Essence: Taraji P. Henson, Serena Williams, and Iman

That's a lot of pink.

While I will say that it is nice to see a few unexpected faces on the cover of Essence, I still think it would have been nice to feature Taraji P. Henson (or Viola Davis) alone on the cover. It's been proven a thousand issues over that Essence just hates to put new faces on their covers. I guess this issue is their way of getting credit for three so that next month they can go back to business as usual and split the year between Jada, Halle, Jill Scott, Mary J. Blige and maybe Mo'nique.

I haven't seen this one on the stands yet. I wonder if it contains their annual "Black Don't Crack" feature.

Out of curiosity, who would be your top choice to appear on the cover of Essence Magazine?

s: Lipstick Alley

Essence: Another Month, Another Dull Cover

So Will and Jada will be on the cover of the December issue of Essence Magazine. He's the biggest movie star in the world and she is his lovely and incredibly stylish actress wife. What's not to love, right? 

I think they're a great couple too and I love seeing them walking hand in hand on the red carpet but c'mon, Essence! Is this the best you can do?

I've written before about how the magazine likes to play it safe and boring month after month but I was keeping my fingers crossed that with all the electricity buzzing in the air lately, that Essence would shake things up a bit.

A Barack and Michelle (or even just Michelle) cover would have been the obvious choice but if Donna Brazile (one of Essence's "Most Inspiring" people,) Condi Rice or Obama senior campaign advisor Valerie Jarrett was on the cover, I'd snap it up in a heartbeat.

Looking at this cover, I feel like I already know how the interview with Will and Jada will read and I know for sure that any beauty, health or money advice article will be a carbon copy of what was in the magazine last month.

Maybe at the very least they could take a cue from People Magazine and start running multiple pics on the cover.

Last gripe: the cover banner with "win a $100 gift card"? $100? Damn, the recession really has hit the magazine industry hard.

S: LSA

Essence Magazine 1974 - Pat Evans - "The Name of the Game Is..."

The copy isn't great. I just hope it's clear enough to read.

Scattered Thoughts

I often wonder if at some point I'll be so turned off by the images (or lack of images) presented to us as women of color that I'll just unplug everything, nail my mailbox shut and  stop even bothering to complain about it. Would that be tacit acceptance of the status quo or a form of enlightenment?

I spend a lot of time on this blog discussing the things about the fashion and beauty industry that I find distasteful. Sometimes I do wonder if I am just waisting my time. The comments that I think I hear often in response to my disgust about the fashion industry are

Why do you care?

Those magazines are for white people anyway! 

Sit down, shut up and read Essence.

I've been thinking about this a lot since I tracked down and read an article by former model Pat Evans that appeared in Essence magazine in 1974.

In the article, Pat Evans states quite emphatically that Black modeling is just another form of prostitution. She goes on to say: 

The black model business is like slave trading - only more refined. You are black and you are beautiful; the first thing you should learn is that your Black beauty should only be appreciated by your own people. We struggle so hard to fulfill out dreams in a white world that we forget this is their game, and if you look like a winner, you can be moved off the board.

Damn, right?

Evans wrote this piece for Essence after she quit her modeling agency. She was disgusted with the fact that she had to check her self and her race at the door if she wanted to work. "Straighten your hair and carry your 'natural' in your pocketbook. There's no room for a Black image in the modeling field." She was also fed up and angry at black male photographers who used their influence in the industry to bed as many women as possible and white photographers, one of whom told her that he'd rather put a black dot or smudge in a photo instead of a black woman because, as he put it, "no one looks at you anyway."

There is a shallow part of me that places a lot of weight on beauty and attractiveness and how black women are perceived by larger society. As a younger person, I just wanted to see proof that being black was beautiful and 'normal.' It didn't matter how many times family members said it because I had to know that other people thought it was true too. 

Reading Evan's essay and her call for black people to be who they are and not obsess over imitation, I wondered if I could be that person who just doesn't give fuck about black models being featured in a fancy Italian magazine or seeing young black actresses in a dramatic role on TV. I know that I am not. I know that I'm even more obsessed with images of black women in the media now than I ever was in my younger years. The Internet is my enabler. Now I can look at more images quicker than ever before.  Hell, I don't even have to hold a magazine in my hands to tell you what's wrong with it.

