Vogue’s glorification of colonial racism

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

Wow, this commenter on New York Times fashion editor Cathy Horyn’s blog really summed up how I’ve always felt about those “Out of Africa”-type fashion spreads in Vogue. (Thanks Johnny!)

American Vogue is a sad joke–the racism and elitist mentality of Vogue is astonishing. The few minorities featured in this magazine reek of tokenism and I would respect them more if they simply had no African-Americans, Asians or Latinos in their magazine. The fact that they hide their racism and ignorance with subterfuge offends even more.

A few years back Vogue once ran one of their annual colonial themed reactionary fantasies in Kenya and in reference to a Masai woman in full tribal regalia, Vogue asserted that the woman’s beaded earrings, beaded corset and bib-style necklace was “inspired” by a recent collection of John Galliano. Vogue actually went to print with the caption that this Masai woman adorned in jewels worn by her ancestors for centuries was “inspired” by John Galliano!! It finally dawned on me that for the average Vogue staffer, the obvious could not be imagined–the “genius” Galliano could not possibly have copied Masai tribal wear. My husband swore it must have been a typo but in the next month’s issue an equally outraged reader lambasted Vogue for its stupidity in making such a claim and I do not recall that any apology was ever given. On the contrary, Vogue continues to use African natives as props in issue after issue. The fact that Vogue just ran another colonial themed pictorial in its June issue with natives as a backdrop to a white actress in full Karen Blixen “Out of Africa” mode reaffirms my belief that the editors are truly clueless–given the number of recent books, films and documentaries describing the British gulags in East Africa and the general heinousness of colonialism in Africa, I am stunned that Vogue continues to exhibit such insensitivity. Granted Africans are not Vogue’s target demographic but for the sake of basic human decency it is time for this magazine to stop belittling historic wrongs and put a stop to the glorification of colonial racism. I have discussed Vogue’s colonial fetish with Jewish friends and although their experience differs in many significant ways, it is similar to the outrage felt by some for the Nazi props used in the Charlotte Rampling movie, “The Night Porter.” While it may be inaccurate to compare Vogue’s racist colonial pictorials with the sadomasochistic Nazi scenes of the Night Porter, for many Africans the khaki safari uniforms shown in the spread, the whips, the servile air surrounding the natives depicted in the background remind us of a time best left in the ash heap. No matter what the artistic vision, neither genocide nor apartheid or any other form of human rights abuse make for good fashion props. I hope Ms. Wintour and Arthur Elgort will one day come to understand this.

Vogue magazine truly embodies all that is wrong in our culture while actually distorting all that is good–sycophancy and rampant cronyism abound while real talent is all but ignored. Unfortunately reading pop culture periodicals is work related but it gets very depressing.

Trackbacks & Pings

  1. Vogue: Skinny White Models With “Quant Token Africans” « The Blog and the Bullet on 21 Aug 2007 at 8:54 pm

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  3. the Fashion Spot - US Vogue June 2007 : Keira Knightley on 10 Sep 2007 at 11:16 am

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  4. Another “among the natives” Vogue editorial at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture on 10 Dec 2007 at 9:24 am

    […] how we discussed fashion magazines’ propensity for editorials in which they “contrast” a white […]

  5. Black Woman, Know That You Are Beautiful | afrobella on 27 Feb 2008 at 9:51 am

    […] in. A “colorful native” version of the kind of fashion shoots that have also been analyzed over at Racialicious, if you will. I’d love to hear your views on this […]

Comments

  1. mireille wrote:

    I whole-heartedly agree. The whole discourse of ethnicity in fashion magazines is absolutely abominable, but this level of repugnance is just…How could a presumably educated editor conceive of this kind of spread without an inkling that it’s just down right racist?

    Posted 18 Aug 2007 at 9:41 am

  2. howard wrote:

    Pure colonist imagery! Just to have the white woman elevated in the picture conveys the symbolism that she is in charge. I run the show coons.

    Posted 18 Aug 2007 at 11:59 am

  3. Anonymous wrote:

    I saw this several weeks ago and wondered what underlying racial implications there might be.

