black cover girls: double edged, multifaceted.
this essay was written for a history class on Black media.
Black women — namely, the bodies of Black women — were regularly featured in Black periodicals in the mid 20th century. Sitting at the convergence of Black capitalism, representation, consumerism, and a search for belonging, Black women were used as vehicles of racial uplift as well as tools of sexual attraction and capitalist marketing. As a result, the discourse around Black women in print was largely centered around what the bodies and behaviors of Black women “provide” in service to Black political and social agendas. The combination of sexual coverage and racial uplift meant that Black women as a whole, with their public image shaped by these sexualized portrayals, were seen as having conflicting roles as members of a larger Black community, and facilitated new forms of misogynoir.
The broadcasting and circulation of Black periodicals were curtailed by the limited socioeconomic possibilities of Black people and the Black public sphere at the time. White periodicals dominated the public sphere, and Black publications had to either compete with them or publish in their own space — neither of which allowed for an audience on the same scale as major white publications. As a result, Black publishers like J. J. Johnson of Ebony decided to include sexually provocative depictions of Black women in their publications — first inside, then on the cover — as a way to boost readership and circulation. This coincided with an evolution of the Black press, where the mass migration of southern Blacks into the North and Midwest transformed “hard” publications that were targeted towards upper class Black people into periodicals that were entertainment sources as much as they were news publications; the image of a professionally sexualized Black woman was introduced in contrast to the archetype of austerely heroic Black women like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. The imagined audience of the Black press moved from being a small literate elite to a mass reading public; content was now focused not only on racial justice but also to the diverse interests of a growing literate Black readership. Black editors believed that local Black communities were more likely to purchase sexually enticing and sensational publications; including provocative photographs of sexually attractive Black women was a way to both engage in racial uplift by advertising Black beauty and increase viewership and revenue by appealing to the desires of the masses.
The women that populated the covers and full-page spreads of these publications served a capitalist interest to draw in readers and advertisers. The desire of editors to increase circulation overrode any hesitation they may have had towards including sensationalism and sexualization in their publications, exemplified by a famous quote from J. J. Johnson of JPC: “We’re not the NAACP. We’re a business.” The American female beauty market represented an imagined capitalist-specific freedom to both “fulfill and enjoy a natural feminine role,” one where sexuality was integral. The inclusion of beauty photos also taught their Black female audience, who were previously unable to access this culture, to take part in this consumerist lifestyle. However, there was an ever-present anxiety over representations of Black women in the context of the hypersexualized, lascivious stereotype of the black female Jezebel; risqué images walked a fine line between showcasing Black female beauty and evoking racist conceptions of an accessible and promiscuous Black woman. Public comments regarding the Johnson Publishing Company’s pinup girls showed both a fear that such representations would be “injurious to Black uplift,” along with a hope that the images would inspire Black men who had been downtrodden by racism.
Black cover girls and pinup girls served a political purpose as proponents of racial uplift, and a way to demonstrate that Black people could engage in normalcy and patriotism the same way white people could. During WWII, American women became a tangible representation of what the soldiers were fighting for — the pinup, for example, became “a symbol of moral obligation and national pride.” After WWII, the pinup was taken by the Black press to promote Black masculinity, patriotism, and belonging — accordingly, the Black pinup girls of the Black press became a vehicle for men to project on, claim ownership over, and objectify. The objectification of women was essential to assimilation into the nation state: cover photographs of Black women as sexual objects helped the Black press access the discourse that defined American citizenship through the male-female dynamic of protector and object worthy of protection. Black publications following white publications in casually including sexualized women showed that they, too, shared this uniquely American value, and deserved full citizenship. Images of Black women also included them in the push for belonging; the visuals of Black beauties were meant to encourage pride in their nonwhite appearance, promote notions of black familyhood, and construct an ideal black middle class where Black women could access the same resources and respect that white women could.
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Black readers had a myriad of views on these sexualized representations as a potential route for equality and belonging in the United States. The revenue base established by the inclusion of sexualized images of women enabled publishing companies to make Black markets visible and attractive to white advertisers and companies, and this participation in the capitalist system was integral to Black claims to American citizenship. The publicity also helped periodicals publicize and generate interest in the experiences of racism that was inherent to Black Americans’ status as second-class citizens, as exemplified by the JPC’s publication of the photos of Emmet Till hidden behind a pinup magazine cover.
Most importantly, the Black cover girls themselves made visible the boundaries of normative beauty, even as they transcended white female beauty standards. Images of Black female sexuality persisted across the color line due to their popularity; the “Black sex goddess” ideal popularized by the JPC’s depiction of the light-skinned, heterosexual Dorothy Dandridge was spread to Black and white consumers alike. Popular images simultaneously celebrate Black women’s capacity for beauty, contribute to fetishization and hypersexualization of Black women, and shape societal expectations of what kinds of Black bodies are acceptable.
Even today, Black female celebrities like Lizzo, Meghan Thee Stallion, and Doja Cat employ their body and sexuality as a part of their public brand while at the same time claiming ownership over it. This results in a similar discourse by their audience (Black or otherwise) about whether their images serve Black sociopolitical agendas — and, most importantly, which agendas. Because of the unique place of Black women at the intersection of Blackness and womanhood, they continue to be an important linchpin in the discourses of marginalization, reclamation, and agency. They are not simply “in service” to some greater good of their race or the material good of a publishing company; rather, we must recognize that Black women have always maintained agency in their own intersectional existence, cover girl or otherwise.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gallon, Kim. Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020.
Greer, Brenna Wynn. Represented: The Black Imagemakers Who Reimagined African American Citizenship. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
Rhodes, Jane. “Pedagogies of Respectability: Race, Media, and Black Womanhood in the Early 20th Century.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 18, 2–4 (2016).
West, E. James, Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020.
