For the first time in its 40-year history, Essence magazine will have a white fashion director. The change, at a magazine focused on the lives of black women, outraged many African Americans. Among them is professor Mark Anthony Neal. In his blog, New Black Man, he described feeling a sense of loss for the magazine he came of age reading. "Beyond this sense of loss," he wrote, "what really is at stake when a 'black' magazine, no longer black owned, but still critically representative to our communities' sense of themselves, simply becomes another periodical?" Mark Anthony Neal talks about the changes at Essence magazine and the future of black publications.
NBM Saturday Edition The ‘Essence’ of Our Blackness? by Mark Anthony Neal
I first started reading EssenceMagazine as a 16-year-old living in the Bronx. Of course I was initially drawn to the magazine because of the pretty black women within its pages, but the magazine, then under the direction of Susan Taylor, offered so much more for my burgeoning political sensibilities. Building on an editorial foundation laid out by Marcia Ann Gillespie—who would later edit Ms. Magazine--the Essence Magazine that existed in the early 1980s was where I would be first introduced to Audre Lorde, via a published conversation between Lorde and James Baldwin. It was in the pages of thatEssence that I got updated on the political exploits of Kwame Toure (Stokley Carmichael) and provided a portrait of Louis Farrakhan before the controversies associated with Jessie Jackson’s first presidential campaign in 1984. I came of age thinking that Essence Magazine in contrast to Ebony magazine, was my magazine—Black America’s magazine. That the magazine was black owned and black directed only added to its allure. ThatEssence magazine hasn’t existed for a long, long time.
Essence Magazine has been in the news recently because of its decision to hire the magazine’s first white fashion editor. Former Essence fashion editor Michaela angela Davis perhaps captured initial emotions best, telling Clutch Magazine “I feel like a girlfriend has died.” But beyond this sense of loss, what really is at stake when a “black” magazine, no longer black owned, but still critically representative to our communities’ sense of themselves, simply becomes another periodical. Is there a response beyond simply decrying an editorial decision, that more or less is fully in-line with the magazine’s general editorial direction for the last decade?
One of the by-products of the Obama era is that there has been added pressure on black institutions to show that they are as progressive as the whites, who broke racial ranks to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election. Part of the initial response to the Shirley Sherrod controversy was rooted in this idea that Black America was to hold themselves as accountable for racist behavior as they hold whites accountable. It is in this context that CNN and TVOne contributor Roland Martin has suggested that Essence Magazine’s decision to hire Ellianna Placas as fashion editor is evidence of their “progressive” racial politics.
But there is nothing progressive about whites directing or overseeing black intellectual and cultural production. Historically, as journalist Esther Armah has suggested, whites have always been in position to sign off on how Blackness would enter the marketplaces of consumption and public opinion. Indeed what generated pride within Black America when Essence Magazine was launched in 1971 was the idea that this it offered an opportunity for black control of black imagery. As such the idea of a white fashion editor at Essence or a black themed magazine owned by a white owned global corporation seems too much like a long established status-quo, as opposed to anything that needs to be celebrated or worse still, labeled as progressive.
But the decision by Essence Magazine also speaks volumes about a general trend that challenges the professional capabilities of black women. When Honoree Fanonne Jeffers laments that “Essence started using any excuse to erode Black women’s sense of strength” she captures the sense of betrayal that black women have experienced, in relation to their partnerships with black men and the broader professional world. In the backdrop of a solitary white woman serving as fashion editor for a formerly black owned magazine, is the fact that black women are marginalized in the editorial leadership of mainstream journals and magazines, a state that is far more deserving of public outrage than the hiring of said solitary white woman at Essence Magazine.
