SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2010
KLMNO Essence’s hiring of a white fashion director should be a symbol of inclusiveness In the face of weeks of frenzied
ROBIN GIVHAN On Fashion
W
ith its September issue, Essence marks its 40th anniversary by proudly
reiterating its longstanding mission: The magazine “celebrates, empowers and inspires black women to be bold and beautiful,” Editor Angela Burt-Murray writes in the opening pages. The issue follows with a report on the state of black women, an essay by first lady Michelle Obama and the introduction of a new fashion director. It’s that last fact that has overshadowed everything else. Why? Because Ellianna Placas is white. She was a freelancer in the fashion department for six months before being hired to oversee the fashion message. In some corners of the
Internet, the reaction to her race was visceral and unforgiving — outbursts sometimes untempered by thoughtful consideration. Some of the hurt arose from the harsh reality that there’s a scarcity of women of color in top jobs anywhere in the fashion industry. Some saw the Essence position as the one guaranteed perch from which a black woman’s fashion vision could shine.
Also mixed into the stew of emotion was the inference that a white woman couldn’t fully comprehend a black woman’s often-fraught relationship with her hair, body and sexuality — as her feelings about her appearance sometimes carry the echoes of history and racism. And finally, there was the unspoken irritation that once again, in the beauty competition, white trumped black — this time, on the home court. On the other side of the
debate, many saw the attacks on Placas’s hiring as nothing more than reverse racism. If Vogue should be encouraged to diversify its top ranks, why shouldn’t Essence? Why should whiteness be a disqualifying
vituperation on blogs — and with only modest public support — Burt-Murray briefly explained her decision in an essay on The Grio. (She declined to comment for this column, preferring to pass on a discussion of the magazine’s anniversary if it included a conversation about Placas.) Essentially, Burt-Murray wrote, Placas was the best person for the job. The fashion director oversees
style stories, models and clothes. She serves as an ambassador to designers, the stylish public face of the magazine, someone who stands only a few steps behind the editor in chief.
Because clothes are about
image and mythmaking, the fashion director has outsize importance. She is intimately involved with readers as they use their wardrobe as a building block to self-definition. And Essence has always underscored the significance of style among its readers who so often were striving to make themselves seen and heard in a culture that tried to ignore or pigeonhole them. Essence also made a
COMING A LONG WAY: As Essence celebrates its 40th anniversary — with an issue whose cover features models, bottom from left, Naomi Campbell, Iman and Liya Kebede — it continues to be for and about black women. The first issue, top, featured model Barbara Cheeseborough.
astronauts and secretary of state, beauty icons and screen idols. Their appeal has been mass and their emulators have come in all colors.
MARC DIMOV/PATRICKMCMULLAN.COM
FACE OF CHANGE: Ellianna Placas (with photographer Yu Tsai) was considered the best person for the job, Essence’s editor says.
factor for a high-profile job at a magazine aimed at a black audience? None of those feelings should be dismissed or taken lightly. But context and timing are
important, too. The tumult over who’s leading the fashion department at a magazine for
and about black women comes at a moment when the most prominent woman in the country — the first lady — is African American. President Obama’s closest confidante, aside from his wife, is another black woman, Valerie Jarrett. Black women have been
Black women are still subject to inequity and stereotypes. Indeed, the first lady is not exempt from being caricatured in ways would make even a segregationist cringe. But the advances that women of color have made — the very
accomplishments the magazine celebrates — complicate the Placas flap. One has to wonder: Were protesters failing to look at the bigger picture?
distinction between the private black woman and her public self. The book was conceived as a supportive girlfriend who whispered secret wisdom into her friend’s ear. And it treated a black woman’s sense of style as though it was unique: the “special” beauty of black women. That perspective is moving toward obsolescence. Models such as Liya Kebede and Queen Latifah have won lucrative cosmetics contracts from Estée Lauder and Cover Girl, making black beauty more mass market than ever. Black models have starred as Victoria’s Secret angels — the contemporary version of a popular pin-up. Fashion designers vie to dress stars such as Beyoncé, Paula Patton and Viola Davis with the same ferocity as white ones. Black actresses regularly entrust their public image to white stylists. And designers of every race and ethnicity salivate at the prospect of dressing the first lady and a rainbow coalition of them have helped her look her best.
