-
2. Race-ing Fantasy: The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in South Africa
- University Press of Mississippi
- Chapter
- Additional Information
29 2. Race-ing Fantasy The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in South Africa In the U.S., race is present in every institution, every relationship, every individual. This is the case not only for the way society is organized—spatially, culturally, in terms of stratification, etc.—but also for our perceptions and understandings of personal experience. —michael omi and howard winant, Racial Formation in the United States Valeria Mazza—a white woman—and Tyra Banks—a black woman— appear back to back in leopard-print bikinis on the cover of the 1996 Sports Illustrated (SI) swimsuit issue (Figure 2.1). They are framed against a blurred background of sand, water, and sky, and the bright yellow letters of the SI logo are half hidden behind their heads. To the left of Mazza is the white text that announces the year’s theme, “South African Adventure,” and the names of the two cover models. At first glance the South African locale seems merely the background for this year’s photographic shoot. Shot one short year after the end of the apartheid era, this cover photograph of black and white together in South Africa seems to celebrate this African nation’s new ideal for race relations. Yet the majority of SI consumers are American, complicating its meaning, for Americans experience race differently than South Africans do.1 This chapter explores the complexities of the racialized discourses that surround this swimsuit issue in the United States. In particular, I argue that the swimsuit photo essay reveals complex issues of fantasy, desire, and race that perpetuate ideas of white superiority over those with black skin. Because of the presence of black models on the pages of this swimsuit issue, connections between Figure 2.1. Valeria Mazza and Tyra Banks, Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue cover, 1996 Photograph: Walter Iooss Jr./Sports Illustrated/Contour by Getty Images [44.222.194.62] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:21 GMT) Race-ing Fantasy: The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in South Africa 31 31 Africans and African Americans add to the racialized meanings these photographs generate. To demonstrate this, I analyze four photographs of Tyra Banks and Georgianna Robertson, the two black models appearing in this swimsuit issue. I do so in terms of the various photographic traditions (advertising, fashion, and ethnography) with which they engage. A White Habitus The American press has paid attention to the cover of the 1996 SI swimsuit issue in two ways. One is celebratory. Tyra Banks is the first African American woman to make the cover of the SI swimsuit issues; and although in 1996 she shares the prestige with Mazza, she alone graces the cover of the 1997 swimsuit edition. In the context of a magazine that presents statistically few women athletes (10 percent) and few women of color (athlete or not), an African American obtaining the cover photo (something all the models hope for) can be seen as an achievement in the face of double discrimination.2 This achievement may not be all it seems. The models of color who have appeared in the swimsuit issues since the early 1980s tend to underscore the “racially-biased standards of beauty” promoted by contemporary media in general and SI in particular.3 They have light-color skin and long, straight hair, standards of beauty that posit “white” characteristics as the ideal.4 Those celebrating Banks’s presence on the cover seem willing to overlook the potentially biased beauty she represents. They focus instead on skin color simply in terms of black or white. Such celebrations ignore the complexities of blackness and whiteness as they are socially constructed. While the presence of Banks’s black body next to Mazza’s white body on the cover of the magazine signifies racially, the South Africa locale does so as well. South Africa was one of the most visible and overtly racist nations until the end of apartheid in the 1994 election gave black South Africans the right to vote for the first time. Throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century, the racist nature of South African society had the attention of the world community through events such as the student uprising in Soweto and the death of activist Stephen Biko (1946–1977) while in police custody in the 1970s, and the international protests and economic sanctions against the controlling white government of the 1980s. Therefore the locale itself is not neutral. It brings to mind, especially in 1996, this recent history...