The B!tch Replies:  I suspect the media thinks Scarlett has amazing lips for a boring white actress, but let's explore this a little more thoroughly.

Welcome to a discussion that has intrigued minorities for years and years. Go ask your mom what happened in 1979, when a white lady named Bo Derek first cavorted about on a movie screen wearing cornrows.

You'd have thought the blonde amazon had invented a whole new hairstyle, the way newscasters were freaking out, man. What innovation, they cried! It's freakin' us out, man!

Black people, of course, had been wearing that hairstyle for hundreds of years, if not longer. When the media crowned Derek as a fashion innovator, African Americans went back to their usual business: pioneering new sounds in music and waiting for groups like New Kids on the Block to come along and get rich off of it.

The truth behind your query is sad and embarrassing: In every society, the majority group sets the beauty standards. In America, that would be white people.

And—the Oprah and her bazillion-dollar empire notwithstanding—white people still run the media. Their values become America's values. And that includes standards of beauty.

By praising Scarlett's "exotic" lips, the media is basically "marginalizing black people," says African-American blogger and publicist Manny Otiko. "The media is saying, We are not going to pay attention to this feature until a white person has it."

The same disparity applies to J.Lo's ass and its planetary proportions, Otiko says. And remember when David Beckham came strutting onto a soccer field recently, his shining, godlike locks twisted into braids? It was Bo Derek all over again.

"The media was like, Look at this exotic new hairstyle," Otiko says.

I am sure Snoop would beg to differ.

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