And so I continue to read, react and blog. I've just accepted that I'm a natural born complainer and I hope that if I am ever blessed with a daughter, she won't internalize the same bull that I have and won't ever need a photograph to convince her that she is the shit like I did when I was a kid. 

Evans ends with:

Woman you are, man you are, it doesn't pay to imitate. Be beautiful in your Black world, be your own image--anything you desire, from Astarte to Nefertiti.... Set the image in your family, be a model man to your woman and vice versa; ... Why should be model what they copied from us...We are the original models.

ETA: There is a fantastic carnival up at Livejournal now. The entries are written by various WOC bloggers on the topic of beauty. Definitely worth reading.

Image source: Daylife

Everyone Loves a Baldie

I never had fashion magazines in my home when I was very young. Up until I was 8, I thought the only magazines in the world were Jet, Life, Ebony, Essence,  TV Guide and that magazine that Jehovah's Witnesses hold at bus stops. 

Even though I'm sure I had some knowledge of the who's who of black models from back in the day  like Beverly Johnson, Naomi Sims and Iman the only one who really struck me back then was Pat Evans. Pat was known as "that bald lady" in my house where she was the source of much controversy. My mother could not get around that fact that a black woman would choose to be a baldie. "Why can't she just wear a wig? She looks like a man!" was the common refrain of my mother, aunts and cousins.

I thought Pat was fierce and a little frightening. I remember just sitting and staring at her photos in magazines. She could hold my attention much easier than any homework assignment. In my mind, any woman that had the nerve to be bald on purpose had to be a "right on" chick.

Pat was from the Sugar Hill section of Harlem and was a dancer. When she danced with the troupe Olatunji she started wearing a afro. It was the group's trademark look. In the 1960s when she started modeling she was told to straighten her hair and wear carry around an afro wig with her to bookings.  

...I got really mad about that, because all of my life it's been good hair/bad hair you know. That same day I saw a little girl skipping down the street with a sweater on her hair. I thought, my sister and I used to do that when we were little. It was a game called White Girl. I said to myself, this means nothing has changed. And I shaved my head.

But she still had to pay the bills so that afro wig was still worn over her bald head for work.  She did a fitting for Stephen Burrows in which she had to squeeze into a tiny dress. When she took it off the wig came off with it. Burrows was surprised and Evans begged him not to tell her agency that she was an undercover no-hair. Burrows insisted on using her in his show without the wig and her career took off.

Evans herself was a bold as her personal style. She sent tongues wagging when she wrote in Essence Magazine that "black modeling is just another form of prostitution" and criticized the racist attitudes in the industry and predatory photographers. She said that modeling would never be an "open" profession for black people until there were more black owned agencies, products, magazines and above all "black owned minds."

Really, that article could have been written yesterday is still holds so much truth.

Anatomy of a Cover: Essence Magazine

Another month, another ho-hum issue of Essence. Don't get me wrong, I love these three ladies and the multiple "collector's edition" covers** with those pretty but predictable portraits are a nice touch but wouldn't it be nice if they featured an up and coming artist for one of the "music issue" covers? Am I the only one who want to see Santogold or Alice Smith get a little more love from our press? Damn, Mary and Jill have become Essence's money shot covers as they seem to be on it a couple of times per year.

Looking back on the 12 issues of Essence published this year, one can easily recognize their cover formula:

Money. No Essence cover is complete with the mention of money and how to get more of it. Appearances on the cover in the past twelve months: 12

Men. Anything from what they think or how to get one of your own. Hell, they'll even pop up on the cover from time to time. Appearances in the past twelve months: 9

Hair. Isn't it funny that no matter how much they tout "sexy new styles" on the cover, when you look inside it's the same lame hairdos that they've been pushing for years? One relaxed bob, a couple of weave styles, and "natural style." I don't think I'd notice if they used the same pics every month. Appearances in the past twelve months: 9

Health. Black woman are more at risk for certain conditions, this is true but the recycled information that Essences thrown on their pages every month isn't getting my attention. Appearances in the past twelve months: 9

Weight. This once overlaps with health on occasion but usually, it gets its own tagline on the cover. Interestingly, there are more references to it on covers produced this year than on last year's covers. Appearances in the past twelve months: 6

The Two Divas: Mary J Blige and Jill Scott. Essences loves them like People Magazine loves Brad and Angelina. Appearances in the past twelve months: 5

**Is there anyone out there who actually collects these issues? Am I going to be sucking my teeth because I recycled mine fifty years from now when they show up on Antiques Roadshow 2058?

