes and ideas of western european men.
Don't get me wrong, many artists had very good intentions, trying to present Ronani people as beautiful, happy and pleasant people, but still this leaves an uncomfortable feeling, watching pictures like that. Especially now, cionsidering how effed up most Romani are after end of the cold war. They were probably the only people in the eastern european countries who had a better live during real existing socialism years. Resulting in way more human trafficking and forced prostitution... but that's another story…
I agree. I live in Czechia and discrimination of Romani people is still very real here. A lot of old people here always say that Romani people only exploit the social system and have a lot of kids so that they can get money from the state (which is especially ironic coming from the people who retired comfortably at 55 and got money from the state ever since, making retirement impossible for future generations who will have to work until we die bc the state will have no money for pensions).
I'd also like to add this is also the case with Middle Eastern women, with 19th century male travel writers depicting harems as something sexy and promiscuous, when that's not what a harem is at all in the original sense. They didn't know what they were talking about of course, since men (apart from male relatives) cannot enter harems, so their imagination ran wild and they completely twisted the perception of these cultures as barbaric and licentious. Some of these Orientalist tropes are even used nowadays by far right political parties to depict refugees as backwards barbarians who have slave women in harems, so this kind of depiction has really done a lot of damage.
Of course it's the artist's freedom to paint or write about anything they want. But maybe they should've considered the implications beforehand.
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You're right, that's the same story. I leave it to our Syrian and Lebanese friends to feel uncomfortable with this ;.-)
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Btw: the Romani part of my family is from Czechia as well. My grandfather came to Austria in the early 1920s, but I never met him, he died before I was born. His story and background were NEVER part of any family conversation. I only learned it thru some racial slurs I got in my Grannys neighborhood when we visited her as kids. My family background in Austria is deepest white trash plebs, so "family history" never was a topic anyway. I have a deep and probably epigenetic favor for Lautari music though lol. Oh, and lots of Romani people here in Hamburg recognize the trait in me. Not kidding. I used to get addressed in romanian quite a lot, when I was in the right/wrong parts of the city where Romani families ran certain illicit trades.
That's really sad. It's always bad for history to be forgotten because people don't want to talk about it.
I don't know anything about the education system of either Austria or Germany but here in Czechia we've never even learned about the Romani people at school, about their culture or history, nothing. So in a system like that it's easy for these harmful stereotypes to persist when the only "education" the kids get about the Romani is from their white trash racist uncle at family gatherings.
That's really interesting that people recognize you. Whereas most people are totally unable to tell my ethnicity. I'm a basic white girl from Czechia with some Slovak ancestry, so my heritage is basically all contained within Central Europe, but I've been told I look Spanish or Turkish (I'm pale as a corpse in winter but tan really well in the summer), Native American (bc I have huge cheekbones lol), Swedish (idk how they got that, I'm not even blonde) so really ethnicity is such a weird concept.
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In Germany in school I never heard about any other german victims of the Nazis but jewish and communist Germans. And that was like "communist germans and Jews.". Not "German-jewish people or anything". And Romani or Sinti (more western and middle European Romani) were never ever mentioned. It took until a feww years ago (!!) to even acknowledge that Romani people were victims, but it's still not widely acknowledged how many Romani people have lived in Germany for centuries.
Wow, yeah, it's really striking how few people are aware that the Romani were also one of the primary "targets" of the Holocaust and there are so many Romani victims of WWII.
Don't get me wrong, many artists had very good intentions, trying to present Ronani people as beautiful, happy and pleasant people, but still this leaves an uncomfortable feeling, watching pictures like that. Especially now, cionsidering how effed up most Romani are after end of the cold war. They were probably the only people in the eastern european countries who had a better live during real existing socialism years. Resulting in way more human trafficking and forced prostitution... but that's another story…
Of course it's the artist's freedom to paint or write about anything they want. But maybe they should've considered the implications beforehand.
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Btw: the Romani part of my family is from Czechia as well. My grandfather came to Austria in the early 1920s, but I never met him, he died before I was born. His story and background were NEVER part of any family conversation. I only learned it thru some racial slurs I got in my Grannys neighborhood when we visited her as kids. My family background in Austria is deepest white trash plebs, so "family history" never was a topic anyway. I have a deep and probably epigenetic favor for Lautari music though lol. Oh, and lots of Romani people here in Hamburg recognize the trait in me. Not kidding. I used to get addressed in romanian quite a lot, when I was in the right/wrong parts of the city where Romani families ran certain illicit trades.
I don't know anything about the education system of either Austria or Germany but here in Czechia we've never even learned about the Romani people at school, about their culture or history, nothing. So in a system like that it's easy for these harmful stereotypes to persist when the only "education" the kids get about the Romani is from their white trash racist uncle at family gatherings.
That's really interesting that people recognize you. Whereas most people are totally unable to tell my ethnicity. I'm a basic white girl from Czechia with some Slovak ancestry, so my heritage is basically all contained within Central Europe, but I've been told I look Spanish or Turkish (I'm pale as a corpse in winter but tan really well in the summer), Native American (bc I have huge cheekbones lol), Swedish (idk how they got that, I'm not even blonde) so really ethnicity is such a weird concept.