Fashion photographer Nick Knight just unveiled his latest movie on Showstudio.com; this one tackles "the outright taboo subject of racism in the fashion industry." It stars Naomi Campbell wearing two dresses by Rodarte (drool), one black and one white (get it?). She points two handguns at the camera, and Knight's words appear on the screen. They read:
I am virtually never allowed to photograph black models for the magazines, fashion houses, cosmetic brands, perfume companies and advertising clients I work for. Whenever I ask to use a black model I am given excuses such as “Black models are not aspirational in some markets” or “they do not reflect the brands values,” normally, however, no reason is given.
He goes on to say black models are "virtually unrepresented" in the fashion industry. And at the end of the two-minute film, Naomi puts those guns to use. Naomi wielding a weapon hits a little too close to home (it had to be said), but at least her rage is directed toward a good target. This one's a must-see.
I just can't stop reporting this wonderful news !!!
In the world of fashion magazines, a black model on the cover of the publication is is a rare occurrence. The justification for this disparity is often that issues with black cover models don't sell. This month, however, the so-called "black" issue of Italian Vogue has proven that theory to be at least somewhat flawed.
As reported by UK news source The Guardian, in the past four weeks, the issue has caused such a phenomenal demand at news-stands in Britain and the United States that Condé Nast, the publisher, has rushed to reprint and distribute 40,000 more copies.
Conceived by editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani, and shot by Steven Meisel from a roster of 18 new, established and former stars, the July 'black issue' sold out in Britain on arrival. Borders bookstores in the country have reported that demand was up 654% from the previous issue.
"It has been unprecedented, a sensation, although that wasn't the aim," said Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast International. Here in the States, the issue is shrink-wrapped and stickered with the words "First Reprint. The Most Wanted Issue Ever."
"I've been watching the news-stands since the beginning. There are lines of women when they hear of a new shipment," says Kenya Hunt, the young black style editor of Metro International News in New York. "The news-stand guys are hustling, locking it up in the back and charging $25, $28, when the real price is $16. Yesterday, I saw it on eBay for $50. There is a climate shift. This is the year of the presidential election. And this at a time when magazine sales are really hurting." The issue isn't new for Hunt, who wrote a piece about the absence of black models a year ago which was generally met with silence from the industry. Now, she says, everyone is eager to quote the article. Source
UPDATED: As reader goldenah stated in the comments, it's time for the editor of US Vogue to exit stage left please:
Our special correspondent Selena continues to find wonderful news of Black Girls living well !
MSNBC reports that a Ghanaian woman in Berlin recently gave birth to a pair of fraternal twins who appear to be of two different races. One of the babies has the dark skin of his mother while the other has light skin like his father, who is German. Doctors say that the odds of this happening are one in one million and that both babies are healthy.
Go HERE to see the video....the babies are adorable.
Screw CNN and their "documentary" about Black women in America....we ROCK and will continue to represent our intelligence, beauty, desirability as mates and whatever- the-hell-else WE decide.
Haven't been able to find a copy of the historic all-Black Italian Vogue ? Never fear, more are on the way:
Who says black female models don’t sell magazines?
Italian Vogue has taken the fashion and publishing world by storm by featuring all black models in its July issue. Historically, the conventional wisdom among "those who know" about circulation and newsstands in consumer publishing issues is that putting a black model or celebrity on the cover of a fashion magazine means that it “just won’t sell” well.
But after a couple of New York newsstand sell-outs, reports of frenzied, cross-town searches for $16 to $20 copies and the accompanying hype, Condé Nast has decided to reprint the issue — 10,000 copies emblazoned with the tagline “Most Wanted Issue Ever” and “First Reprint” banded across the front.Source
Hhhm...some reports are saying an extra 10,000 copies and others are saying an extra 100,000 copies have been ordered...we shall see. Yes, Black Girls representing and flexing those economic muscles ! We are willing to pay an average of 4 times the U.S. cost of Vogue to see our beauty displayed; American advertisers TAKE NOTE.
I absolutely adore Michelle Obama and how she is helping raise the self esteem of Black women and girls simply by being herself: Beautiful, Powerful, Free and most definitely Living a Quality life. However, I keep hearing a theme in relation to both Michelle and her husband that worries me--this excerpt from the Washington Post.com pretty much highlights my concern:
With all the challenges facing professional black women today, we hope that Michelle Obama will defy the negative stereotypes about us. And that, now that a strong professional black woman is center stage, she'll bring to light what we already know: that an accomplished black woman can be a loyal and supportive wife and a good mother and still fulfill her own dreams. The fact that her husband clearly adores Michelle is both refreshing and reassuring to many of us who long to find a good man who will love and appreciate us.
