UNDERGRADUATE

FIGURE 4
An advertisement for G&T Real Human Hair. Tan Confessions. Mar
1951. Microform. Jan. 2016.
FIGURE 5
An advertisement by Laurel Company. Tan Confessions. Jan 1951.
Microform. Jan. 2016.
posses shared cultural ideals. 19 Had Tan Confessions
sought to publish, say, medicinal ads that combat the
body’s internal problems rather than external, it would
have potentially succeeded in its goal of ensuring the wellbeing
of Black people.
Conclusion
The first two issues of Tan Confessions published
in November and December of 1950 contained no
advertisements. As time progressed, however, ads for
beauty products, household items, and expensive jewelry
proliferated throughout the magazine. What were once
quarter-page advertisements eventually evolved into
full-page spreads, constituting almost one-third of the
entire publication. Such a rise in advertisements in Tan
Confessions reflected the larger society’s accepting
attitude toward consumerism.
While I have pointed out the multiple ways in which Tan
Confessions failed in its goal of racial uplift among Black
people, it is worthwhile to mention how racial uplift was
practiced before the period of economic prosperity during
the 50s. bell hooks recounts the shared values associated
with Blacks in the south during this time:
A child of the fifties in that part of the American south
that was always seen as culturally backward, I was raised
in a world where racial uplift was the norm. Like their
nineteenth-century ancestors, our working-class parents
believed that if we wanted freedom we had to be worthy of
it, that we had to educate ourselves, work hard, be people
of integrity. Racial uplift through self-help meant not just
that we should confront racism, we should become fully
cultured holistic individuals. 20
Unfortunately, the value placed on integrity and
education was replaced with hedonistic consumption
as Tan Confessions so clearly emphasized through its
advertisements. Useful strategies to move away from the
destructive culture of Black consumerism involve rejecting
negative images, languages, and representation of Blacks
in advertisements and mass media. Again, hooks describes
the formation of this damaging culture of consumerism:
When many black Americans measured their potential for
freedom, success, and well-being against the standard set
by white middle-class culture and the burgeoning culture
of class privilege that prioritized consumerism and greed,
they saw ethical and moral values as impediments. 21
When the compulsion to consume is suppressed, a re-
19 Kim B. Sheehan, Controversies in Contemporary Advertising (United
Kingdom: Sage Publications, 2004), 95.
20 hooks, Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem, 11.
21 Ibid., 57
DEPAUL UNIVERSITY
13