I recently paged through the latest edition of Men’s Health
SA and it struck me how the majority of cover models tend to be white.
I decided to count all the black men in the December 2014
edition and I found 27 different black men of which 17 are models; the other
ten appear in DSTV and Telkom adverts. I then counted all the white models and
I found 47 white men. This total would have been more if I included the DSTV and
Telkom adverts.
More disturbing was the under representation of black women
in this edition. I counted 3 black women compared to the 24 white women. More
interesting was how these women were portrayed. Firstly, the 3 black women
shared the spotlight other white women. Secondly, white women were portrayed as
sexually desirable which ranged from the girl next door to models who
suggestive press against men in jeans and libido enhancing adverts.
I did not stop there, I also looked at the cartoons in the
Magazine and I found that it is evidently racialized and there is a clear
underrepresentation of black people.
So what does this say?
Firstly, this edition of Men’s Health is targeting white men
and this is evident from the underrepresentation of black people.
Secondly, the underrepresentation of black people in Men’s
Health says something about how Men’s Health sees and portrays beauty in the
cosmetic industry. This is obvious by how they portrayed intimate relationships
(relationships between men and women). Their portrayal reinforces the apartheid
objective[1]
which was that white people must date and marry white people and black people
must date and marry black people. Through this they do not encourage
interracial relationships. The evidence is their lack of portraying black women
as sexually attractive beings. They clearly work from the assumption that white
men would not be interested in black women. Thus, they do not encourage
interracial relationships.
I see this as a ‘politics of beauty.’ For me the ‘politics
of beauty’ is where the dominant social force reinforces or enforces their
notion of beauty through popular media such the television, radio, print media
and social media.
Fanon speak about this phenomenon in length in Black Skin, White Masks and it worth
mention here briefly. Black women in particular are guilty for reinforcing the mainstream
portrayal of beauty. Fanon speaks about the whitening process black women
undergo to become desirable for white men and to match the standards of what white
women consider as beauty. Fanon point out how black women will go through
extreme measures such as skin bleaching and hair straightening to become more
like white women.
This is still the case today. In South Africa there is currently
a ‘yellow bone’ trend going on amongst ‘black’ women[2].
If you are considered to be a ‘yellow bone’ you automatically moved up the
beauty hierarchy in the ‘black’ society. The same trend is visible amongst ‘coloured’
women. The lighter you are in complexion the further you move up the beauty
ladder in the ‘coloured’ society. Some ‘coloured’ women do not even want to be
in the sun for 10 min because they do want to ‘become black.’ Another trend is
weaves and hair straightening products amongst ‘black’ and ‘coloured’ women.
However, we black men are not saints because we let our
inferiority complex cloud our notions of beauty. This is evident by the gender
of the male in interracial relationships. My observation is that in the
majority of black and white interracial relationships the male is white and the
female is black. The minority of cases are the other way around.
Once again let’s use Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks to make sense of this. Fanon argued that
for the black man to see himself of worthy dating a white woman he will first
try and overcome his material limitations so that it equals that of his male
white counterpart. Only once this is achieved he will develop a sense of
self-worth to approach a white woman. The reality however, especially in a
society like ours it is hard for a black man to equal the resources of their
white male counterparts. Thus, white women stay goddesses which mere mortal
beings such as black men can only dream of and since they dream of white women
they encourage black women to become white so that their fantasies become a
reality even if it is only in their dreams.
I cannot but conclude that in this particular case Men’s
Health’s portrayal of beauty is racialized and reinforces the racist notion
that white people are more beautiful than black people. Their aim,
intentionally or unintentionally, is to maintain the status quo in a society that was torn apart by racism. However,
this notion is also reinforced by black people’s inferiority complex towards
white people.
This left me with something to ponder: can you consider this
kind of politics as racism especially since it has the same end in mind as the
racist project which started in the previous century.