To echo Jeffers’s point, in the decade since Time Warner acquired 49% of Essence Magazine, purchasing the remaining 51% in 2005, the magazine’s editorial direction seems intent on damaging the emotional psyches of black women and girls, if only present itself as the self-help haven for those same black women and girls, in an attempt to increase the magazine’s circulation. This is a time tested strategy in magazine culture, which in concert with the advertising industry, have actively sought to sell magazines to women by highlighting their imperfections—literally from the highlights in their hair to the shade of their toe-nails. All magazines have concerns about circulation, but what made Essence Magazine so special is that it was always above simply selling magazines.
Now Essence is just another magazine (like BET is just another television network) and our response to its on-going editorial direction, should reflect just that. The glossy colorful print gems that so many of us read, even a decade ago, reflect an industry trying to hold on to its past. The future has long been in social media and the blogosphere, where black women have been able—more than in any historical period—to fashion a view of themselves that they can take ownership of. This a point that commentator Felicia Pride recently made at theLoop21.com where she wrote, “I turned to the Internet and found online publications like Clutch…the online magazine is focused on ‘ushering in the new era for young, contemporary women of color.’ Visually appealing. Wide-ranging. Multicultural. Forward-moving. Me. And so many others like me.”
“Girlfriend” has died—we can mourn her, lament her passing, but now we must move on.
Yesterday, I found out from cultural critic Michaela Angela Davis (a Facebook friend) that Essence Magazine has hired Fashion Director Elliana Placas. The issue, of course, is that Placas is White, and Essence is a magazine that has been focused on Black women since 1968.
Davis is very upset, and since she is also a writer, I can understand her concern; Essence is one of the few places that has consistently provided employment to Black female journalists–and Black stylists and designers. Davis was quote in Clutch Magazine as saying that “I feel like a girlfriend died.” (Click on this to read the article.)
However, I have to tell you that what has made me so sad was not Essence’s hiring of a White Fashion Director, but that I really don’t care in the least anymore what happens to Essence magazine and I haven’t for a long, long time.
Like all of the African American women I know– and also, all the biracial women of African descent that I know, too—I grew up on Essence. It was lovely seeing all those super-fine, super-bad Sisters in cute, fly outfits, faces beat to perfection, and hair that was natural yet impeccably coifed. “You don’t need chemicals and you don’t need to be light-skinned to be pretty, either, though our beauty comes in all shades and hair textures”—this is what Essence said to Sisters each month.
The only other magazine that featured Black women on such a scale was Ebony, but let’s face it, Ebony wasn’t slick like Essence, which was just as classy as Glamour, Elle, or Vogue—magazines that might have a Sister on the cover every two or three years. Ebony, on the other hand, featured staged and sometimes, well, cheesy photo essays.
And Ebony clearly wasn’t about a Black woman’s point of view. It was invested in a traditional view of the Black family: Brother in the front, Sister and children to the side or the back, looking up at The Black Man adoringly and always deferring to him. Which is the way it was ‘sposed to be, right?
Always, Ebony let Sisters know that if they would just get on board the Patriarchal Man-As-Head train, everything would be great in the Black community. Meanwhile, there was a woman’s liberation movement going on with White Women AND Black Women. But, Ebony implicitly stated each month, this movement was for lesbians, straight man-haters who didn’t have daddies, and ugly women with buck-teeth who couldn’t get no man in the first place.
Essence, on the other hand, started off as a publication supporting “Strong Black Women.” In fact, Marcia Ann Gillespie was editor-in-chief of Essence for nine years. Gillespie used to be editor of Ms. Magazine, a mainstream “official” feminist magazine.
So, in the beginning, Essence was about putting black women first. Then, came the nineties.
I had a long conversation with Essence magazine's Jeannine Amber last month. She was working on a cover story about Beyonce Knowles, and she wanted to chat a bit about how celebrities negotiate fandom, its commonsensical expectations and its worst excesses.
Part of the point of that Essence article, which has just hit newsstands, was to discuss Beyonce's attempt to maintain a modicum of privacy in an age of Reality TV'd hyper-access. She is known for being pretty cagey about the most basic facts of her personal life, including her marriage to hip-hop mega-star Jay-Z.