    Some pics from the rest of the Keira-Knightley-Among-the-Masai photoshoot (warning: they’re large):

    http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/6585/scan0002dq9ba9.jpg
    http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/2991/scan0006op6kc7.jpg
    http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/3555/scan0011ss0bs0.jpg

    It did not strike me as being overtly, purposefully, pointedly offensive. It does however reek of the more insidious upper-middle class white Western fantasy of being the beautiful white man or woman gamely tramping about among the “natives.” Like “Dances with Wolves.” Or “The Last Samurai.” Either way, its the white character who’s the centerpiece of the work of art, be it a photoshoot or film, and the natives are relegated to composing the perhaps noble, exotic but not particularly important “periphery.”

    Another thing that bothered me about the photoshoot is, as mentioned, how colonialist it is. It’s obviously supposed to be evocative of “romance and adventure during an exotic and wild African safari, circa early 20th century!” but I think its obvious the era it hearkens back to was not really fun for anyone who didn’t have white skin.

    Note to Western media: Please stop playing a spin-the-globe, drop-the-white-person-where-it-stops game. Randomly inserting beautiful white models and actors/actresses to play the hero in foreign backdrops– while essentially relegating the local population to “colorful” background props– reeks of underlying ignorance and tokenism, if not overt contempt.

    If we want to discuss Vogue’s racial problems further, I’d like to point out that their “World’s Next Top Models” issue a few months back included exactly ONE model of color, and she was placed on the inner page of their fold-out cover.

    Though Chinese model Du Juan and South Korean model Hye Park are quite popular on the best runways, Vogue decided to not include them among their top model photoshoot. Their token model of color was Chanel Iman, a half-black, half-Korean American model. I guess they figured they could kill two birds with one stone on that one, and put her on the far side of the cover as well.

    And while two Latin American (Brazilian) models were included, one would be hard-pressed to physically differentiate them from their likewise-blonde and blue eyed European counterparts.

    Too much slant in the eyes or melanin in the skin among the prized models would obviously make Wintour and her staff’s heads explode.

    Posted 18 Aug 2007 at 12:33 pm

  4. LM wrote:

    Ugh. I’m not a frequent reader of women’s fashion mags, but I know Sports Illustrated has been guilty of the same sort of creation in its swimsuit issue several times over the years. Is there a chance at getting a response to criticism from Vogue in this case?

    Posted 18 Aug 2007 at 12:54 pm

  5. njeri wrote:

    i agree. i saw this editorial on news stands and was really put off by it. people were praising it as the return of “republican chic”…

    i hate to get all partisan,but can we deny the sentimental connection we were all thinking of?

    Posted 18 Aug 2007 at 4:49 pm

  6. Danni wrote:

    i whole heartedly agree. where as many of the shoots that vogue does in this vein are very beautiful aesthetically, they can only pull off this kind of racist bull shit for so long. (”oh, their skin colors are shockingly different! look! it’s beautiful!”).

    one of my friends called to my attention the trends of the women of color that they actually do portray in these magazines. their skin colors might be different from the white models, but their facial features (and body types!) are still very similar to their white counterparts. Liya Kebede is a perfect example of this. east africans are getting quite a bit of attention in the fashion world, and I can’t help but notice the similarities in facial features between these people and the owners of these magazines…

    Posted 19 Aug 2007 at 12:35 pm

  7. michelle wrote:

    the 3rd comment said it best

    Posted 19 Aug 2007 at 2:51 pm

  8. miriam wrote:

    Hi,

    I found your blog from Hochmah Umussar’s side bar. I am so glad to find it! looking forward to reading more posts.

    Wow! that’s blatant! re: the picture up there.

    Posted 19 Aug 2007 at 3:25 pm

  9. Fiqah wrote:

    SS, DD. I’m amazed and saddened by the persistence of racist imagery. It never goes away: it just evolves. If you haven’t, do check out “Reading National Geographic” by Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins. It helped me to understand why this imagery is consistently unquestioned by the larger viewing public.

    Posted 20 Aug 2007 at 8:15 am

  10. Andi wrote:

    Unfortunately, too few readers of Vogue call the magazine out on this stuff. I have written letters to them in the past about the hypocrisy of their annual “Shape” and “Age” issues, none of which were published. It’s just not a magazine that’s at all interested in entering into an actual dialogue with its readers.The few letters they do publish every month are generally fawning.

