Out for Glamour in Africa
Loading...
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Michigan State University Press
University of Michigan Press
University of Michigan Press
Abstract
Description
Out for Glamour in Africa critically reflects on how Black women utilized Drum magazine, a leading publication in Africa during the era of independence, for political empowerment and constructing notions of Black femininity. Wanjirũ G. Mbure terms the concept of femme urbAfricana , a model of Black femininity depicted as urban, political, fashionable, paradoxically Afrocentric, heteronormative, and transnational. Foregrounding stories of the women who embodied these traits and the social, political, and economic forces that shaped their presence in Drum , Mbure argues that these representations of Black women from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States produced a novel form of Black urban femininity. Utilizing a breadth of archival materials from cover girl photographs, advertisements, and columns, to readers’ comments, Mbure reveals the complex relationship between the Black urban woman and the era’s contested ideals within a transnational matrix.
Keywords
Drum magazine, African American, African American women, Black women, Black magazines, Transnationalism, Beauty ideals, South Africa, Beauty pageants, South African townships, Advertising and Black women, Black marketing, Black beauty pageants, African women in film, Black Caribbean women, Pan-African movement, Black female jazz artists, East African women, Black writers in Drum, Literary writing in South Africa, Femme urbAfricana, Ebony Magazine, thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History, thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHH African history, thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSL Ethnic studies, thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCT Media studies