The female nude - raced skins
Overview
The history of the female nude is embedded with the history of colonialism, as seen in the history of the female nude it was the white female body that represented the 'perfect' form, this then positions the black female body in opposition. Here is a discussion around the racist histories of the female nude and how this history informs contemporary ideals around beauty and the female body.
This is a brief overview of some of the racist histories that positioned the black skin in opposition to the white skin, but this history is far too complex to do justice so for a more in-depth history see David Olusoga's rigorous analysis in his book 'Black British history'.
The history of the female nude is embedded with the history of colonialism, as seen in the history of the female nude it was the white female body that represented the 'perfect' form, this then positions the black female body in opposition. Here is a discussion around the racist histories of the female nude and how this history informs contemporary ideals around beauty and the female body.
This is a brief overview of some of the racist histories that positioned the black skin in opposition to the white skin, but this history is far too complex to do justice so for a more in-depth history see David Olusoga's rigorous analysis in his book 'Black British history'.
The ancient Greeks
The roots of racialised bodies can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, with many Greek scholars, such as Homer, Herodotus, Ptolemy and Pliny writing about the African continent both through first hand navigation of the land, and also through bizarre stories that were based in their imagination (Olusoga: 2016). For example, Herodotus suggested that somewhere in Africa people had the heads of dogs; Pliny the Elder suggested that Ethiopians ‘have neither nose nor nostril … Others ... have no upper lip, they are without tongues, and they speak by signs, and they have but a little hole to take their breath’ (cited in Olusoga: 2016, 35). This particular text became all the more dangerous as it was reprinted around the time that the first Western traders reached the shores of West Africa. As such texts permeated the minds of Western travellers during the 1500s.
The roots of racialised bodies can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, with many Greek scholars, such as Homer, Herodotus, Ptolemy and Pliny writing about the African continent both through first hand navigation of the land, and also through bizarre stories that were based in their imagination (Olusoga: 2016). For example, Herodotus suggested that somewhere in Africa people had the heads of dogs; Pliny the Elder suggested that Ethiopians ‘have neither nose nor nostril … Others ... have no upper lip, they are without tongues, and they speak by signs, and they have but a little hole to take their breath’ (cited in Olusoga: 2016, 35). This particular text became all the more dangerous as it was reprinted around the time that the first Western traders reached the shores of West Africa. As such texts permeated the minds of Western travellers during the 1500s.
Elizabeth I
It was during this time that smallpox contaminated Britain when pure white skin was seen to signify beauty, power and wealth. Queen Elizabeth I inspired the heavy use of white make up to hide the pock marks that pitted her skin but paradoxically became a symbol of purity for a ‘Virgin Queen’. This overt whitening of the already white face was a social and cultural politicisation of the skin in terms of class (with lower classes seen to have darker skins from working outdoors), and subsequently in terms of race. See link for interesting discussion around the painting opposite) |
Charles II
Although it wasn’t until the reign of Charles II that the British interest in trading human beings into slavery was fully realised, it was certainly instigated and already under way in Western Africa during Elizabeth’s reign, and Elizabeth herself profited from the early slave-trading expeditions of Sir John Hawkins (Olusoga: 2016). When Britain fully realised the potential wealth that such trading could accrue, they took it to a global scale increasing tenfold a heightened awareness of white pure skin, in direct contrast to the black skin of enslaved Africans (Olusoga: 2016). The vast wealth accumulated from the sale of human bodies, through which Britain became a dominating colonial power, needed to be justified as on the one hand slavery brought vast amounts of wealth into England, but morally it was hard to justify especially as England itself was considered a moral high ground where the air was considered ‘too pure … for Slaves to breathe’ (Olusoga: 2016, 118).Therefore scientific and religious arguments were used to dispel and debates. |
Religion
The story of Noah’s son Ham became synonymous with arguments in favour of the slave trade. The story goes that Ham betrayed his father and was subsequently cursed along with all his descendants to live a life in servitude. Although race is not mentioned in the bible, Ham’s descendants became equated with the people of Africa and this link was often recited to justify the ill-treatment of enslaved people from the west coast of Africa (Olusoga: 2016, 56).