    Jezebel.com has been scanning letters from the September issue that were written in response to the issue featuring the Keira Knightley photo shoot.
    (http://jezebel.com/gossip/top/dear-vogue-i-love-the-smell-of-natives-in-the-morning-290014.php) Not one takes issue with either the colonialism of the concept or the fact that the baby elephant in the shoot is — oy! — wearing a Louis Vuitton leather blanket. The letters are so inane that I almost want to believe they’re a metacommentary — but given what I know about Vogue, they’re actually just that clueless.

    Posted 20 Aug 2007 at 7:58 pm

  11. hc1 wrote:

    I agree completely. I saw the Keira Knightley spread and was stunned. Even if the editors are all that stupid and insensitive, Knightley should have put her foot down and refused to participate. I literally cringed and had to flip the pages quickly; they were so blatantly offensive. I have been reading Vogue for about 15 years and in the past 5 years I have noticed it becoming more and more insular and focusing on socialites (who are friends of the writers and editors) rather than on designers, artists and other women of substance. It’s become almost like a glossed-up version of the alumnae magazine from my all-girls high school. I am very disappointed. And this change in perspective is undoubtedly contributing to the racists undertones/overtones. Pathetic.

    Posted 21 Aug 2007 at 9:20 am

  12. carla wrote:

    Vogue is hardly alone in the persistent use of this kind of imagery; they just have a higher media profile. The “we’re so boho” hipster Free People catalog utilized it this past spring (http://blog.freepeople.com/2007/04/catalog_stories.html)

    Posted 22 Aug 2007 at 2:44 pm

  13. Anonymous wrote:

    I never read Vogue but happened to pick up that issue in a hotel recently and was horrified. They used the Masai like human props. I couldn’t believe Knightly would participate in such a thing. Exploitation, classism, racism and just plain stupidity on display. I wrote all over the photos in the magazine and left it there for the next guest.

    Posted 22 Aug 2007 at 4:15 pm

  14. anon wrote:

    I never read Vogue but happened to pick up that issue in a hotel recently and was horrified. They used the Masai like human props. I couldn’t believe Knightly would participate in such a thing. Exploitation, classism, racism and just plain stupidity on display. I wrote all over the photos in the magazine and left it there for the next guest.

    Posted 22 Aug 2007 at 4:18 pm

  15. Angela wrote:

    I really loved the concept of the pictures–as a fashion student and a hobbyist photographer I could see that–but as I flipped back to look at them again and again, as a black woman I grew uneasier by how they chose to portray the spread and realized that I’ve never seen a spread in Vogue or Elle or Harper’s where a black actress or model was photographed against an African backdrop. The fact that Vogue rarely features a black model or actress period is also disturbing, but the spread, despite its prettiness, harked back to the days of colonialism(as the title of this post says) and white woman fetishism.

    Posted 22 Aug 2007 at 10:57 pm

  16. Anonymous wrote:

    Hi Carmen,

    You might want to note this in your daily list of links on this site. In the UK September issue of Vogue, supermodel Gemma Ward also does a “white woman posing among the natives” photoshoot entitled “Indian Summer” (ugh). The link to the entire spread is here http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/3376471-post177.html

    Some of the more telling pictures:
    http://img156.imagevenue.com/aAfkjfp01fo1i-17634/loc1077/78197_gw_122_1077lo.jpg

    http://img11.imagevenue.com/aAfkjfp01fo1i-6535/loc842/90140_is2_122_842lo.jpg

    http://img171.imagevenue.com/aAfkjfp01fo1i-8214/loc376/90154_is4_122_376lo.jpg

    http://img185.imagevenue.com/aAfkjfp01fo1i-21067/loc56/90380_is10_122_56lo.jpg

    I actually found these to be even more ludicrous, if not outright offensive, than the Knightley among the Masai photoshoot.

    Posted 22 Aug 2007 at 11:40 pm

  17. Allen wrote:

    I thought the second comment said it best. I laughed out loud.

    Posted 23 Aug 2007 at 5:41 pm

  18. April wrote:

    I’m late on this one because I’ve been unpacking at a new town house.

    This is absolutely disgusting. I’m glad you decided to share this. Thanks Johnny!

    Posted 26 Aug 2007 at 11:00 pm

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