Indochine's Top Shelf

What Happened To All The Black Girls in Urban Mags?

Now I don’t want to go getting all racial, but it seems to me the urban eye candy genre had its origins in hip hop/rap music videos. The women in those videos and the early issues of BlackMen (note the name, Black men), KING, and Smooth were, by and large, black. So this genre started off showcasing black women for a mainly black male audience. But over time, this has changed dramatically in the magazines. It’s no longer about black women. It’s more so about white and Latina women. Let me state for the record that I have nothing against women of other races, but I don’t see a whole lot black women on Lowrider or Maxim covers. Yet, white and Latina women seem to dominate the few covers a black model can be featured on.

Coco has had at least 6 - count ‘em, SIX - BlackMen issues in the last two years. More than any black model I can think of. SHOW magazine just finished with the Latina Black Lingerie issue. Now the next issue is the SHOWcase, also featuring two Latina models on the cover: Jesika Maximus and Jessica Burciaga. I know for a fact issues with Bria Myles and Khyrsti Hill on the cover are waiting in abeyance while these new SHOWcase Latina issues come out.

Maybe this all comes down to dollars and cents for the magazine owners. Maybe black males don’t buy magazines with black women on the covers. If so, that’s a sad commentary and not an issue I expect a profit driven magazine operation to take on. But it sure would be nice to start seeing sistas return to the forefront of a genre (urban eye candy) they founded.
Jesikah SHOWJessica SHOW
CocoCovers




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