the politics of beauty

“It wasn’t so much Iman’s blackness that defied the fashion world of 1975; it was that she was African. She might as well have been from the moon. Not only did an African have no precedent in the business of good looks, but this one exuded an authenticity that made just about everyone else seem compromised in some way — including black Americans.”

from the book “I am Iman“, on her arrival in new york in 1975 and her effect on the fashion world in general, and the dynamics between africans and black americans in particular.

iman abdulmajid was a diplomat’s daughter and political science student at univ. of nairobi when she was “discovered” by peter beard; she must have had an inkling of how much her arrival on the fashion scene would have in upending long held views of africans, as the primitive, unsophisticated other, incapable of fitting into mainstream notions of beauty.