>she wasn't downplaying her looks, she was rightly placing the
>blame on western beauty standards. halle berry is considered
>more beauty in this culture than she is because halle got
>"whiter" features. therefore, halle is more accessible for
>white audiences. done deal.

But she didn't say that. She said, "I'm a 46 year old black woman who REALLY doesn't look like Halle Berry and Halle Berry is having a hard time getting roles."
And then after Theron says she's hot, Davis says that she's fully aware "of the image that I project." Note "I PROJECT". She's not saying, "How Hollywood judges my beauty" She says "the image I project."

By no means was Davis "placing the blame on western beauty standards". She was accepting them or, at least, treating them as a given, a fact of life. Charlize should have made her point more general, that it's fucked up that studios don't see Viola as being beautiful rather than saying it to Viola herself (because obviously, Theron's not telling Davis anything that she hasn't lived with for 46 years) but if Theron hadn't spoken up, the standards would have been put out there as a given (and thus, assumed by most, the truth.) The whole angle of challenging the western beauty standards came from Theron, not Davis. Although, to go back to OE's point, it wasn't even that deep. If Davis said that exact same thing around her friends, I'm sure one or two people (of any race) would have said exactly what Charlize Theron said and nobody would have been offended. Shit, comments like that are made to not classically beautiful actresses all the time.

(And I don't think anyone thought she was having a mini-pity party. She was simply making a self-deprecating comment to help prove a larger point.)

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NBA MOCK DRAFT #1 - https://thecourierclass.com/whole-shebang/2017/5/18/2017-nba-mock-draft-1-just-lotto-and-lotta-trades