"You Got an Eye Problem?": Media Representation of "Urban Chicks," Women & Hip-Hop Culture

If you've been out-and-about in the city in the last week or so, chances are you've been snagged to the edge of a sidewalk or street corner, walked into something/someone, or have almost been hit by a bus when the jaw-droppingly buxom and scandalous image gracing the May 30th - June 5th cover of the Village Voice caught your eye. And if you are alive or at least have a faint pulse, it did no doubt catch your eye. Featuring BlackMen's fashion editor, Marcus Blassingame, with coyly positioned, pouty-lipped, and smokey-eyed model Angel Melaku submissively kneeling on a bar stool, as Blassingame defiantly grills the camera. Conjuring the classic pin-up vibe flipped with "urban interest," the Ethiopian-born beauty almost completely spills-out of her vintage lingerie-inspired bustier, clad in nothing else but thigh-high black fishnet garter-stockings, a black g-string thong, and six-inch stiletto heels. Titled "End Run," the cover story aims to bolster editors and publishers of urban versions of popular "lad rags," such as King, SSX, Smooth, Sweets, (to a lesser degree) Vibe (Vixen), XXL, and Source targeted largely at Black and Latino men. Instead of featuring the stereotypical euro-centric, amazonian supermodel-types in their salacious spreads as magazines such as Maxim, Stuff, and the U.K.'s F.H.M. have traditionally done, editors like Blassingame are opting to showcase full-figured, voluptuous women of color on their pages.
Blassingame boasts that he wanted a much more "street element" in his models, so he literally did just that; instead of hiring models, he scouted, discovered, and featured real women off the street who largely had no prior experience at all. Lamenting the difficulties of siring a "breakthrough in the genre," editors of urban men's interest magazines are finding it harder and harder to sell advertising and win distribution space in mainstream arenas, which they vocally attribute to racist misrepresentations in the media. What's more, the editorial staff and models themselves are also taking jabs at the misogyny of mainstream media, especially when it comes to images and representations of women of color. Models like Angel Melaku and the Buffie "the Body" Carruth (hailed as the "Black Pam Anderson") feel that their work is so often suppressed because mainstream media views their voluptuous rumps and curvaceous bodies as offensive and profane.

Buffie "the Body," has been featured in G-Unit, Tony Yayo, and 50 Cent videos among other mags' spreads.

While mainstream media is undeniably and flagrantly racist, sexist, misogynistic, and xenophobic in nature, especially in the (mis)representation and often times violent fetishization of women of color (for example, see: Asian women in porn, women of color in snuff films, etc.), and the unfair and unrealistic physical expectations placed on all women, women of color are asking themselves, "is this the best solution?" Is it really an issue of fighting back and re-appropriating a beauty standard and body image as Sandy Vasceannie, editor of Smooth professes, or is it just another front for the degradation of Black and Brown women with harmful and tasteless "big booty freaks & ho's" stereotyping? Without any subtly or nuanced motives at all, magazines like King feature their pictorial back page closer with titles like "Backshot," or Smooth's "Rear View" page, outwardly admitting their publications are all about "fat asses and pretty faces."
For one, I am not a hater when it comes to the embrace of thick, womanly curves. Standing at an extremely low-to-the-ground 5'0" with my fair share of mixed-Boriqua hips & booty, frankly I was elated to read that Antoine Clark, editor of Sweets magazine wanted "page after page of short, stocky urban chicks with fat butts and big hips," of the graphic layout. But more and more "urban chicks" are finding these images offensive, and some say they actually make their day-to-day lives that much more difficult.
Sonovia, a 26 year-old local East Village bartender resents these images and says that as a Black woman, they do indeed make her life noticeably harder. Born and raised in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, Sonovia is a statuesque and striking Trinidadian-Puerto Rican mixed beauty, but is unmistakably spunky and hard as nails, and not one to fuck with. "When I saw that cover [of the Village Voice]," Sonovia says to me over a quickly disappearing rum and coke on a Saturday night around St. Marks, "I was so upset, before my shift began I took every one of those issues off of the street and threw them in the garbage." I agreed that the cover shot had been a bit much and pretty offensive, but was a really good publicity move. I often times don't know exactly how to express myself with these issues, as I am extremely white and basically unaffected by this kind of media representation, but I supported her move to make her job a safer and less irritating place. We ordered another round and I asked her to please continue venting, "I get that kinda shit all the time when I'm behind the bar," she tells me, "and it's mostly from white guys- they think they're 'down' because they watch Chappelle's Show and see these kinds of 'ghetto' images that it's okay to treat women of color a certain way; like animals. These idiot frat boys come-in every night, see me working the bar and think it's their perfect opportunity to put their hands on me and fulfill some kind of 'big booty freak jungle fantasy.'"
Big booty fetishization is no new phenom, either. The "Hottentot Venus" of 19th Century fame was a title given to one or more indentured or enslaved Khoisan South African women, as they toured Europe as the main attraction of a freak show. Their asses were literally the main attraction, put on display and paraded around for a price, usually in a burlesque-like atmosphere. It was not unheard of for people to pay extra to touch the Venus' legendary rump, and they were often times pimped-out by the show managers after-hours. They were not only sexualized curiosities, but the Hottentot Venus' were viewed and treated as subhuman. Saarjtie Bartman, the most famous Hottentot Venus was studied and treated as a science experiment during her life, and when she died at age 25, her body was sold to the Musée de l'Homme, dissected, studied, and put on display in Paris, France. Her genitals, skeleton, and brain were on display in the anthropology museum until May 6th, 2002 when she was finally returned to her native South Africa after much tumult between the two nations, and laid to rest in a proper Khoisan burial.

The men's urban interests rags that wallpaper and litter the trains and news stands of the city are nothing incredibly new to any New Yorker. After reading the piece and discussing it with other ladies (and gent's), I was perplexed. We all basically agreed on, "yeah, big booty rags and urban men's interest- so what? They always have been and always will be, most likely." Perhaps shocking to middle America as they quickly spread in popularity to racks nation-wide, King, XXL, Vibe, BlackMen, and the like are probably not winning any wars of justice or starting any great revolutions with pin-ups and centerfolds. At best, they're running a successful game , getting rich themselves and making the jerks at the Village Voice richer. Their "activism" spin was asinine and played-out; it served to soften the ethical blows to the Village Voice's false political egoism as they simultaneously slapped "urban chicks" and women of color so as to be "down." I think the irony of this whole absurdity is that the morons reading this piece as a sociological/anthropological window into "urban culture" wouldn't dream of going into the neighborhoods where these publications are on every toilet's tank and end table, and if a regular reader walked too closely behind him or her at night, you'd better believe they'd have their Lily-white fingers on the 9-1-1 dial of their blackberry.

Post Note: Unfortunately, after much Internet digging, I couldn't find a picture of the cover of the Voice. Please forgive, as this was the focus of my tangents.