Despite the increasing use of models from diverse ethnic backgrounds, ethnic minorities are still hugely under-represented in the fashion world. When they do appear, their presentation has often been troubling and damaging. The fetishism of black women (and men to a lesser extent) in mainstream culture is no novel notion. Black women have been seen as sexual objects since slavery, but the topic is no less relevant than today, with the callously carnal presentations of black women in fashion.

This presentation is nothing but a modern-day adaptation of the space that black women used to occupy in the 19th-century mindset as insatiable sexual beasts. According to the study ‘Stereotypes: Negative Racial Stereotypes and Their Effect on Attitudes Toward African-Americans’ by Laura Green, this association between black women and sex is represented by a biblical cliché: that of Jezebel, the idolatrous Israeli queen, usually associated with prostitution and sexual voracity. 

These Jezebel stereotypes have been reinforced time and again in fashion: for example, Numéro magazine ran an editorial spread in 2009 called ‘Best Friends’, where black model R’el Dade appeared topless in every frame next to clothed white model Melodie Dagault. Dade was staged in a submissive sexual role where she rarely makes eye contact with the camera and is the sexual object. Her face is frequently masked in bondage-style headpieces and underwear of a similarly subordinate sexual inclination. Not only does this hyper-sexualisation hark back to the Jezebel stereotype, but the constricting garments she wears echo the historic subjugation of black people.

In 1979, People magazine interviewed Jean-Paul Goude, who has been the subject of much recent media scrutiny because of his explicit Paper photo shoot with Kim Kardashian, featuring full frontal nudity and her naked behind, intended to “break the Internet”. In the interview, Goude exposed a dark obsession with black women in his work. He was quoted stating that, from a very young age, he was captivated by “ethnic minorities – black girls. I had jungle fever.”

Goude capitalised on his “jungle fever” in the form of a highly controversial 1982 book of the same name, including the original picture that inspired the Kim Kardashian shoot. It also contains a piece with his then-girlfriend and muse, Grace Jones. One photograph portrayed her oiled and naked, in a cage, with a lump of raw meat and a sign reading ‘Do Not Feed the Animal’, another showed her again oiled and naked, and holding a safari whip around her neck with primitive tribal face paint and a third (you guessed it) oiled and naked, fighting her way out of a chocolate wrapper bearing her name. It does not take much to recognise the explicit references to colonial racial perceptions and degradation of black women in this spectacularly unsubtle set of pictures. And if you thought such flagrant fetishism of black women was a thing of the past, you could not be more wrong. The photographer Matt Doyle recreated the shoot with American model, actress, and fashion designer, Amber Levonchuck, better known as Amber Rose, for a 2009 issue of Complex magazine.

This racial objectification is not confined to women only; black men, too, have not been spared. Take for example the February/March 2011 cover of RUSSH Magazine, which featured Belgian model, Delfine Bafort, surrounded by a group of doting black men, who all appear to be lusting after her. While she is fully clothed, they are all naked. Examples of the objectification of black men are less frequent than for women, but they hold the same potency in terms of reinforcing colonial views of ethnic minorities.

While the incidences of questionable or demeaning use of black models appear to become, thankfully, less frequent, this remains a highly relevant and poignant issue in fashion. Only by recognising the dark past of ethnicity and fashion can we move on from it. The problem with racial stereotypes, such as the Jezebel archetype, is that their longevity is such that many believe them to be biologically inherited, rather than socially constructed. More recent manifestations of this unpleasant truth suggest that the fashion world still has a long way to go. Only when fashion photography champions beauty, innovation, form and style above considerations of race or racial tropes will we have reached a higher realm of art.