2017 Black History Month Series Day 3
The significance of the media is not only important for the benefit of spreading public opinion and keeping ‘alternative facts’ in check, but it is also valuable because it provides people with a source of representation. People should be able to find themselves in the media/entertainment that they’re consuming. If one cannot find themselves in their society’s media output than it can be difficult for that person to place themselves within that society. As a result, they may even feel as though they do not belong or are not accepted within that society. Along with this, accurate media representation is crucial because it allows people to experience a culture different from their own. In this way the media makes us closer to one another, bridging gaps between understanding due to social differences or geographical distance.
I remember over the summer of last year I visited an antique thrift store and saw a dated collection of TIME magazines. As a media scholar I couldn’t help but want to see how black people were portrayed in TIME magazine back in the early 1900s. I was surprised to find how difficult it was to even locate one edition that featured a person of color on any page, and especially on any cover. I later learned that baseball athlete, Jackie Robinson was the first African American on TIME’s cover in their 13 year history.
Black is beautiful, in all shades, gender identities ages and sizes but the media has been hesitant throughout history to accept this fact.
This lack of Blackness represented in TIME made me wonder what other groundbreaking Black athletes, entertainers and models broke boundaries on other popular magazine covers. The problem of this lack of people of color in the media is worldwide. Media Outlets in some cases those historic cover’s which first feature Black women, the model’s face is barely, if at all, visible. for example, in 1965 British model, Donyale Luna is featured on the cover of Harper’s Bazar with her facial profile peeking through the magazine title as she looks up, her right eye barely visible through her thick straightened hair bangs. Similarly, in 1966 when Luna is featured as the first Black model in British Vogue her hand covers the majority of her face as her left eye makes direct contact with the camera through her fingers. Even when a Black model is chosen to grace the cover, it’s as if we are de-personified in that attempt in masking our eyes or covering our faces.
As time went on and boundaries were broken worldwide, Beverly Johnson is the first African American featured on the cover of American Vogue. She speaks about the significance of the experience in a Huffington Post interview 41 years after the cover’s release saying, “This is the only time in my life where I can say: Oprah, the First Lady, and Beyoncé came after me”. Johnson led the way for Black women in American in not only print media, but her face opened the door for young aspiring African American models, reporters, actresses and others who wanted to work in the media industry whose skin would have been perceived as a disadvantage, or even a disqualification in many positions. We can see this in Paris Vogue, which was forced to feature Naomi Campbell on their 1988 cover when designer Yves Saint Laurent treated to pull his ads from the magazine if they continued to refuse to feature her.
There were many long running magazines that published for decades before releasing an issue with a cover representative of their black and brown consumers. Life magazine was releasing covers for 33 years before featuring their first African American supermodel, Naomi Films, on the cover in 1969. Seventeen magazine, first published in 1944, waited until 1971 when Joyce Wilford, sharing the core with Bonnir Lyshoir, was the first Black girl featured on the cover of Seventeen magazine. I’m sure there were hundreds of African-American young women reading Seventeen magazine prior to 1971 that would have appreciated seeing a reflection of themselves in the media they are consuming. Throughout history Black women have been forced to whitewash themselves in order to fit into society, and these magazine covers were our first step in showing the world our skin its features are beautiful.
Even today there is a serious lack of accurate representation of Black people in the media. When people of color represent the majority of the world’s population, why is the majority of our media white washed? Why aren’t we able to see accurate representations of ourselves in roles other than baby mamas on reality tv dramas or plaintiffs in Divorce court Trials? During Black History month, many television networks choose to honor the celebration by airing marathons of popular black series and sitcoms, I challenge those networks to give us the opportunity to consume these positive media images on the other 11 months of the year that we pay our cable bills.
