The modern girl and racial respectability in 1930s south Africa

Journal of African History

Volumn 47, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 461-490

  Thomas, Lynn M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

Author keywords

Gender; Identity; Press; Race; South Africa

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL HISTORY; GENDER RELATIONS; RACIAL DISPARITY; RACIAL IDENTITY; WAR; WOMENS STATUS;

AFRICA; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

EID: 33845257570     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: 14695138     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853706002131     Document Type: Article

References (255)

1. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the International Workshop on Gender and Visuality at the University of the Western Cape, the University of Stellenbosch, the International Symposium on 'Modern Girl, Asia and Beyond' at Ochanomizu University, the 2004 African Studies Association meetings, Rutgers University, Yale University, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the University of Chicago and the University of Washington. I thank the participants in these forums, other colleagues, and the anonymous Journal of African History reviewers who provided insightful commentary on those many versions. A Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies; a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship; and the Walter C. Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Graduate School and the History Department at the University of Washington generously provided funding for research and writing. Finally, I thank my undergraduate and graduate student research assistants at the University of Washington who collected some of the sources for this article.
2. Modern Girl research group (Tani E. Barlow, Madeleine Yue Dong, Uta G. Poiger, Priti Ramamurthy, Lynn M. Thomas and Alys Eve Weinbaum), 'The Modern Girl Around the World', Gender and History, 17 (August 2005), 245-94
3. http://depts.washington.edu/its/moderngirl.htm.
4. The work of a number of other scholars on modern girl-related topics has been crucial to our development of this heuristic device. This scholarship includes: For Brazil, S. Caulfield, In Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early-Twentieth-Century Brazil (Durham, 2000)
5. for China, S. Shih, 'Gender, Race and Semicolonialism: Liu Na'Ou's Urban Shanghai Landscape', Journal of Asian Studies, 55 (1996), 934-56
6. for France, M. Roberts, Civilization Without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 (Chicago, 1994)
7. for Germany, A. Grossmann, 'Girlkultur, or Thoroughly Rationalized Female?' in J. Friedlander (ed.), Women in Culture and Politics: A Century of Change (Bloomington, 1986), 62-80,
8. and K. von Ankum (ed.), Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture (Berkeley, 1997)
9. for India, R. Mohan, Of Wayward Girls and Wicked Women: Women in Indian Silent Feature Films (Mumbai, 1996)
10. for Japan, M. Silverberg, 'The Modern Girl As Militant', in G. Bernstein (ed.), Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945 (Berkeley, 1991), 239-66,
11. and M. Silverberg, 'The Cafe Waitress Serving Modern Japan', in S. Vlastos (ed.), Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan (Berkeley, 1998), 208-25,
12. as well as H. D. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton, 2000),
13. and B. Sato, The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan (Durham, 2003)
14. for the United States, K. Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986),
15. and K. Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (New York, 1998),
16. as well as L. Mizejewski, Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Icon in Culture and Cinema (Durham, 1999),
17. A. Latham, Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers of the American 1920s (Hanover NH, 2000),
18. and S. Glenn, Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge, 2000)
19. and for Zimbabwe, T. Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, & Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham, 1996).
20. For example, see B. Carton, Blood from Your Children: The Colonial Origins of Generational Conflict in South Africa (Charlottesville, 2000)
21. A. Stambach, Lessons from Kilimanjaro: Schooling, Community, and Gender in East Africa (New York, 2000)
