When you can’t find what you want, make it.

Quite simply it is the desire–one might indeed say the need–in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest. (An Image of Africa, 2)

Safari Trend from an ELLE magazine spread for Spring 2008

If there is an inferiority complex, it is the outcome of a double process: // –primarily, economic; //–subsequently, the internalization — or, better, the epidermalization — of this inferiority._Franz Fanon

Take an interest in print media and broadcasting. I also recommend blogs such as http://schememag.com/and http://clutchmagonline.com/. They capture a new sharp perspective for African American women on Fashion and Media, and I look to them for new ideas and artists. We have the creative power to create change. When you can’t find what you want, make it.

Questions I have about this editorial spread :

1. What Africa is referred to in this advertisement?

2. What was so great about Colonial Fashion? What does it imply about power based on the ability to buy expensive clothes representative of repressive regimes?

3. What do you think of when you see the phrases :  Out of Africa, Stark White, Urban Jungle and Khaki Rule? What message is sent to the reader of this magazine?