The politics of fashion and beauty in Africa

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62 | Feminist Africa 21 Musisi, B. Nakanyike. 2001. “Gender and the Cultural Construction of ‘Bad Women’ in the Development of Kampala-Kibuga, 1900–1962”. in Hodgson, D and McCurdy, S. eds. ‘Wicked’ Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa. Suffolk: James Currey. Nannyonga-Tamusuza, Sylvia. 2005. Baakisimba: Gender in the Music and Dance of the Baganda People of Uganda. New York: Routledge. Prince, Stephen. 1990. “Power and Pain: Content Analysis and The Ideology of Pornography”, Journal of Film and Video 42(2): 31–41. Rumanzi, Abraham, 2012. “Sheba’s Kigali Mission” The Independent 13th March 2012. http://www.independent.co.ug/rwanda-ed/rwanda/5393-shebas-kigali-mission (Accessed 22 December 2015). Sackey, M. Brigid. 2003. “Apuskeleke: Youth Fashion Craze, Immorality or Female Harassment?” Etnofoor 16(2): 57–69. Tamale, Sylvia. 2013. “Eroticism, Sensuality and Women’s Secrets among the Baganda: A Critical Analysis” in Jolly, S., Cornwall, A. and Hawkins, K. eds. Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure. London: Zed Books. The Republic of Uganda. 2014. The Anti-Pornography Act. Vance, Carole. 1984. “Pleasure and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality”, in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Boston: Routledge. Zeiger, Gene. 1996. “The Queen of Sheba”, The Georgia Review 50(2): 383–385.
Standpoint | 63 The weave as an ‘unhappy’ technology of black femininity Simidele Dosekun Black women everywhere seem to be in weaves these days. Afua Hirsh (2012) half-jokingly declaims that “the weave has invaded Africa on its march to world domination” while, referring to North America, Cheryl Thompson observes similarly that: “From Oprah to Janet Jackson to Tyra Banks and a slew of others, weaves have become a normative part of Black beauty. More so than ever before, Black women are bombarded with images that have normalised long, straight hair” (2009: 847). Certainly the research that I briefly reference in this standpoint piece, a study of young Nigerian women who dress in what I call “hyper-feminine style” (Dosekun, 2015a), began with my subjective sense of being surrounded, in Lagos, by women in cascading hair extensions. Yet whether in relation to black women in Africa or in the diaspora, feminist and other critical literatures have not caught up with the weave at all. Women’s contemporary hairstyling in Africa is under-researched in general, while in a number of works on black diasporic women and their hair, the weave is considered only as one style among others, in some cases merely listed (e.g. Tate, 2009; Thompson, 2009). The larger concern in these works is on black women straightening or otherwise chemically altering the texture of their hair. The significant lack of scholarly attention to black women’s weaves does not mean the lack of a certain prior and sedimented mode of seeing the style, however. There is a tendency, scholarly and popular, in Africa and beyond, to see black women’s appearance with hair longer and less ‘kinky’ than ‘nature’ would have it as evidence of a relative racial ‘self-hatred’ and ‘inferiority complex’; as a form of repudiating ‘blackness’ and sign of desiring ‘whiteness.’ For instance, Francis Nyamnjoh and Divine Fuh cite participants on a South African television debate on the topic of “Natural vs Weave” who
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Feminist Africa 21 | v Contents Edi
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along with letters from their audie
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normative and restrictive categorie
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Feature article | 9 the ‘modern l
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Page 43 and 44: Feature article | 35 Hansen, Karen
Page 45 and 46: Feature article | 37 “These Girls
Page 47 and 48: Feature article | 39 the domesticat
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Page 51 and 52: Feature article | 43 or barely clot
Page 53 and 54: Feature article | 45 Eurocentric te
Page 55 and 56: Feature article | 47 what you have
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Page 59 and 60: Feature article | 51 O’Shaughness
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Page 63 and 64: Feature article | 55 and hence skim
Page 65 and 66: Feature article | 57 emphasises sex
Page 67 and 68: Feature article | 59 relations with
Page 69: Feature article | 61 Bakare-Yusuf,
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Page 77 and 78: Standpoint | 69 Craig, Maxine. 1997
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Page 81 and 82: Standpoint | 73 hand as well. I str
Page 83 and 84: In Conversation | 75 Doing Beauty a
Page 85 and 86: In Conversation | 77 the waxing lad
Page 87 and 88: In Conversation | 79 but there is a
Page 89 and 90: In Conversation | 81 But on the oth
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Page 109 and 110: Tribute | 101 Tribute: Hajiya Bilki
Page 111 and 112: Contributors 21 | 103 Contributors
Page 113 and 114: Contributors 21 | 105 Yewande Omoto
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