Burt-Murray assures her readers that despite the hiring of
a white fashion director, Essence’s mission hasn’t changed. But 40 years after it was first articulated, it should. Black women no longer need Essence to nurture their souls— as one of the magazine’s uplifting essays might put it. According to Essence’s own survey, their souls are just fine. So is their self- confidence. And when they fall on hard times, their greatest support could easily come from someone who looks nothing like them. Seventy-seven percent of black women say at least one of their five closest friends is of a different race.
Black women still need a strong voice in the fashion industry. Someone to remind Allure that kinky hair is not the same as curly hair and that dark skin is ebony, not medium brown. Someone to introduce Vogue to socialites who call Spelman and Howard their alma maters and not just Brown. Instead of assuring her readers that nothing has changed, Burt-Murray should inform them that going forward, everything has. How bold it would be if Essence embraced the rise of Michelle Obama — a black woman who serves as a symbol of the American woman — and used that as a signal that it’s time for the magazine’s beloved “sister-to-sister” conversations between black women to be overheard by others, for them to include other voices. Instead of wishing that the brouhaha over Placas would die down, Burt-Murray should take to the airwaves and hold up her decision as a sign that Essence isn’t just about black women. Black women aren’t “special.” They are individuals and they are universal. Just as surely as a black woman can develop the skills and sensitivity to someday hold sway over the entire fashion industry, a white woman can learn to seek out a diverse range of designers and a beautiful mix of models. And if the mainstream glossies keep to their mostly homogenous ways, so be it. That’s another battle. Essence shouldn’t aspire to be just like all the other magazines. It should aim to be better.
givhanr@washpost.com
E3
‘ANIMAL KINGDOM’
In crime film, a new group of Australian actors emerges Director’s debut, a hit
with critics, tells story of Melbourne crime family
by Christine Kearney
new york — Russell Crowe, Eric Bana and Sam Worthington may be in favor in Hollywood, but a new group of Aussie actors is win- ning fans in indie crime drama “Animal Kingdom” and could soon challenge their countrymen for jobs in studio movies. The movie, which opens in
Washington on Friday, likens re- maining alive in the Australian crime world to the theory of sur- vival of the fittest, which has al- ways been the rule of maintaining a strong Hollywood career. “Animal Kingdom” was named
best dramatic film by judges at January’s Sundance Film Festival, and if early reviews are any in- dication, it is having similar sway with critics. The movie features Guy Pearce, who is fairly well known in the United States, but surrounding him is an ensemble that includes Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton and Jacki Weaver—hardly U.S. house- hold names. It tells the story of an alienated
teenage boy who moves into the Melbourne home of his grand- mother and once there, follows the path of his volatile uncles into a world of robbery, drug dealing and murder while also being pursued by police. “Animal Kingdom” is the feature
film debut of director and writer David Michod, who spent 10 years developing the story among other projects and said the title is de- rived from its “social Darwinist survival-of-the-fittest theme.” “I wanted it to be about cops and robbers and everything in be- tween and the ways in which all of these different animals, in a sense, move in this particular jungle and the way they brush up against each other,” he said. The movie has been compared
TONY MOTT/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
UP FROM DOWN UNDER: Sullivan Stapleton is among the cast of “Animal Kingdom.”
to British crime films of the past decade, with numerous twists and turns. The IndieWire Web site, which
tracks the independent film world, said “Michod’s cold, hopeless vi- sion of life and death will appeal to fans of early Coen brothers noirs.” Variety magazine chimed in,
“Michod’s unusually accom- plished feature debut unfolds with a confident, almost antiquated sense of deliberation.” Michod, 38, said he was inspired by real-life crime families and events in Melbourne in the 1980s — including the killing of two young policemen that at the time he found “chilling and shocking.” “They were the dying days of the old-school bank robber and the dy- ing days of an equally old-school, hardened core of the armed rob- bery squad in Melbourne,” he said. Beyond the story, however, it has been the ensemble cast — many of whom have long been known in their native Australia — that has wowed fans and critics in early screenings. Edgerton earned some plaudits
WHERE THE ARTS COME OUT TO PLAYTM
This Week at Wolf Trap
PREMIER SPONSOR 2010 WOLF TRAP SUMMER SEASON
last year sharing the stage with Cate Blanchett in New York in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and is moving from starring in several Australian films to U.S. movies. Mendelsohn, who appeared in Baz Luhrmann’s “Australia,” has long been considered one of the coun- try’s best actors whose fame has yet to transfer overseas. And Weaver, 63, who plays the tough and nurturing grandmother Janine “Smurf” Cody, has carved out a career over four decades in her native land on stage and screen. Having spent part of his child- hood and considerable time as an adult in Melbourne, Mendelsohn said it was fairly easy to imagine his disturbed character, a thug whose “business” in armed rob- bery doesn’t make the money it once did. He said his character, Andrew
“Pope” Cody, expresses himself vio- lently as a normal way of life, yet “in an unchecked kind of person like him, it [anger] will go to ex- treme kind of places.” Michod said he specifically wrote roles for several of the ac- tors, including Mendelsohn. “I rel- ished being able to give him some- thing meaty to chew on,” he said. And one of his goals in creating tension for the movie was to keep the angry and violent personalities of the characters underneath their skin and inside their own minds until they lash out.
“I wanted the violence to ex- plode out of nowhere and be gone in the blink of an eye, which is how I imagine violent events are ex- perienced by people in the real world,” he said. Now in talks with Hollywood for
his next film, Michod said waiting 10 years for “Animal Kingdom” to come to the big screen was, in hindsight, worthwhile. “All young filmmakers should be prepared for the possibility it may take that long and it should take that long,” he said. But after that, and as long as you
have a hit — as Crowe, Bana and Worthington well know — careers can change fast in Hollywood. —Reuters
AN EVENING WITH GREAT BIG SEA Canadian folk-rockers fire up a crowd with hard-driving songs braced with gleeful spirit and wit
TONIGHT! 8 PM
TONY BENNETT Iconic vocal jazz star still resonates with generations of audiences
AN EVENING WITH FRI., AUGUST 27; 8 PM LAWN ONLY
THE ULTIMATE DOO-WOP SHOW STARRING:
CHARLIE THOMAS, FORMER LEAD SINGER OF
SHIRLEY ALSTON-REEVES, ORIGINAL LEAD SINGER OF THE SHIRELLES
THE DRIFTERS
THE FLAMINGOS FEATURING TERRY JOHNSON
JAY SIEGAL & THE TOKENS WITH THEIR SPECIAL GUEST JAY TRAYNOR OF
JAY & THE AMERICANS EUGENE PITT & THE JIVE FIVE CATHY JEAN & THE ROOMMATES
THE VOGUES FEATURING BILL BURKETTE & HUGH GEYER DADDY G, THE JARMELS & THE RAMA LAMA BIG BAND SAT., AUGUST 28; 8 PM
DONNA SUMMER “Last Dance,” “She Works Hard for the Money,” “Hot Stuff,” and other hits
SUN., AUGUST 29; 8 PM
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
THE RETURN OF THE KING
CITY CHOIR OF WASHINGTON
COMPLETE FILM IN HD! LIVE ORCHESTRA AND SOLOISTS
U.S. premiere with HUGE SCREENS! FRI. & SAT., SEPTEMBER 10 & 11; 7:30 PM
TAKE METRO TO WOLF TRAP!
MUSIC BY RICHARD RODGERS LYRICS BY OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II BOOK BY HOWARD LINDSAY AND RUSSEL CROUSE
TUES.–SUN., AUGUST 31–SEPTEMBER 5; 8 PM WEEKEND MATINEES; 2 PM
Celebrate the golden anniversary of this iconic musical with“My Favorite Things,” “Do-Re-Mi,” and more!
TheWolf Trap Express Bus, supported in part by Heineken USA, runs fromthe West Falls Church Metro; go to
www.wolftrap.org/visit for more information.
RODRIGO Y GABRIELA SPECIAL GUEST:
XAVIER RUDD Fusing fast-paced flamenco guitar with heavy metal and rock TUES., AUGUST 24; 8 PM
JACKSON BROWNE WITH DAVID LINDLEY
SUN., SEPTEMBER 12; 8 PM LAWN ONLY
ABBA—THE MUSIC Disco is back with a tribute to the greatest pop group of all time!
FRI., SEPTEMBER 17; 8 PM
SPECIAL FAMILY 4-PACK DISCOUNT AVAILABLE ONLINE!
ANITA BAKER SPECIAL GUEST:
VANCE GILBERT Sensual R&B songstress with soulful hit “Sweet Love” and more THURS., AUGUST 26; 8 PM
ACROBATS FROM CHINA Premier Chinese troupe presents breathtaking
acrobatics, music, and dance SAT., SEPTEMBER 18; 7 PM
PLUS Jeff Daniels, Jim Brickman, RogerMcGuinn, and more ON SALE NOW at The Barns!
GOLDEN DRAGON
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