22. 'Youth and the Social Imagination in Africa', Anthropological Quarterly, 73 (2000)
23. M. McKittrick, To Dwell Secure: Generation, Christianity, and Colonialism in Ovamboland (Portsmouth, 2002)
24. L. Thomas, Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya (Berkeley, 2003)
25. J. Cole, 'Fresh Contact in Tamatave, Madagascar: Sex, Money, and Intergenerational Transformation', American Ethnologist, 31 (2004), 573-88
26. J. Abbink and I. van Kessel (eds.), Vanguard or Vandals: Youth Politics and Conflict in Africa (Leiden, 2005)
27. J. Burgess (guest ed.), Africa Today (Special Issue: Youth and Citizenship in East Africa) 51 (2005)
28. Journal of African History (Special Section: Youth and its Discontents) 47 (2006).
29. S. Mitchell, The New Girl: Girls' Culture in England, 1880-1915 (New York, 1995), 3.
30. I have found the most extensive use of 'modern girl' in the papers Bantu World (Johannesburg) and Times of West Accra (Accra). For an insightful analysis of the 'modern woman' in the Nigerian press during the 1930s, see LaRay Denzer, 'Emancipation and the Modern Woman in Lagos (Nigeria)' (unpublished paper presented at the conference, 'Youth Policy and the Policies of Youth in Africa', Program of African Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, 10-11 May 2002). In reference to South Africa, I use 'black' as an umbrella term to refer to people who thought of themselves or were viewed by others, particularly state institutions, as non-white, coloured, African, Malay or Indian.
31. Modern Girl research group, 'The Modern Girl as Heuristic Device: Collaboration, Connective Comparison, Multidirectional Citation', in the Modern Girl research group (eds.), The Modern Girl Around the World (forthcoming).
32. S. Nuttall and C. Michael, 'Introduction: Imagining the Past', in S. Nuttall and C. Michael (eds.), Senses of Culture: South African Culture Studies (Oxford, 2000), 11-12.
33. See J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (2 vols.), vol. II (Chicago, 1997), esp. 29-35, for a broader argument about the importance of 'the everyday' for understanding social change and political life in southern Africa since the nineteenth century.
34. Burke's path-breaking history of consumption in Zimbabwe (Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women) implies that modern girl figures emerged in the 1950s and 1960s with the expanded marketing of consumer goods to Africans. Modern girls in the form of cover girls, beauty-pageant winners and lovelorn letter-writers proliferated in the pages of the popular magazine Drum, founded in Johannesburg in 1951. See the rapidly growing scholarship on Drum including: D. Driver, 'Drum Magazine (1951-9) and the Spatial Configurations in Gender', in K. Darian-Smith, L. Gunner and S. Nuttall (eds.), Text, Theory, Space: Land, Literature and History in South Africa and Australia (London, 1996), 231-42
35. R. Neville Choonoo, 'The Sophiatown Generation: Black Literary Journalism during the 1950s', in L. Switzer (ed.), South Africa's Alternative Press: Voices of Protest and Resistance, 1880s-1960s (Cambridge, 1997), 252-65
36. C. Ballantine, 'Gender, Migrancy, and South African Popular Music in the Late 1940s and the 1950s', Ethnomusicology, 44 (2000), 376-407
37. K. Mutongi, '"Dear Dolly's" Advice: Representations of Youth, Courtship, and Sexualities in Africa, 1960-1980', International Journal of African Historical Studies 33 (2000), 1-23
38. L. Clowes, '"Are You going to be MISS (or MR) Africa?" Contesting Masculinity in Drum Magazine 1951-1953', Gender & History, 13 (2001), 1-20
39. and Clowes, 'A Modernised Man? Changing Constructions of Masculinity in Drum Magazine, 1951-1984' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Cape Town, 2002).
40. L. Switzer, 'Bantu World and the Origins of a Captive African Commercial Press', in L. Switzer (ed.), South Africa's Alternative Press: Voices of Protest and Resistance, 1880s-1960s (Cambridge, 1997), 189-212, quotes from 190-1
41. T. Couzens, 'A Short History of "World" (and other Black SA Newspapers)', Inspan Journal, 1 (1978), 69-92
42. South African Institute of Race Relations papers, University of Witwatersrand (hereafter SAIRR) AD843 RJ Aa3.3.2 1, Correspondence on the Black Press, J. D. Rheinallt Jones's Letter on Native Newspapers to R. Muir, 16 Sept. 1931.
