Hi all,
This week I spent time reflecting on past selves and making plans for future selves. Heavy I know, but it had to be done. Throughout the week I grappled with my unsure self about what I actually need to happen in order for me to lay claim to my life. Again, sorry for the heaviness of the subject, warning, it gets heavier. In breaking up the weight of my self assigned task, I listened to some Sade. Love Deluxe in particular had me in a chokehold all week. With Sade as my background crooner, I wandered in and out of memory contemplating my own internalized prejudices and past instances of self abandonment. I found myself thinking in particular about the insidious nature of white supremacy and how, without knowing, I have consumed and digested it; made it a part of myself worth. Which got me thinking about the time that Alek Wek gloriously threw off her blonde wig at the Betsey Johnson Fall/Winter 1998 show. You can see the triumphant moment here. But in short, the Sudanese model’s protest against the fashion industry’s blatant anti-blackness and some say texturism got me thinking about Kerry James Marshall’s 2000 woodcut print Supermodel and Wangechi Mutu’s Pin-Up Series (2001).
Supermodel, is one in a series of supermodel images starting as early as 1994. It depicts an unambiguous black woman wearing white lingerie and a blonde wig in ¾ pose. Her dark skin is only slightly discernable from the black background of the print via the darker crosscut etching of the wood that makes out her body. What I love about this print is the model’s gaze that stares alluringly at me, the translucent blond wig that acts as a sort of halo revealing the dark hair underneath, and the pose that seems to confront yet turns away from me. Supermodel is a simple work free of unnecessary flattery and chock full of daring. It centers blackness and black femininity while taking into account the presence of eurocentric beauty standards. Wek says of the wig toss:
“That wig was not just about me taking it off to make a scene. It was a time [when] I was just starting in fashion, to work. And the one thing that I told my agents was, 'If you are going to represent me, I'm not going to be a gimmick and be in for a couple of seasons.You’re going to take it all or leave it’.”1
Wek sums up perfectly the contentious subject of black femininity in popular culture, especially in the fashion/beauty realm in which black aesthetics are frequently appropriated, but black models are rarely given the opportunity to showcase those same aesthetics.
Recently, there have been two documentaries teased about blackness in fashion. One, Donyale Luna: Supermodel which chronicles the life and times of Donyale Luna, the first black model to grace the cover of both Harper's Bazaar and Vogue in the 60s. The second, The Super Models, which is a four part series that showcases the making of the supermodels Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, and Linda Evangelista. In both documentary trailers, they speak briefly about racism and anti-blackness in the fashion world with a troubling undertone that makes it seem all so long ago. Today, black women are faced with constant appropriation of our features while being condemned for having those same features.
In recent times, a Tik Tok “femininity coach,”a title which is a joke in itself, proceeded to condemn certain features using black women as examples. Shanspeare covers the aestheticization of racism pretty well here, so I will not get into it. Thinking about the ugliness and glamorization of anti-blackness in recent years and time immemorial (think golden ratio), I was reminded of Wangechi Mutu’s 2001 Pin-up Series. Pin-up Series is a collage series by the Kenyan-American that depicts well the psychosexual and implicit bias of fashion and beauty and the projected beauty standards that are inherently rooted in white supremacy. That’s a mouthful I know, but it has to be said. Mutu does a fantastic/phenomenal job of radically intervening and turning inside-out and upside-down these insidious bastardization of blackness and black femininity. In Pin-Up Series, she collects imagery from fashion magazines and presents her glamazons disfigured and misshapen in ways that attract and repulse. In the instance of looking at Mutu’s models I am confronted with my own prejudices and internalized white supremacy, I am made intensely aware of their hold. Take for example, the attached image of the glamazon in the blonde wig I've included below. Her alluring stare is capsized in swollen bulbs, her eyes barely visible, her once glossy smile is muddied by blood that smears her wig and her right breast. This supposedly beatific image is marred by signifiers that are rejected by fashion, namely her splotchy brown skin, her amputated limbs and the not quite blonde hair that juts out like the forked tongue of a snake. Here, I am confronted by my own views on glamour and worthiness as determined by beauty, and the dread sinks in.
Supermodel and Pin-Up Series both showcase the hold that Eurocentric beauty standards continue to have over us/me. But they offer a self guided analysis that allows me/the audience to consider and challenge internal prejudices while shifting them. In short, they are testaments for on-going self actualization and decentering white supremacy.
https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/alek-wek-wig-toss/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThat%20wig%20was%20not%20just,for%20a%20couple%20of%20seasons.