What Happened To All The
Black Girls in Urban Mags?
08/18/09 12:30 AM Filed in:
Video Vixens
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.
Tags: Jesikah Maximus