Shattering
glass ceilings has become SOP for Bonang Matheba and it’s not hard to see why
she keeps bagging glossy cover after cover. She’s a major star and her’s shines
brighter than most. Her latest cover for Glamour Magazine is a case in point.
It’s no small feat being the first black South African on the cover of a
magazine title that has been in this market for over a decade. For Bonang it is
certainly worth popping a bottle of Veuve Clicquot for as I am pretty sure it
is for the editorial team at Glamour. For the rest of us it is also something
we should view as a victory because 20 years after Mandela became the country’s
first black President we are still faced with a situation where seeing black
faces covering international titles like Glamour, GQ, even ELLE, Marie Claire
and Cosmo is something that rarely happens.
I
guess the natural question would be why? In a country where black people are
the majority, how is it possible that magazines are still selling a particular
standard of beauty over another?
A very
interesting thread emerged over the weekend after stylist Bee Diamondhead
posted on her Facebook timeline that it is actually sad that Bonang’s cover is
the first black South African cover by Glamour South Africa, 100 editions in.
Many of us who pitched in were industry practitioners and we all had our two
cents' worth but the most interesting response, for me, came from Jason
Alexander Basson, who works for Conde Nast, the publishers of Glamour and GQ.
Do
note that we were all speaking in our personal capacities and not as
representatives of titles but being an industry practitioner, Jason shed
some insight into the whole dilemma of local covers/content and these were facts that
hadn’t come up on the thread.
He
pointed out that the local entertainment industry has only over the last few
years gained such gravitas as to give publishers options by way of celebrity cover
stars. I cannot agree with that. I think it is a reflection of how little
attention is paid to what’s actually happening out there!
“Every magazine title has,
irrefutably, been celebrating the achievements of local celebs and trying
desperately to foster the local culture in so many ways and for so many years -
it's undeniable.” True… but we need to do more!
“This thread doesn't take that into
consideration at all and I find it quite surprising coming from some people
here who have spent time working in local publishing, or some of you social
media personalities who have such close ties with the magazines. And while
there is undeniably a vast shortage of local celebs on covers, still, it's not
for lack of trying.”
There’s absolutely nothing I can say to counter this argument because
there are many industry practitioners that I know try very hard to do more
local stories and cover local celebrities for their respective titles, but this
is often met with resistance from publishers who obviously believe that their
formulas have served them well over the years and moving away from that is
something they perhaps are very sceptical about doing. There’s a bottom line to
worry about at the end of the day.
There’s a very firm belief that what readers want is what they are being
given but it’s not hard to see why magazine circulation figures are suffering.
While there’s no denying that online plays a significant role in diminishing circulation figures, I am interested in how much content influences that decline.
I speak of content because I think few glossy magazine journalists would
be able to make a case for local content because few are even as engaged with
local popular culture as they should be to begin with.
How do you explain a situation where you find journalists asking
questions like “who is Bonang?”. I’ve heard several instances of this happening
and it’s simply embarrassing! How do you explain a situation where Lee-Ann
Liebenberg covers Marie Claire’s naked issue cover and this goes virtually
unnoticed as Boity eclipses her as the undeniable star of that particular
issue? Surely, that shows that we are having the wrong conversations in our
editorial meetings, no?
The challenge, in my view, is for content creators to be in on what is
actually happening on the streets and what conversations the people they view
as their target market are having. In the South Africa of today I refuse to
believe that white faces is all that people WANT to see. If this is so, and
research actually exists to back this up, then I have to say the publishers
actually have proof that we, as black people, hate ourselves.
What I think also tends to drown in the noise, because this issue only
comes up when black faces are put on mag covers, is the fact that magazines
don’t hire a lot of black talent. When this happens we have seen the shift in
content and it is interesting that you can actually see the change when a black
journalist arrives at a publication. We’ve seen it at ELLE with Janine Jellars
and Refilwe Boikanyo and we’ve seen it with Bee Diamondhead herself and the
models she often used and still uses, not only at Marie Claire, but with other
work that she does outside of the magazine world as a stylist (and I’m only
talking here about professionals of my generation, I’m pretty sure history is
littered with examples).
The fact of the matter is that this shift in content towards a more
representative output cannot be separated from the fact that it happens when,
well, black people are given the opportunity to create content and because they
are in tune with what appeals to black people, the content will reflect that,
now won’t it?
What I am simply trying to get to is that there are two problems that underscore
the lack of local content in magazines and we need to stop making excuses for
it; (1) white people still dominate editorial positions and few of them are
engaging in South African popular culture (2) few black journalists are employed
by glossies.
Whichever way you look at it, it is undeniable that this is an issue
that is squarely informed by the stubborn status quo in magazines. Also, I
don’t think it is by co-incidence that the international titles who believe
they are giving their target market what it wants hardly ever crack the top 10
in terms of circulation figures. The top 10 is dominated by magazines who give
their readers what is relevant to them: local! This is hardly about covers,
it’s about content in general. I think very little attention is given to how
much our failure to capture the zeitgeist impacts on circulation.
Without taking away from the fact that Glamour’s Bonang cover is a step
in the right direction and we all ought to celebrate it, we must be cognisant
of the fact that more can and should be done and debate around these issues
must continue. If it doesn’t then the publishers have every right to believe
they are giving us what we want. And if so, why should they bother not carrying
on as if it’s all good in the hood?
