Race and the ‘politics of beauty’ – A male’s view

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.

---

[1] For those of you who do not know to what I am referring to it time you take a history lesson on the effects of the Immorality Act.

[2] Where I use inverted commas to describe races I refer specifically to the racial classification of the groups of people in South Africa. 

Women are no Saints

Women are as equally bad and evil as men. Mamdani (2001) in his book on the Rwandan genocide ask a very important question: Was the perpetrators of the genocide only males?  He found that women played an active role in pointing out potential victims and they were standing by supporting and encouraging their male counterparts to kill. This made women equally the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide.

We must ask that same question when we want to determine the gender of the perpetrators of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. In all these cases you will find that women must be attributed equal perpetrator status as that of their male counterparts. 

If you read the autobiography of Frederick Douglas and if you read James Walvin’s book titled ‘The trader, the Owner and the Slave’ you will soon realise that women during slavery were sometimes crueller than male counterparts. In Frederick Douglas’ book he explains how a slave owner’s wife asked one of her ‘white’ sons to beat up their mulatto brother because she hated the slave girl by who her husband had the child.

Karel Schoeman in his book ‘Kinders van die Kompanjie’ explains how Dutch women were against soldiers and vryburgers taking Khoi women as wives. The Dutch women of the Cape Colony considered the Khoi women as barbarians and thus it would have been a sin if any of the men married any of the Khoi women. The children that were born from these relationships (between Khoi women and Dutch men) were rejected by the Khoi and by the Dutch women and they were raised as servants in the homes of their fathers. 

The attitude of ‘white’ women during apartheid was no different than that of the ‘white’ males. The ‘white’ women like in the case of the Rwandan genocide supported apartheid openly even though they did not commit the physical atrocities. Thus, I cannot help but feel a sense of sympathy for ‘white’ males because today when you talk about the atrocities of apartheid, colonialism and slavery you imagine a ‘white’ male with a whip or a gun. Feminists strategically removed themselves from the atrocities of the past by painting them also as victims of a ‘white’ male dominated world. However, this is one of the biggest fallacies or dogma modern day feminists follow. History shows that women at times were also active participants in the atrocities of the past like for example Queen Isabella I of Castile who violently converted Jews and Muslim, and funded Christopher Columbus’ expedition to the Caribbean. An inconvenient truth feminists would like to hide is that women were staunch supporters of slavery, colonialism and apartheid, and at times they were active participants. 

I personally have been more abused by women than men. When I say abuse I refer to both physically and emotional abuse, of which I regard emotional abuse as the most destructive of all. All men who abused me or tried to abuse me did it through physically means which allowed me to fight back once I was strong enough. However, being abused through psychological means, if it starts at a very young age, shatters you self-esteem which fills you with self-doubt. Doubting yourself holds you back and literally over time mentally enslaves you. My experience is that women are masters in abusing men emotionally.

Part of my life I grew up in a monastery and the nuns used to employ both emotional and physical abuse. If we were naughty we were made out to be sinners (emotional abuse) and had to kneel on gravel for long periods of times (physical abuse).  Luckily I only stayed there for two years of which I am grateful because if I stayed there for longer I do not think I would have recovered, like many others. This is one of just the many incidences of abuse I experienced at the hands of women.

After reading this I hope men would start a process of de-demonising themselves and speak out against the abuse they experience at the hands of women. I know it is hard for any men to speak out against abuse because it is harmful to their egos. However, if this demonising of men continues there will be any egos to protect.