Where are Indigenous models in our fashion landscape?
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Version 0 of 1. In their 55 year tenure, Vogue Australia has featured only two Indigenous cover girls, Elaine George in 1993 and Samantha Harris in 2010. The 17 year absence of Indigenous models has left a heavy weight on the shoulders of Samantha Harris and Jake Gordon, branded as Australia’s “Indigenous supermodels”. A model’s cultural heritage need not be announced; unfortunately it is necessary within the Indigenous community due to the limited reflections of us in Australia’s fashion and media industries. For Indigenous women, it’s a knee-jerk reaction to run to the newsagency counter when there’s an Indigenous woman on the cover of a magazine: we never know when an Indigenous face will next find its way to the newsstands. The whitewash of excuses about the lack of diversity in fashion is held out to dry every year. Stylists say they’re adhering to the “aesthetic vision” of the designers’ collection; casting directors complain “ethnic models” aren’t sent from the agencies for consideration; advertising agencies are simply meeting the needs of their consumers. In tow, it amounts to racism that resurfaces like daisies in the spring. The cornerstone of this debate is a western ideal of beauty, often pursued by Indigenous women across the Americas, Asia, Caribbean, Africa and India. Colourism, a “skin shade hierarchy”, was introduced to these nations through colonialism. Alice Walker used the term to describe the “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their colour”. This “divide and conquer” tactic used by colonialist was adopted by Indigenous peoples through the ideology that “light skin” equates to beauty. These days, the manifestations of colonialism is embodied by the global skin lightening industry, set to be worth $10bn in 2015. Cosmetic surgery is also on the rise, with reports of one in five Korean women undertaking a cosmetic procedure to achieve a more westernised look. Across the globe, women are ethnically tweaking and bleaching their melanin in the name of beauty. Colonisation has indeed left its psychological imprint in Indigenous women’s mindsets, activated every time we turn on the television and flip through a magazine. How do we push for change to see an equitable reflection of Australia’s culturally diverse society? Given the fashion and media’s resistance to open its doors to diversity, I suggest we stop knocking on their door. Instead of searching outside ourselves, I suggest we take a more liberating perspective. Colonisation has played its part in the vanishing of Indigenous people’s language, songs, dance and traditional practices passed down from generations; we need to emancipate from this mindset. We need to discover the beauty of who we are. Culture is inherent in Indigenous peoples; it can be resurrected. Investing in creative industries through independent publishing, media and fashion arms that infuse traditional and contemporary cultural expressions is advocating for change on our own terms. The success of Fiji and Shanghai fashion weeks is evidence of our Asian and South Pacific sister cities embracing their independence to make their mark on the international stage. Australian Indigenous Fashion Week brought a plethora of emerging fashion designers, models, artists and creative directors together for its debut earlier this year. It found new ways to integrate and influence a dominant industry with mutual respect and cultural awareness of its First Nations people. Initiatives such as Kimberly Girl and Sunameke, tailored to empower our young Indigenous and South Pacific women and their communities, are cultural tools that help solidify cultural identity and self-worth. It won’t matter how many times Indigenous women see eurocentric imagery or messages; the deprogramming of the western world’s ideal of beauty has already begun. Increased images, stories and beauty that reflect “us” outshine an assembly line of size 0’s, non-Indigenous, cookie cutter models. Indigenous women will no longer turn to skin lightening creams and scalpels to erase our ethnic features; instead we will embrace our heritage and natural beauty – standing firm in our cultural identity. A far more enriching legacy our ancestors could have hoped for. Sasha Sarago joins NITV’s Awaken: Black is Beautiful Forum on 24 September, 8.30pm to discuss Eethnic and Indigenous representation in fashion, beauty and the media |