Recently, a friend who's a married professional mother of three girls wrote to me: "I think one of the most interesting things about Michelle Obama is that what she and her husband are doing is pretty revolutionary these days -- and I don't mean running for president. For a black man and woman in the U.S. to be happily married, with children, and working as partners to build a life -- let alone a life of service to others -- all while rearing their children together is downright revolutionary."
It's how so many black professional women feel. And our hope is that if Michelle Obama becomes first lady, the revolution will come to us at last.
While I think the marriage between the Obama's is wonderful and I love seeing it, it gives me pause that the author of the article seems to imply the old BC standard "just hang on girls, you too can have the revolutionary black marriage..just hang on." To use Evia's phrase, this sounds a LOT like "magical thinking" to me and it's very dangerous to BW who are serious about having a loving husband and children TODAY versus some time in the magical future that may never come.
So Disney finally decides to give us a Black princess who just happens to find her white Prince Charming, but suddenly it’s all too “stereotypical” and they have to go back to the drawing board. Uhmm….ok, what part of this is stereotypical again; because I must have missed the part where there were millions of Black girls with white Princes. *insert eye roll*
According to the Independent, this is the original storyline of The Princess and The Frog: An American Fairy Tale:
A musical set in 1920s New Orleans, the film was supposed to feature Maddy, a black chambermaid working for a spoilt, white Southern debutante. Maddy was to be helped by a voodoo priestess fairy godmother to win the heart of a white prince, after he rescued her from the clutches of a voodoo magician. Disney's original storyboard is believed to have been torn up after criticism that the lead character was a clichéd subservient role with echoes of slavery, and whose name sounded too much like "Mammy" – an unwelcome reminder of America's Deep South before the civil rights movement swept away segregation.
The story has been changed to this:
The heroine has been recast as Tiana, a 19-year-old in a country that has never had a monarchy. She is now slated to live "happily ever after" with a handsome fellow who is not black – with leaks suggesting that he will be of Middle Eastern heritage and called Naveen. The race of the villain in the cartoon is reported to have also been revised. The film studio began making changes a year ago, first to its title, The Frog Princess, which some had interpreted as a slur. Amendments to the plot followed. Disney commented: "The story takes place in the charming elegance and grandeur of New Orleans' fabled French Quarter during the Jazz Age... Princess Tiana will be a heroine in the great tradition of Disney's rich animated fairy tale legacy, and all other characters and aspects of the story will be treated with the greatest respect and sensitivity."
I’ll just let folks read between the lines as to the “other characters” that must be treated with kid gloves. At this rate, perhaps we will see Princess Tiana sometime in 2009.
Image via WikipediaI have been thinking a lot lately about the food we all eat and whether or not I’m making a real effort to eat healthier. My concern has everything to do with being heart-healthy, strong, and fit. In my book fit = healthy; this is not about being a particular “size.” I took my concerns to my doctor and she suggested that I keep a food diary so that we could analyze the nutritional content of my daily diet. I immediately groaned. I absolutely hated the idea of “logging” my meals. It’s not that I was afraid to “see” what I eating; it was just the idea of “wasting” the time to write down each meal. Fast-forward a few weeks and I receive an email from a public relations firm about the following: Kaiser Permanente Study Finds Keeping a Food Diary Doubles Diet Weight Loss.
I guess the universe must be trying to tell me that yes, perhaps a food diary is not such a bad idea after all. In my efforts to be more heart-healthy, I came across the following information:
Do women of color need to worry about heart disease?
Yes. African American and Hispanic American/Latina women are more likely to get heart disease because they tend to have more risk factors such as obesity, lack of exercise, high blood pressure, and diabetes than white women. Women of color also are more likely than white women to die of heart disease. If you're a woman of color, take steps to reduce your risk factors.
What can I do to prevent heart disease?
You can reduce your chances of getting heart disease by taking these steps:
In the same prevention vein, please read an excerpt about the Kaiser Permanente Study:
Study is one of few trials to recruit large percentage of African American participants
July 8, 2008 (Portland, Ore.) – Keeping a food diary can double a person’s weight loss according to a study from Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research. The findings, from one of the largest and longest running weight loss maintenance trials ever conducted, will be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, the study is one of the few studies to recruit a large percentage of African Americans as study participants (44 percent). African Americans have a higher risk of conditions that are aggravated by being overweight, including diabetes and heart disease. In this study, the majority of African American participants lost at least nine pounds of weight, which is higher than in previous studies.
“The more food records people kept, the more weight they lost,” said lead author Jack Hollis Ph.D., a researcher at Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore. “Those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records. It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories.”
