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3 ‘Celebrating’ the Female Body in Global Trade: Fashion, Media and Music in Kenya Edward Waswa Kisiang’ani Introduction As we settle our intellectual nerves into the cockpit of the 21st century, there is probably no terminology which attracts so much scholarly attention as globalization. The term may mean many things to many people. Nevertheless, whichever way one looks at it, globalization signifies certain fundamental principles. For example, the rule of multinational corporations and the dwindling powers of nationalstates could be one factor of globalization. Besides, globalization could also imply a new type of centralized power controlled by the West (Martin 1999). It is an experience in which the world is dominated by powerful nations. Such domination could be financial, social, cultural, political and even technological. Fundamentally, the Internet is the icon of globalization because it not only promotes the continuous domination of world affairs by the rich nations but also creates new frontiers which perpetuate that domination. The impact of globalization on Africa is without doubt profound. Like many African countries which continue to experience the pressures of global forces, Kenya is still struggling to come to terms with the new developments. The focal point of this study is to interrogate Kenya’s experience with contemporary forms of globalization. Specifically, the study undertakes to highlight how the female body has been constructed in order to fit in and enhance the force of global trade within the country. To accomplish our objective, we have deliberately focused on the diverse but complex representations of the female body in the fields of fashion, media and music. Global Exchanges and Gender Perspectives in Africa 44 Contextualizing the Problem Our urge to undertake the present research was fuelled by the absence of serious scientific inquiry into the various ways the female body has been constructed and utilized in Kenya’s public life. Most of the works on female gender have so far tended to focus on the role of women in such areas as family planning (Ayayo 1991), the environment (Khasiani 1992) as well as politics (Association of African Women for Research and Development 1998). Yet the tendency to overlook the female body as an analytical category has also meant that there is very little understanding of the female gender in Kenya. Within the perspective of globalization, the female body has undergone varied and sophisticated constructions all over the world. For example, in the Southeastern Asian nation of Thailand, the female body has been effectively constructed and utilized to facilitate the lucrative enterprise of prostitution and tourism (Truong 1990). Here, the organized sex trade affects women at national and international levels. In general, pornography has become an attractive source of money in our world. Catherine Itzin (1992) has made profound efforts to address this question. Raising moral issues, Itzin has attacked the multimillion pound international pornography industry. Further, the author has meticulously explained how the woman’s body, in pornographic literature, has been manipulated in order to make millions of pounds in a male-dominated world. Can we, therefore, say that pornography is a significant element in the fashion, media and music industries of Kenya? Closer home, Mbilinyi and Omari (1996) draw examples from Tanzania to demonstrate that, over the years, the female gender has been put in a position of being the docile recipient of the male gender’s emotional and physical releases. How, we may ask, have fashion, media and music enhanced the docility of the female gender in Kenya? In its formal disposition, colonial imperialism tended to alienate its subjects towards Western culture. Evidently, colonialism was itself a form of globalization that psychologically forced the native to adopt Western lifestyles. In Black Skin White Masks (Fanon 1970), revolutionary thinker Frantz Fanon offers an anguished and eloquent description of the psychological effects of colonialism on the colonized people, arguing that those who ‘recognize themselves in it’ (colonialism) will have made the right step forward (Fanon 1970:12). The attainment of political independence in Kenya ushered in a new type of Western hegemony. In its postindependence dispensation, the colonial project transformed itself into some form of mysterious, faceless and anonymous power. At the level of the female gender, this power has manifested itself through the diverse ways the female body has been constructed and utilized so as to promote global commerce. Thus in ‘recognizing herself’ in global culture, the Kenyan woman has continuously experienced varying constructions of her body along lines defined by the Western [18.191.211.66] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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