Science
Science also provided justification, of which the following is an example courtesy of Lorenz Oken (1811) from his Handbook of Natural Philosophy,
The Ape man is the moor. The interior of his body does not show through his skin, which, like plants, is characteristically coloured – he is black and cannot display his inner emotions by means of colour. The human man is the white. His inside shows through the skin because the latter is translucent, uncoloured. The person who is able to blush is a human being; the person who is not, is a moor. (355)
The black skin here is further removed from its human condition in servitude by becoming animal and consequently non-human. The skin becomes a malleable political tool, used to subjugate ‘other’ people of non-white complexions.
The story of Noah’s son Ham became synonymous with arguments in favour of the slave trade. The story goes that Ham betrayed his father and was subsequently cursed along with all his descendants to live a life in servitude. Although race is not mentioned in the bible, Ham’s descendants became equated with the people of Africa and this link was often recited to justify the ill-treatment of enslaved people from the west coast of Africa (Olusoga: 2016, 56).
Science
Science also provided justification, of which the following is an example courtesy of Lorenz Oken (1811) from his Handbook of Natural Philosophy,
The Ape man is the moor. The interior of his body does not show through his skin, which, like plants, is characteristically coloured – he is black and cannot display his inner emotions by means of colour. The human man is the white. His inside shows through the skin because the latter is translucent, uncoloured. The person who is able to blush is a human being; the person who is not, is a moor. (355)
The black skin here is further removed from its human condition in servitude by becoming animal and consequently non-human. The skin becomes a malleable political tool, used to subjugate ‘other’ people of non-white complexions.
The black female body
Black women’s skin became defined as ugly, overtly sexualised, erotised and positioned as the ‘moral opposites of pure white women’ (Leeds Craig: 2006; 163). Nelson (2005) explains this as a device to embed idealisations of female beauty as whiteness,
The black female subject has a strained relationship to the history of Western visual art: frequently represented, yet often as an abject sexual and racial body, the polar opposite of the idealised white female subject. With art produced after the European colonisation of Africa, we are dealing with aesthetic and material traditions invested in the racialisation of bodies and bound up with the hierarchisation of race and the concomitant idealisation of whiteness. (45)
This manifested in scientific experiments that tried to solidify the ‘difference and superiority of the "white race"’ (Ahmed: 2002, 49).
Black women’s skin became defined as ugly, overtly sexualised, erotised and positioned as the ‘moral opposites of pure white women’ (Leeds Craig: 2006; 163). Nelson (2005) explains this as a device to embed idealisations of female beauty as whiteness,
The black female subject has a strained relationship to the history of Western visual art: frequently represented, yet often as an abject sexual and racial body, the polar opposite of the idealised white female subject. With art produced after the European colonisation of Africa, we are dealing with aesthetic and material traditions invested in the racialisation of bodies and bound up with the hierarchisation of race and the concomitant idealisation of whiteness. (45)
This manifested in scientific experiments that tried to solidify the ‘difference and superiority of the "white race"’ (Ahmed: 2002, 49).
The most notorious example of this is the exploitation of Saartjie Baartman, of the Khoikhoi people of South Africa, who was transported to London and Paris in 1810. More famously known as the ‘Hottentot Venus’, she was exhibited for her ‘primitive genitalia’, although the focus was mainly on her large buttocks. Scientific narratives developed physical signifiers during this period that racialised black women’s body parts as malformed, hypersexual and therefore deviant. Even in death her body became a scientific specimen exhibited in L’Musee de l’Homme in Paris.
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The black body in contemporary media imagery
As discussed earlier, the black female body is historically inscribed as overtly sexualised, and in contemporary media imagery this is often aligned with a black woman’s ‘booty’, a contemporary manifestation of the sexualisation and dehumanisation of Saartjie Baartman, the Hottentot Venus. As Hobson (2018b) explains,
the representational politics that framed the Hottentot Venus in the nineteenth century is specific to the era, but remnants abound in twenty-first century imagery concerning beauty, sexuality, and racialized gender. (108).