In addition to keeping food diaries, participants were asked to follow a heart-healthy DASH (a Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet rich in fruits and vegetables and low-fat or non-fat dairy, attend weekly group sessions and exercise at moderate intensity levels for at least 30 minutes a day. After six months, the average weight loss among the nearly 1,700 participants was approximately 13 pounds. More than two-thirds of the participants (69 percent) lost at least nine pounds, enough to reduce their health risks and qualify for the second phase of the study, which lasted 30 months and tested strategies for maintaining the weight loss.
“More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. If we all lost just nine pounds, like the majority of people in this study did, our nation would see vast decreases in hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease and stroke,” said study co-author Victor Stevens, Ph.D., a Kaiser Permanente researcher. For example, in an earlier study Stevens found that losing as little as five pounds can reduce the risk of developing high blood pressure by 20 percent.
The Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute’s Weight Management Initiative (http://www.kpcmi.org/weight-management/index.html) has recommended food journaling as a strategy for losing weight since 2002. The Weight Management Initiative unites clinicians, researchers, insurers, and policymakers to identify practical, effective, non-surgical approaches for the prevention and treatment of overweight and obesity.
“Keeping a food diary doesn’t have to be a formal thing. Just the act of scribbling down what you eat on a Post-It note, sending yourself e-mails tallying each meal, or sending yourself a text message will suffice. It’s the process of reflecting on what you eat that helps us become aware of our habits, and hopefully change our behavior,” says Keith Bachman, MD, a Weight Management Initiative member. “Every day I hear patients say they can’t lose weight. This study shows that most people can lose weight if they have the right tools and support. And food journaling in conjunction with a weight management program or class is the ideal combination of tools and support.”
About the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research
Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research, founded in 1964, is a nonprofit research institution dedicated to advancing knowledge to improve health. It has research sites in Portland, Ore., Honolulu, Hawaii and Atlanta. For more Kaiser Permanente news, visit the KP News Center at: http://xnet.kp.org/newscenter.
Source : GolinHarris Press Release via email to me
I am providing this information in sincere love for Black women and girls everywhere.Please consult a doctor before beginning a new diet or exercise plan !
Reader and rockin' chica Selena sent me the following story:
July 10, 2008. You knew that some rappers were ignorant ... but this is just too much. MediaTakeOut.com just caught wind that during a recent interview on the radip show Lip Sevice, rapper Young Berg claimed that he's not into dark skinned black women - or dark butts as he calls them. Here's a transcript of his words:
I'm kinda racist ... I don't like dark butts .... You know how some women prefer light skin men or dark skin men. It's rare that I do dark butts - that's what I call dark skinned women ... I [don't date women] darker than me.
I love the pool test. If you can jump in the pool exactly like you are and you don't come out looking better than you looked before going in the pool - then that's not a good look.
Any woman that uses brown gel to set down her baby hair is not poppin'
Did you know that companies in the US have said they would hire a white man with a felony record and no high school education BEFORE they would hire a black man with NO criminal record and a 4-year degree?
On Wednesday July 23 at 9pm and Thursday July 24 at9pm, CNN will premiere a series, 'Black in America with Soledad O'Brien' and I personally challenge you to watch it WITH your children, especially your sons, if you have any, uninterrupted. The aforementioned statistics and many others will be revealed during the series.
My sister had the privilege of meeting with Soledad O'Brien and actually SEEING this premier on Monday, and what she saw brought tears to her eyes and anguish, frustration, and a senseof helplessness to her soul.
On Monday the series will focus on Women and Families and Tuesday is dedicated entirely to the plight of the Black Man in America.
I beg and plead with you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE watch and internalize what you see and hear; no matter HOW disturbing the information revealed...you can (and will) thank me later. Feel free to pass this email on or go here for more information:
Out of curiosity, I checked out the link to see the preview for the segment on Black Women and *gasp* we were the background to the foreground of Black men. LOL. If you get bored and want to check out the link, look at the tab for "The Black Woman & Family" and then look at the tab for "The Black Man." Isn't it interesting that the streaming video for US has virtually nothing to do with BW, but yet the video for the BM has everything to do with them. The BW's issues (breast cancer, single parents, etc.) peppered amongst the "In the News" topics does NOT count.
Fashion photographer Nick Knight just unveiled his latest movie on Showstudio.com; this one tackles "the outright taboo subject of racism in the fashion industry." It stars Naomi Campbell wearing two dresses by Rodarte (drool), one black and one white (get it?). She points two handguns at the camera, and Knight's words appear on the screen. They read:
