The Study of Racialism

mixedmom · Moderator Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 775 }

http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/19/24/News/city.html

Black models need not apply
Stores try to make everyone happy with light, mixed-race faces
By VERNON CLEMENT JONES

How do you break the heart of a 14-year-old black girl? Tell her she'll never be a model -- not even if the afro makes a fashion comeback! Not in Canada!

My cousin Melissa is cuter than a speckled pup. Pubescent boys worship her, and all the girls look up, way up, to this 6-foot black beauty. So why couldn't she, why shouldn't she, make it as a model? Surely, the sky's the limit!

Back on earth, my desk sits warping under a mountain of Canadian catalogues and flyers -- 58 to be exact. Some hawk two-buck bargains, others herald designer discounts, but all use models to do it -- 2,476 model images in total.

According to Brandon Hall, director of the Armstrong Modelling Agency, "Catalogue work is the bread and butter of the modelling industry in Toronto."

And if a model is looking to scale mountains like Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, et al., she's on the wrong side of the border, baby. Here in Canada, there are two molehills: Flare and Toronto Life Fashion.

Of the approximately 80 models Hall represents, only six are black. Their number is small, he tells me, but they get plenty of that all-important catalogue work.

Discourage you
In my pile of flyers, only 13 per cent of the models are black. (Reason enough to discourage you, Melissa.) But get this: 92 per cent of those black models don't really look it. They're mixed -- they have one black parent and one white.

At Giovanni Models, Cory Mann tours me around the same mulberry bush. While TV and film work are supposed to play big roles in his models' futures, star billing for now goes to the catalogue.

Mann, too, represents a handful of black models and admits that there may have been -- possibly, in the past, you understand -- a preference for mixed models. "But today's client likes diversity and wants that true ethnic look."

As for the agency's two mixed models, whom he calls "his big money-makers," Mann is sure I've seen them in flyers for the Bay and Zeller's. He's right! With pride, I recall their peaches-and-cream faces alongside slightly peachier-and-creamier white ones. But for the darker faces of his black models -- those like Melissa's -- not many light bulbs flash. Still, Mann is adamant: "My black models work regularly."

A white model can work regularly. You bet! But she's the chosen one --chosen time and time again from her agency's "head sheet" (a photographic inventory of models). Yet just before her crow's feet dig in, a new chosen one will strike her pose. You'll never be any the wiser, though. The new is a clone of the old -- equally white, equally blond.

Just who's doing all this choosing? Retailers will tell you plain: the photographic studios.

These "catalogue houses" are hired by the Bay, Sears, Holt Renfrew and the like to book models, shoot photos and print catalogues.

In Canada, Networks Photographic Studio produces most of the Sears flyers. The studio's Luda Pawliw pooh-poohs the idea that colour plays any part in model selection. "It's totally not true that we book only mulatto models!"

But she has discussed this nonexistent bias with Sears. "The catalogue goes to every small town in Canada, like Tilsonburg, Ontario, and The Pas, Manitoba," Pawliw reminds me. "Sears has to keep that in mind. I don't tell Sears who to choose; Sears tells me."

Now, here is what Sears public affairs officer Christine Hudson says: "Sears Canada is committed to ensuring that our advertising reflects Canada's cultural diversity. We actively encourage the photographic studios and the modelling agencies to seek out talented individuals who can reflect this diversity."

In the Sears catalogue, 91 per cent of the black diversity is mixed.

At the high end of the retail market sits Canada's only answer to Saks Fifth Avenue -- Holt Renfrew. Here, Sally Scott, executive in charge of promotions marketing, concedes that Holt's "maybe in the past -- before we got a whole new team here -- lacked a wide diversity of ethnic representation. But I would say now we are committed."

Scott hastens to add, "I think Holt's is doing quite a good job of it -- better than the Bay!"

Well, that's true. In the fall 1999 edition of Holt Renfrew's magalogue, Point Of View, 95.5 per cent of the black models were mixed. However, the "new team" must have taken control by December, because in the holiday 1999 edition, a mere 70 per cent of the black models were mixed.

Over coffee, Toronto model Janice Guillaume, a grown-up version of Melissa, boils it down. The retailers and their photographic studios take plenty of cream in their coffee. They don't take it black, period!

And because the customers don't complain, they get away with it.

"The client (the retailer) thinks the mixed girl is light enough that the whites won't know she's black, but the blacks will know and be grateful," says Guillaume.

Gone backward
"We've actually gone backward. Eight years ago, when I started out, there were a bunch of us medium-skinned and dark-skinned black women doing catalogues, and we worked. Now it's mixed girls."

Although she's one of the few black models who get some flyer work thrown their way, Guillaume sees blacks today as largely confined to the catwalk, condemned to model that one neon-green dress.

"I've heard it so many times from the stylists and the photographers: 'Oh, let's wrap your head.' 'Oh, you can carry this colour off.' They use you as the accessory, and they want you looking freaky."

In a technicolour world, Guillaume could be any catalogue's cover girl. Like Melissa, she's the girl next door, albeit the drop-dead-gorgeous, 6-foot-1, brown-skinned girl next door. That's the image retailers sell, but they don't sell it in brown or in black.

Simon Curwen, professor of marketing at Ryerson, wonders what would happen if the retailers did sell that "image" another way. "If a retailer came out with 91 per cent of their models mixed and only 9 per cent white, how would we (white consumers) feel about that? I think the retailer would be very cautious. It is unlikely to happen, because they know their target audience."

A former ad exec, Curwen believes the pages of the Canadian retail catalogue are "changing to reflect Toronto's ethnic diversity."

Guillaume chokes on her coffee when I share what the Bi-Way's photographic studio served up: "There's just not a wide selection of black models out there," says Tammy Toole at TDS, "and because we're in Brampton, some models don't get out here."

So many
For a recent flyer, only four out of 36 models to "get out there" were "ethnic" -- two mixed women and one Asian, and one mixed baby.

"That excuse is total BS," says Guillaume. "There are so many beautiful black women in Toronto. And the only time you see them is at Fashion Cares, the AIDS fundraiser, when they need 300 models, and they're not being paid."

Janet Feasby, public affairs director for Advertising Standards Canada, says, "There are no mandatory standards on ethnic diversity for retail advertising in Canada."

But along with many others in the industry, she asserts that "retailers make every effort to be inclusive."

Roughly one in five models used in ads is "ethnic." However, there is no similar rule of thumb in place to distinguish one member of a racial group from another of that same group, based on skin colour.

Just outside the Bay, I approach a black woman who's trying to tame her shopping bags. Lyn Shephard gives me the once-over, but I look harmless enough. Handing her the Bay's flyer, I ask, "Please, find me the black model."

Flipping from page 1 to 60, then from page 60 to 1, Shephard knits her brow. "What black model?" On page 5, I point out the creamy brunette with upswept curls and up-turned nose.

Shephard kisses her teeth. "Where were you before I bought out the store?" Pioneer of the colourless catalogue, the Bay uses few black models and 99 per cent of them are mixed.

I'm still waiting for the Bay to return my calls. Who knows? They might. But Melissa, don't you sit by the phone. Get going on plan two -- be an anaesthesiologist!

NOW FEBRUARY 10-16, 2000 | 23