Racialised tropes that essentialise the black booty continue in contemporary media imagery, and are exemplified in the contemporary music scene by the phenomenon of ‘twerking’ (Noble: 2008). This is a dance move consisting of rapid up and down movements of the bottom, that highlights the curvaceousness of the black ‘booty’, but perpetuates Western associations of sexual deviance at the same time, rather than the history of the twerk which is far richer and more diverse than this oversimplification.
Hobson (2018b) critiques the twerk as culturally appropriated by white singers, including Miley Cyrus, Iggy Azalea and Taylor Swift, for ‘engaging in racial tropes that mobilise black women’s sexualities’ (108). Hobson cites the example of the transition made by Cyrus from the sweet innocent role of Hannah Montana to grown up sexually provocative singer. In her ‘coming out’ videos, Cyrus uses the black body to signify this shift through her association with black deviance as a signifier for her own sexual maturity (Hobson: 2018a).
In contemporary media imagery the coding of female racial inscriptions shaped by historical events are embedded in contemporary readings of the black body. This is then re-mobilised and used to empower the white body to throw off out-dated patriarchal stereotypical gender tropes. The role of the morally pure daughter, wife and mother, (discussed in the Moral Skin page) constructed through the absence of the black body now becomes so through its proximity to the black body. Gilman (1985) insightfully unpicks this relationship, highlighting that through the historic sexualisation of the ‘deviant’ black body, the central presence is always that of the white woman, who has the historical ability to use the black body as a palimpsest. Once this is established, the black body is no longer needed as a sexual signifier. As Hobson (2018b) claims ‘Once again, we witness the theft of a black woman’s body’ (109). However, Hobson goes onto explore the retaking of black women’s bodies, a ‘pushing back’ particularly in the contemporary music and arts scene, shared through the cultural frame of Twitter and Instagram. She proclaims that
the booty don’t lie” – despite the incredible lies told on the black booty – we can dance in the space of our own truths, reclaim our bodies, assert our beauty, and redefine our sexual selves on our own terms … for careful and painstaking reassemblage of missing parts and new interpretations. (Hobson: 2018b, 118)
The future
Pulling through all these complex histories, it is time, as Hobson (2018b) argues, ‘for careful and painstaking reassemblage of missing parts and new interpretations’ (118). The missing parts, in terms of the black female body in art history, are visible through its absence. The black body’s absence can be situated through the presence of the white body. In contemporary feminist art practices, however, women’s bodies of all races, sexualities, abilities and ages are being (re)drawn.
As discussed earlier, the black female body is historically inscribed as overtly sexualised, and in contemporary media imagery this is often aligned with a black woman’s ‘booty’, a contemporary manifestation of the sexualisation and dehumanisation of Saartjie Baartman, the Hottentot Venus. As Hobson (2018b) explains,
the representational politics that framed the Hottentot Venus in the nineteenth century is specific to the era, but remnants abound in twenty-first century imagery concerning beauty, sexuality, and racialized gender. (108).
Racialised tropes that essentialise the black booty continue in contemporary media imagery, and are exemplified in the contemporary music scene by the phenomenon of ‘twerking’ (Noble: 2008). This is a dance move consisting of rapid up and down movements of the bottom, that highlights the curvaceousness of the black ‘booty’, but perpetuates Western associations of sexual deviance at the same time, rather than the history of the twerk which is far richer and more diverse than this oversimplification.
Hobson (2018b) critiques the twerk as culturally appropriated by white singers, including Miley Cyrus, Iggy Azalea and Taylor Swift, for ‘engaging in racial tropes that mobilise black women’s sexualities’ (108). Hobson cites the example of the transition made by Cyrus from the sweet innocent role of Hannah Montana to grown up sexually provocative singer. In her ‘coming out’ videos, Cyrus uses the black body to signify this shift through her association with black deviance as a signifier for her own sexual maturity (Hobson: 2018a).
