What makes a body the best?
There's been a lot of bruhaha about this cover of Vogue recently, from a photo essay purporting to pair the world's "best bodies" - top athletes with top models.
Many black commentators have taken offence at what they see as a King Kong and Fay Wray-like depiction of an aggressive/dangeous black man and a white woman (it kind of did look that way, but only after the fact had been pointed out to me - which is interesting in its own right). The quote below if from a funny, but also thought-provoking, rebuttal by a black sports columnist:
Are we only bothered by negative images of black men when the primary/sole consumer of the image is white people?
To me, and I admit that this is a self-will-intrude kind of reaction (call it identity politics if you must), it never even occurred to think of any potential racist interpretation of the image. I went straight to the actuall photos to check which female athletes have been paired with male models. Answer?
Drum roll...
None.
Now, I know that it's stupid and hopeless to look for feminist values in Vogue, but seriously, you guys. Are you really spending all those marketing dollars just to tell women that their bodies are best when they just are? As opposed to men, whose bodies distinguish themselves by doing, accomplishing, striving, achieving? That's it? After thirty years in the business, this is Annie Leibovitz's vision of gender parity? Women with ambitions for being "the best" should just hope to have been born looking like a model? No, seriously? You've thought this through and everything?
Christ.
Needless to say I'd be enraged by this thing whatever the platform or circumstances; but of course if it hadn't been for the race row, it would never have come to my attention. Because gender is not an acceptable subject for a row in the US right now (and never in Europe, how déclassée, feh, Darling). An epochal contest between a black person and a female person has been dominated by the blackness of one and steered well clear of the femaleness of the other. Any suggestion that sexism played a role in opposition to HRC met with accusations of hysteria, delusion, being behind the times.
And yet, when another black man and another white woman meet in the public arena, they're portrayed in the most regressive gender stereotypical way. And that's OK. In fact, it's a complete non-issue. It is utterly transparent to a country that is obsessed with the concerns of one minority to the complete exclusion, marginalisation and even resentment of the other.
It's pretty obvious by now that HRC's campaign for Democratic Primary is dead in the water. But if this thing had blown up six months ago, I'd have known not to expect any better for her. She - and all the rest of us western women with her - are a victim of the oldest politically correct rhetorical trick of all time. We will be presented with the consequences of bigotry and prejudice and told to accept those consequences as proof positive of the fact that the bigotry and prejudice are justified.
Many black commentators have taken offence at what they see as a King Kong and Fay Wray-like depiction of an aggressive/dangeous black man and a white woman (it kind of did look that way, but only after the fact had been pointed out to me - which is interesting in its own right). The quote below if from a funny, but also thought-provoking, rebuttal by a black sports columnist:
Are we only bothered by negative images of black men when the primary/sole consumer of the image is white people?
To me, and I admit that this is a self-will-intrude kind of reaction (call it identity politics if you must), it never even occurred to think of any potential racist interpretation of the image. I went straight to the actuall photos to check which female athletes have been paired with male models. Answer?
Drum roll...
None.
Now, I know that it's stupid and hopeless to look for feminist values in Vogue, but seriously, you guys. Are you really spending all those marketing dollars just to tell women that their bodies are best when they just are? As opposed to men, whose bodies distinguish themselves by doing, accomplishing, striving, achieving? That's it? After thirty years in the business, this is Annie Leibovitz's vision of gender parity? Women with ambitions for being "the best" should just hope to have been born looking like a model? No, seriously? You've thought this through and everything?
Christ.
Needless to say I'd be enraged by this thing whatever the platform or circumstances; but of course if it hadn't been for the race row, it would never have come to my attention. Because gender is not an acceptable subject for a row in the US right now (and never in Europe, how déclassée, feh, Darling). An epochal contest between a black person and a female person has been dominated by the blackness of one and steered well clear of the femaleness of the other. Any suggestion that sexism played a role in opposition to HRC met with accusations of hysteria, delusion, being behind the times.
And yet, when another black man and another white woman meet in the public arena, they're portrayed in the most regressive gender stereotypical way. And that's OK. In fact, it's a complete non-issue. It is utterly transparent to a country that is obsessed with the concerns of one minority to the complete exclusion, marginalisation and even resentment of the other.
It's pretty obvious by now that HRC's campaign for Democratic Primary is dead in the water. But if this thing had blown up six months ago, I'd have known not to expect any better for her. She - and all the rest of us western women with her - are a victim of the oldest politically correct rhetorical trick of all time. We will be presented with the consequences of bigotry and prejudice and told to accept those consequences as proof positive of the fact that the bigotry and prejudice are justified.