"(White) African Queen"

Over the past couple of days in class we have discussed how much, if any, has American society progressed in reaching equality. A majority of the class felt that while there have been signs of progress, such as an African-American becoming our president; we are definitely still not at the state of complete equality. Recently, a CNN video, posted that Numero Magazine contained an add titled “African Queen”, however, instead of an African-American modeling for this add, they hired a white 16-year old girl for the job, and painted her body with brown make up.

As you can imagine, this add received quite a lot of attention for its hypocrisy. However, one surprising comment that this article received was “Why hire a black model, when you can just paint a white one?” The use of the word “just” is very interesting because it is implying that the white model is the better choice, even though you are painting her skin to look exactly like an African-American model!

Another shocking fact is that the overwhelming majority of models are white, about 82%. While, only 6% of models are African-Americans. Models are seen as figures that society wants to copy or imitate. By choosing a white model to act as an African-American model, this magazine company is basically expressing that we should follow or be like white Americans, instead of an African-Americans. Why do you think that is? Or why choose a white model if she will just end up looking exactly like an African-American model? What do you think this add is saying about race in American society?

The lack of equality is truly being expressed within this magazine add, highlighting the fact that American society has still a lot of work ahead to reach a state of equality.