No diversity

The Radian contest's winners have had their pictures posted, and there's something they have in common that I did not notice at first. I had noticed that they were all about the same age, but that's it. Others have pointed out that there is no diversity in this group. They are all blue-eyed blondes. I will say, even if they had picked a diverse group, Orren would not have been among them because he's older than they were looking for, so I don't think this is why we lost. I was a little surprised at some of the winners, though. Even among babies the age they were looking for, there were really two who stood out to me among the contestants. One was Korean (pictured in Hanbok, traditional dress), and the other looked biracial (black and white) but could as easily have been Dominican. They were really stunning babies, those two. I was shocked that neither of them won.

I showed this to Thak, and he said he thinks it's just that someone who judges the contest is really drawn to eye color, and likes the big blue eyes that a lot of really fair-skinned white babies have, and therefore, all that's picked is white babies. In the girls' contest, 2 out of 3 winners were blonde with blue eyes. The third was biracial.

I'm not implying that the company is racist. I do not believe that they are. I think, as Thak does, that it was an honest oversight of how this would look to people. I'm really hoping that if they have another contest at some point, they will make more of an effort to have more diversity among the winners. It's really not fair that out of 6 babies who have won so far, 5 are blue-eyed blondes.

What about the rest of us? I happen to know for a certain fact that green-eyed brunettes and Asian guys make beautiful babies... and so do a lot of other non-blonde, dark-eyed, tan-skinned people. Next set of winners, even my kids aren't in the running at all, I want to see at least two minority or mixed-racial babies/kids. Gimme TWO in the next set of winners, and I'll forgive you another blue-eyed blonde for the third. ;-)