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| Champion Double Dutch Girls Jumping High. Image: Seehowyouplay. |
A girlfriend and i were just talking about the dearth of black girls who speak to us and our experience on monthly newsstands. Rising Media MegaPowerHouse Abi Ishola just posted a thought-provoking and on point episode on just this topic--No Lifestyle Mags for Black Girls 18-34. Will def leave you wondering outloud...are online-only magazines enough to satiate an entire demographic? Unasked though but looming beyond the surface...is a black woman's magazine still pertinent? i mean, yes, i have a lot of hair/cab issues no one else will eva wrap their weave around (that's right! no one else even knows what that means:) but so much more of my voice resonates in the pages of The New Yorker/Vogue than Ebony. Okey, okey unfair example and yes, i love my Ebony/Essence heritage, but i think there are some really tough questions we need to ask ourselves bluntly and openly if answering any of them really matters to us.
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| Wanted! Mario Epanya's Africa Vogue Dream. |
Just how many savvy, informed, educated and fashionably fly young black women identify first with color over class? If you're gobbling up ARISE Magazine as eagerly as i--can you honestly say the hottitude there is about cool covers of black folk or about a certain class' lifestyle? Or is it neither and simply that ARISE captures an intellectually elegant but complex truth--that we're as much defined by our black heritage as we are a plethora and infinite series of other identities?
Reminds me of an exchange with another friend (white) a while ago. She said she hides her The New Yorker cover on the subway b/c it's such an elite/ #thestuffwhitepeoplelike read. Really? So high esoteric ideas+intellectualism are beyond people in Kibera/Harlem because they are lower income? See the parallel? It's hard bouncing back from any one-dimensional definition of identity. It's like the insult women's magazines throw at us constantly--concluding that because we're concerned with fashion we couldn't possibly have much room for earnest intellectualism alongside monthly intakes of our high fashion shoegasm. Thank You, Marie Clare/Vogue for knowing and doing better:) And no serious judgement everyone else, you're just mirroring the society we live in, missing an opportunity to shape what+who we could become. Not saying i got or know the answers here, and not saying i'm not stirring the pot, but the thing must be said for exactly what it is,
Does It Matter That There's No For Black Girls Only Glossies?
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