Tracee Ellis Ross in Essence

I've always admired Tracee Ellis Ross' fashion sense. She's one of the few celebrities who isn't a slave to the latest trends and really knows how to mix vintage pieces with high and low fashion. I've been completely envious of her wardrobe ever since I read several years ago that she still has many of the outrageous outfits her mother designed for the movie Mahogany. Seriously, I would kill to spend a day rummaging through her closet.

I try not to post too much celebrity related stuff but I had to share these images (that I found on UrbanScanz) because the lady really doesn't get enough credit from the fashionistas and also because after eight seasons, Girlfriends was abruptly canceled by the CW and the network has decided that a proper finale is "too expensive" and will not be produced.

Now, I've been watching the show for years and will admit that the post-Toni seasons have ranged from lackluster to downright painful to watch. I've done more than my share of complaining about it over at Television Without Pity but it was still the only show of its kind on TV and it will be missed. Here's to hoping that something even better is on the horizon for the shows largely Black female audience.

Essence, I wish I could quit you

I used to love Essence Magazine...when I was 16. Back then it was like Cosmo for black teens full of articles about famous people, lifestyles and hairstyles that I could never quite pull off. There was also the occasional article about sex which made reading the magazine seem like a very grown up thing to do. I always looked forward to seeing who would be on the next month's cover and then gobbled up the issue in no time flat.

Flash forward more years than I care to reveal and the magazine is still around, only my feelings for it have changed.

As a girl growing up reading the magazine I guess I thought it would grow up with me but this is clearly not the case. Everything about Essence is the same as it has been for twenty years. It looks the same, weighs the same, talks about the same "safe" celebrities ad nauseum and features damn near the same articles month after month.

You always know what you are getting with Essence and maybe that's good enough for some readers but it's like boring sex. Everyone has it at some point, but if it's always the same it might be time to see a therapist.

To be fair, Essence is really the only magazine of its type out there. It has a healthy circulation and doesn't seem to be starved for advertisers. Its closest rivals might be Jewel or Heart & Soul but really, the former is still too green and the latter makes me feel like I'm reading a browner version of Redbook.

After it became clear that Suede was never coming back from its hiatus, I secretly wondered if some Suede's fresh attitude would eventually start to invade

Essence but it didn't. Suzanne Boyd left the company and it was back to business as usual.

So what about that content? There's usually an "inspirational" letter from the editor that I don't read, some beauty products shot against a white

background, a page or two of hairstyles, the ubiquitous "I'm in an interracial relationship" article, one page confessional essays, the cover story, a poorly

shot fashion layout sometimes featuring an America's Next Top model contestant, some recipes,and another "inspirational" essay by former editor Susan Taylor.

The end. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I guess their philosophy is "if it ain't broke why fix it?" I'm sure there are a lot of Essence readers who like it just the way it is. I'm just not one of them and I refuse to believe I'm alone in that.

One particular issue of Essence that stands out in my mind is one that featured Lil' Kim on the cover some years back. At the time I was surprised that Essence would put a rapper of Kim's particular niche on the cover so I snapped up the issue only to get home and find that there was no interview with Kim in the magazine. There were just details from the 10 hour plus photo-shoot and an "open letter" to Kim written by an editor. Not even a write around, just a letter saying nothing new about her provocative image. It was, in a word, lame.

That pretty much sums up what Essence has become to me. A pretty cover photo to draw you in and not much going on between the sheets.

Will I buy this month's issue featuring Erykah Badu? I don't know, but I won't lie, I will probably page through it at the grocery.

Essence Magazine Hollywood Issue

Well it may be full of the same old faces but I applaud Essence for doing their own gatefold cover Hollywood Issue. I have a love/hate relationship with the magazine which in my view has been recycling content for the last 15 years. At the end of the day however, it really is the only magazine of its type on the newsstand that caters to Black women so I still end up buying it month after month.