In contemporary media imagery the coding of female racial inscriptions shaped by historical events are embedded in contemporary readings of the black body. This is then re-mobilised and used to empower the white body to throw off out-dated patriarchal stereotypical gender tropes. The role of the morally pure daughter, wife and mother, (discussed in the Moral Skin page) constructed through the absence of the black body now becomes so through its proximity to the black body. Gilman (1985) insightfully unpicks this relationship, highlighting that through the historic sexualisation of the ‘deviant’ black body, the central presence is always that of the white woman, who has the historical ability to use the black body as a palimpsest. Once this is established, the black body is no longer needed as a sexual signifier. As Hobson (2018b) claims ‘Once again, we witness the theft of a black woman’s body’ (109). However, Hobson goes onto explore the retaking of black women’s bodies, a ‘pushing back’ particularly in the contemporary music and arts scene, shared through the cultural frame of Twitter and Instagram. She proclaims that
the booty don’t lie” – despite the incredible lies told on the black booty – we can dance in the space of our own truths, reclaim our bodies, assert our beauty, and redefine our sexual selves on our own terms … for careful and painstaking reassemblage of missing parts and new interpretations. (Hobson: 2018b, 118)
The future
Pulling through all these complex histories, it is time, as Hobson (2018b) argues, ‘for careful and painstaking reassemblage of missing parts and new interpretations’ (118). The missing parts, in terms of the black female body in art history, are visible through its absence. The black body’s absence can be situated through the presence of the white body. In contemporary feminist art practices, however, women’s bodies of all races, sexualities, abilities and ages are being (re)drawn.
References
Ahmed, S. (2002) Racialised Bodies. In: Professor Mary Evans & Ellie Lee (eds.). Real Bodies: A Sociological Introduction. 2002 edition. Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan. 46–63.
Gilman, S. (1985) Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth Century Art, Medicine and Literature. In: H.L Gates & Kwame Anthony Appiah (eds.). Race, Writing and Difference. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. 204–242.
Hobson, J. (2018a) Remnants of Venus: Signifying Black Beauty and Sexuality. Women’s Studies Quarterly. 46 (1 & 2), 105–120.
Hobson, J. (2018b) Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture. 2 edition. Routledge.
Leeds Craig, M. (2006) Race, beauty, and the tangled knot of a guilty pleasure. Feminist Theory. 7 (2), 159–177.
Nelson, C. (2005) Venus Africaine: Race, Beauty and African-ness. In: Jan Marsh (ed.). Black Victorians: Black People in British Art 1800-1900. Manchester and Birmingham, Manchester Art Gallery and Birmingham Museums and Art gallery. 46–56.
Olusoga, D. (2016) Black and British: A Forgotten History. London, Macmillan.
Oken, L. (1811) Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie. Jena, Frommann.
Ahmed, S. (2002) Racialised Bodies. In: Professor Mary Evans & Ellie Lee (eds.). Real Bodies: A Sociological Introduction. 2002 edition. Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan. 46–63.
Gilman, S. (1985) Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth Century Art, Medicine and Literature. In: H.L Gates & Kwame Anthony Appiah (eds.). Race, Writing and Difference. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. 204–242.
Hobson, J. (2018a) Remnants of Venus: Signifying Black Beauty and Sexuality. Women’s Studies Quarterly. 46 (1 & 2), 105–120.
Hobson, J. (2018b) Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture. 2 edition. Routledge.
Leeds Craig, M. (2006) Race, beauty, and the tangled knot of a guilty pleasure. Feminist Theory. 7 (2), 159–177.
Nelson, C. (2005) Venus Africaine: Race, Beauty and African-ness. In: Jan Marsh (ed.). Black Victorians: Black People in British Art 1800-1900. Manchester and Birmingham, Manchester Art Gallery and Birmingham Museums and Art gallery. 46–56.
Olusoga, D. (2016) Black and British: A Forgotten History. London, Macmillan.
Oken, L. (1811) Lehrbuch der Naturphilosophie. Jena, Frommann.