Black male “supermodel” Tyson Beckford triggered a racial meme when he sounded off seven days ago on the fashion industry being dominated by White models:
Out of all the industries I find … that fashion is very racist. This past season during Fashion Week, you might go to a show and it’s all White girls: not one Asian or Black or Latino girl was in it…
It kind of makes that ethnic race of people feel like they’re not important or being catered to.
(Huffington Post, May 15, 2014)
Except that I sounded off seven years ago on this very topic, in similar fashion:
I’m not too focused on how bone thin these bitches walking the runways at NYC’s Fashion Week are to notice how bone white they are also!
One could be forgiven the impression that – since Alek Wek is busy promoting her extraordinary autobiography, and a semi-reformed Naomi Campbell is busy raising funds for flood victims – no other Black models are worthy of showing off the clothes of the world’s top fashion designers.
(“Fashion Model Fired for Being Too Skinny. Hallelujah!” The iPINIONS Journal, September 12, 2007)
But I was so dismayed this trend continued virtually unchallenged that I felt constrained to sound off again four years later:
It should go without saying that just because a black face appears on the cover of a fashion magazine … does not mean that there’s diversity in the fashion industry. Especially when that black face is most often half-white (like Halle Berry’s) or digitally whitened (like Beyoncé’s)…
Unless non-White women, especially Asians and Latinas, stop doing all they can to look White, this racist trend will continue.
For starters, Black women can stop covering up their natural hair with wigs made to look like White women’s hair. Indeed, why should White fashionistas hire Black models to appeal to Black women who just want to look White? I find nothing more unattractive and pathetic than a Black woman sporting a long, blond wig.
(“No Blacks Please, We’re Fashionistas,” The iPINIONS Journal, June 15, 2011)
This is why I have two questions for Tyson and his female counterparts, including Jourdan Dunn and Chanel Iman:
- What took you guys so long to notice?
- Are you prepared to lead a strike by models (of all ethnicities) and call for a boycott by consumers (of all ethnicities) against the fashion industry for featuring all-White models – just as LeBron James and Chris Paul were prepared to lead a strike by players and urge a boycott by fans against the NBA for harboring a racist owner like Donald Sterling?
In other words, put up, or shut up.
That said, one of the things that truly distinguished the Abolition and Civil Rights Movements was the number of Whites who were in the vanguard of those agitating for equal rights. I am constrained to wonder, therefore, why Whites are so rarely in the vanguard of those agitating for racial justice these days.
That White models are as conspicuously absent in the vanguard of those agitating for diversity in the fashion industry today as they are conspicuously present on the runways at fashion shows bears this out. Hell, it took Black superstar players threatening to strike to force the NBA to get rid of Donald Sterling, even though the League’s (practically) all-White governing committee of fellow owners knew of and abided his racist rants and practices for decades. (Michael Jordan became the only token-Black owner in 2010, when he bought the Charlotte Bobcats from the NBA’s first token-Black owner, Bob Johnson.)
There are notable exceptions, of course – even in the fashion industry. In fact, original White supermodels Stephanie Seymour, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Claudia Schieffer, and Cindy Crawford set an instructive example years ago when they shocked the fashion industry by declaring that they would not walk the catwalk for any designer who did not include Black supermodel Naomi Campbell in his or her show. Their profile in courage was recounted in the September 2008 edition of Vanity Fair.
This compels one to wonder why today’s White supermodels Giselle Bundchen, Adriana Lima, Bar Rafaeli, Candice Swanepoel, and Kate Upton have not made a similar declaration. I doubt they are more racist; or that they have less affinity for Black models like Jourdan and Chanel than Stephanie & co. had for Naomi. Perhaps they are just more narcissistic and selfish … like so many people are these days.
Whatever the case, it’s important for Giselle & co. to appreciate that, just as LeBron & co. showed they have the power to force a racist like Sterling out of the NBA, they can show they have the power to feature more diversity in the fashion industry. They can do so by demanding that photographers, stylists, booking agents, and designers do more to work with non-White models in everything from print advertisements to product endorsements and major fashion shows.
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