This article centers itself on body politics, with a specific focus on reflections regarding the body in African popular culture. Relying on the experimental findings and analytical works of South African writers/researchers Mpho Motseki and Toks Oyedemi, this article aims to aid in contributing towards an informative discussion on body politics from the perspective of popular culture’s influence on beauty ideals and representations of the African body.
More specifically, the article discusses celebrity culture/social media influence and the power held by African celebrities who use various social media platforms to promote ideals regarding the body in certain African societies (particularly, but not limited to, South Africa’s Black community). As we enter the digital age, the rise of celebrity influencer power through the use of various social media platforms has become incredibly impactful on beauty ideals and perceptions worldwide, and Africa is no exception to this reality. Evidently, celebrities play a large and powerful role when it comes to public influence and promotions of beauty standards/ideals. With such power comes a great responsibility attached to their use of social media platforms.
Mpho Motseki, a contemporary from the South African University of Limpopo, raises a valid and important point in her assertion that: “Celebrities and celebrity culture tend to influence young people’s ideas of culture and the aspirational perception of self and identity” (136). In South Africa, celebrities are the bulk of pop culture, and the ways in which celebrities communicate their perceptions of beauty and the ideal body on media platforms has the largest impact on pop culture.
The Impact of Social Media on Body Image & Mental Health
In the journal article, Motseki reports findings from a South African study conducted to examine the sort of messages, particularly regarding body type/femininity and beauty ideals, that are being sent out to young women by popular celebrity figures on social media platforms as depicted by the various ways in which: “celebrities present their bodies in the performance of beauty on social media” (136). Motseki further goes on to announce that the findings of a study revealed that, in present day South Africa: “celebrity culture perpetuates the ideology that Black beauty can be achieved through natural skin colour erasure, extended artificial weaves and a thin body frame ” (136). It is worth noting that, Motseki’s findings could ultimately confirm a latent hypothesis that; in South Africa, popular culture as reflected through social media prevails as an influential determinate of certain standards of beauty.
Skin Lightening and Colorism
Skin lightening among Black women in various Black African societies is a body alteration trend that is commonly endorsed by many local celebrities. It could be argued that, purely based on the images and captions that they upload on their social media, celebrities implicitly manage body trends and beauty ideals, according to Motseki and Oyedemi’s examination: “Black women who use skin-lightening products confirmed that they use the products because models and celebrities use them and the notion of beauty in advertisements is defined as being light-skinned” (140).
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One South African celebrity icon that easily exemplifies this is the famous South African socialite, television persona and influencer Khanyi Mbau, who openly and proudly admits to having bleached her skin as an act of enhancing her beauty. Another example comes from a local South African musician, Nomasonto ‘Mshoza’ Mnisi, who bleached her brown skin to a very light pink color and controversially made statements about how she was motivated to do the skin lightening procedure by the fact that she considered her brown African skin as having been ‘ugly’.
Sociologist Margaret Hunter defines the term ‘colorism’ as being: “a process that privileges light-skinned people of color over dark in areas such as income, education, housing, and the marriage market” (237), colorism is essentially a notion that promotes the practice of skin color stratification and is inherently prevalent and linked to brown skin communities. Skin lightening practices have become increasingly common among Black celebrities as well as ordinary Black women across Africa. All throughout the African continent, certain bodies are privileged above others on the basis of the skin color complex.
Evidently, light-skinned bodies are positioned at a more advantageous standing, both socially and economically within Black communities, while on the other hand ,darker-skinned individuals are seen and treated as being less desirable and inferior. Hunter points out that: “Research demonstrates that light-skinned people have clear advantages in these areas, even when controlling for other background variables” (237), additionally Hunter also reveals that: “ dark-skinned people of color are typically regarded as more ethnically authentic or legitimate than light-skinned people” (237).
