Malaika Mahlatsi writes about Bonang Mathebe on GLAMOUR magazine cover story: In the collective excitement around Bonang Matheba becoming the first Black woman to grace the cover of GLAMOUR magazine, some critical reflections must be made. Like most South Afrikans, Im happy for Bonang, a hard-working, gifted and young woman whose celebrity status was earned legitimately. But I find it difficult to suspend my honest thoughts about it. GLAMOUR magazine was launched in our country exactly 10 years ago, a decade into our democratic dispensation. Black people in South Afrika make up 80% of the population. That it took the magazine a decade to have a Black woman gracing its cover is only one part of the tragedy. The other part is that this industry is supported significantly by the Black women it has, until now, relegated to the periphery. The reality that it has taken the magazine more than 100 editions to have a Black woman on the cover speaks to the vulgar nature of White racism. This racism manifests itself in the kind of Black woman it has given this honour, and this is by no means an attack on Bonang. But that it had to be a woman who fits into the White South Afrikan medias definition of Black beauty is disturbing. The White idea of beauty is a beauty most divorced from the authenticity of Blackness. It is beauty most closest to White reflection, one of weaves, filters, airbrushed features and so on and so forth. This beauty is one measured using the barometer of Whiteness, and a beauty therefore, that is observed from and validated by the White lens. But for me, what hits hard is that every month, the Black woman goes to the stores to spend her hard-earned money on a copy of GLAMOUR magazine and to purchase the products it advertises in its pages. In doing this, the Black woman pays the salaries of GLAMOUR magazines White dominated editorial team, and keeps the magazine operational. So the Black woman who has kept this magazine afloat is on the receiving end of its conscious ostracisation of herself. This is true of many things, of the many White supremacist products that we continuously lend our support to, with the peanuts that we earn as a result of an untransformed economy that is characterised by White monopoly capital, a monopoly capital most visible in the advertising and beauty industry that remains lily White at our very own expense. I think as we celebrate Bonangs victory, we need to also have a deeper conversation about what it reflects, and to dare to problematise the reflection, lest we become so drowned in the euphoria and miss an opportunity to use it as a tool for the deconstruction of an even greater question. As for GLAMOUR magazine, it has no cause for any celebration. It should actually be ashamed that it took a DECADE to have a Black face on its cover, a DECADE of a post-apartheid dispensation, in a country where Blacks are a majority. And the fact that it is using statements like Get yourself a copy of the historic December 2014 edition of GLAMOUR magazine - first ever Black local star graces the cover!, is itself a slap on the face of Black people, who in that statement alone, are reduced to a commodity, and our Blackness used merely as a marketing gimmick, a selling card for a White monopolised industry. This to me brings back painful memories of another Black woman, Sarah Baartman, who too served Whites only in so far as she could be commodified. I pause.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 07:27:48 +0000
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