MOYsauce: AFRICAN QUEEN, WHITE?
February 28, 2013 in THE MORNING SHOW
Numero magazine featured a 16 year old white model as an “African Queen” in a recent editorial.Instead of finding a black model, of which there is certainly no shortage of in the industry, the French magazine went to North Carolina and chose a blonde haired, fair-skinned Ondria Hardin.Numero spray tanned the model to make her porcelain skin a deep brown and dressed her in traditional African garb. The magazine has sparked outrage from various sources including a white editor for Jezebel who expressed her disappointment as well as her sadness for young women of color who may be discouraged from the fashion industry after seeing images like these. Of this year’s New York fashion week, only 8% of the models were black, 82% were white.Unfortunately this is not the first time the magazine has hired a white model to depict a black one. In 2010, they did an editorial with a white women again spray tanned much darker than her natural complexion and sporting a large afro wig. The photographer Sebastian Kim claims his intentions were never to offend anyone and that he did not know what the editorial was going to be titled beforehand.
