Naomi jumping rope with monkeys
Naomi running with cheetahs
These images appear in the September 2009 issue of Harpers Bazaar magazine. They were shot by French photographer Jean Paul Goude.
Okay, so I don’t have time right now to write about how extremely problematic, racist, and stereotypical these images are, but I will say that there’s been a deliberate and intentional trend of advertisers and high fashion magazines continually linking black women and women of color models with the likes of animals and the jungle- leopards, cheetahs, monkeys, etc, historically and presently. Our bodies have become “things of the wild,” encompassing the unruly, and “exotic.” The first image is particularly absurd as we see Naomi Campbell playing double dutch with monkeys as a white man looks on. This finds its foundation in “Orientalist” European Explorer folklore/propaganda where white men venture “into the wild” for a look at the “exotic” life in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, North America, etc. I argue that a white model would not be placed in this same “jungle” theme.
If you want to read more about race and representation and why these types of images are problematic and have a very troubling history, refer to works by bell hooks (Black Looks: Race and Representation + many more), The Black Female Body: A Photographic History, by Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, writings by Shohat and Stam, Edward Said (Orientalism + others), Maurice Berger (White Lies), + read this poem by awesome poet Suheir Hammad that directly confronts the “exotification” of women’s bodies:
exotic
suheir hammad
don’t wanna be your exotic
some delicate fragile colorful bird
imprisoned caged
in a land foreign to the stretch of her wings
don’t wanna be your exotic
women everywhere are just like me
some taller darker nicer than me
but like me but just the same
women everywhere carry my nose on their faces
my name on their spirits
don’t wanna
don’t seduce yourself with
my otherness my hair
wasn’t put on top of my head to entice
you into some mysterious black voodoo
the beat of my lashes against each other
ain’t some dark desert beat
it’s just a blink
get over it
don’t wanna be your exotic
your lovin of my beauty ain’t more than
funky fornication plain pink perversion
in fact nasty necrophilia
cause my beauty is dead to you
I am dead to you
not your
harem girl geisha doll banana picker
pom pom girl pum pum shorts coffee maker
town whore belly dancer private dancer
la malinche venus hottentot laundry girl
your immaculate vessel emasculating princess
don’t wanna be
your erotic
not your exotic
© Suheir Hammad
sweet potato pie Press 