Motseki also affirms that the practice of skin bleaching can be traced to a psychological mis-orientation and even mental disturbance, noting that: “the colonial psyche has created a feeling of low self-worth resulting in low self-esteem among Black populations as they occupied the lowest rung of the colonial hierarchy” (41). Moreover, the prevalence of colorism throughout African popular culture not only provides an unfortunate basis for self-hatred within Black African communities, it also poses as a threat towards biogenetic blackness as well as solidarity and unity among Black Africans as a whole. Motseki’s study holds that: “skin bleaching is accurately interpreted as a profound attack on genetic blackness and by extension African descendants.”(41).
Body Image and Hair
Black South African women are not only plagued by issues of having to keep up with pop culture’s skin color trends and body shape preferences, they additionally have to deal with beauty ideals around the issue of their natural hair. The narrative of ‘good hair’ vs. ‘bad hair’ is highly prevalent among Black communities. In the Black community, hair is a very important feature of the body and it is often connected to a woman’s identity. Popular culture often projects a notion that ‘good hair’ is defined as straight and long hair, while ‘bad hair’ is defined as afro-textured, coarse or short hair.
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As a result of these indoctrinating ideals projected by pop culture many Black women resort to using chemical relaxers to straighten their natural hair, wearing weaves, hair extensions or wigs, to achieve the look that popular culture deems to be desirable. In the case of weave or wig wearing, Black women are seen sporting Peruvian or Brazilian hair on their heads, while in doing so they thus hide their natural African hair. While many Black South Africans enforce the ideals themselves, the beliefs behind the discriminative ideals stem from colonial ideals that latently promote European beauty standards. In fact, in another study conducted with a central emphasis on hair culture and ideals amongst Black South Africans, Motseki detailed findings that confirmed that: “many young black women do not wear their natural hair as a result of many stereotypes and issues with social acceptability” (139).
Historical Representations of the African Body
Finally, it is important to consider ideologies behind some images presented by popular culture as a primary depiction and representation of the African body in media. When discussing the representation of the native African woman in popular culture and media, anthropologist Aleksandar Bošković, recalls an 1898 National Geographic advertisement. The advert featured an image involving a half-naked African woman with a focus on her body. This example lends itself to the discussion on body politics in popular culture, because it highlights the regard and metaphorical ideals related to the native African body. Looking blandly at the camera, the woman is standing right next to her husband, and they are both (as the natives should be) naked from the waist up.
The caption under the photograph is truly informative: ‘These people are of dark bronze hue, and have good athletic figure. The advertisement reflects an age old depiction of the African native as somewhat animalist, hypersexual and subhuman; a colonial sentiment that once assigned the African native to a category of “other”. Given that the advertisement was the first photograph image of a semi-nude African woman, Bošković describes the advert as having been: “an inauguration of a certain way of representing “native” women or “women of color” (178).
Adjacent to this conception is a similar sentiment and depiction relevant to the African male body that Bošković notes as being a sentiment stemming from early colonialism when Europeans first arrived in Africa. According to Bošković, historically speaking, when early western colonialists first arrived on the African continent they perceived ‘African culture’ as being very uninhibited in terms of its expressions of sexuality (179), as a result of this perception- the generated opinion by the Western colonialists towards the African natives was that the natives were sexually uninhibited: “On the one hand, the imagined sexuality of African men was perceived as dangerous and threatening - coming from the (perceived) promiscuous cultural background, they were imagined to be totally superior to the white men (myth of the black lover with huge penis)” (179).
Similarly, the view generated of the native African women was that: “they were perceived as ‘easy’ and ‘willing’” (Bošković 179). It can be argued that it is these colonialist sentiments that may have contributed towards the often hyper sexualized archetype image of the Black woman in present day popular culture, as seen in media and on entertainment platforms - especially music videos and in rap/hip-hop culture. Bošković’s reading presents and confirms the claim that: “the ‘Africa’ has served as a metaphor for the exotic, different, mysterious other” (178).
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