43. Although Paver had high expectations for Bantu World's advertising potential, its news-advertising ratio of 28-72 per cent during the 1930s was less than that of both militant and moderate black papers during the 1920s. L. Switzer, 'Bantu World and the Origins of a Captive African Commercial Press in South Africa', Journal of Southern African Studies, 14 (1988), 366-7.
44. Switzer, 'Bantu World', in South Africa's Alternative Press, quote from 198.
45. For subtle discussion of this group's ideology, see T. Couzens, The New African: A Study of the Life and Work of H. I. E. Dhlomo (Johannesburg, 1985)
46. B. Peterson, Monarchs, Missionaries & African Intellectuals (Johannesburg, 2000)
47. and Peterson, 'The Bantu World and the World of the Book: Reading, Writing, and "Enlightenment"', in K. Barber (ed.), Social Histories of Reading in Africa (Bloomington, forthcoming in 2006).
48. V. Bickford-Smith, Ethnic Pride and Racial Prejudice in Victorian Cape Town (Cambridge, 1995), 39.
49. B. Willan, Sol Plaatje: South African Nationalist 1876-1932 (Berkeley, 1984)
50. Bickford-Smith, Ethnic Pride, 203
51. V. Bickford-Smith, E. van Heyningen and N. Worden, Cape Town in the Twentieth Century (Cape Town, 1999), 43.
52. J. Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge, 2005), 246.
53. D. Goodhew, 'Working-Class Respectability: The Example of the Western Areas of Johannesburg, 1930-55', Journal of African History, 41 (2000), 241-66
54. Goodhew, Respectability and Resistance: A History of Sophiatown (Westport, 2004).
55. M. Wilson and A. Mafeje (Langa: A Study of Social Groups in an African Township [London, 1963]) similarly argue that notions of respectability were widely diffuse, if subtly differentiated, in Cape Town's Langa during the 1950s.
56. S. Marks, 'Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity: Natal and the Politics of Zulu Ethnic Consciousness', in L. Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (Berkeley, 1991), 215-40
57. Marks, 'Introduction', in S. Marks (ed.), Not Either an Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women (Bloomington, 1987), 1-55.
58. E. Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, 1993), quotes from 14 and 187.
59. Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 209-10
60. V. Wolcott, Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit (Chapel Hill, 2001), 1-10.
61. Also see K. Gaines, Uplifting The Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, 1996).
62. Bantu World's early circulation figures were double those of contemporary African papers including Imvo Zabantsundu and Ilanga lase Natal: Couzens, 'A Short History of "World"', 77. By 1946, Bantu World circulation figures had climbed to 24,000 per week.
63. Switzer, 'Bantu World', in South Africa's Alternative Press, 190.
64. For women's complaints about too many male letter-writers on the women's pages, see Bantu World (9 Nov. 1935), 16; (23 Nov. 1935), 12; and (21 Dec. 1935), 12. The paper did not publish any explicit criticism of a man serving as 'editress'.
65. Couzens, The New African, 42-81.
66. 'The Son of Africa', 'Great Progress! The Bantu World Calls to the Women of the Race' and 'Competition', Bantu World (22 Oct. 1932), 10.
67. 'Bantu World Beauty Competition Entrants', Bantu World (18 Feb. 1933), 10.
68. Later beauty contests in the popular magazines Zonk! and Drum relied, at least in part, on a panel of 'experts'. On South African beauty contests from the 1950s to the present, see P. Johnson, '"Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk": The Spring Queen Festival and the Eroding Family Cult in the Western Cape Garment Industry' (unpublished paper presented to the Oral History Project Seminar, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 7 Oct. 1993)
69. R. Barnard, 'Contesting Beauty', in Nuttall and Michael (eds.), Senses of Culture, 344-62
70. Clowes, '"Are You Going to be MISS Africa?"', 1-20
71. J. Kennedy, Cinderella of the Cape Flats, video (Johannesburg, Film Resource Unit, 2004)
72. and A. Ashforth, 'Weighing Manhood in Soweto', CODESRIA Bulletin, 3 and 4 (1999), 56-7.
73. C. Cohen and R. Wilk with B. Stoeltje, 'Introduction: Beauty Queens on the Global Stage', in C. Cohen, R. Wilk and B. Stoeltje (eds.), Beauty Queens on the Global Stage: Gender, Contests, and Power (New York, 1996), 1-11.
74. N. Isaacs, Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, ed. L. Herrmann and P. Kirby (Cape Town, 1970 [London, 1836]), 51, 56, 88, 107, 179, 190-1, 221, 265, 289 and 291
75. H. F. Fynn, The Diary of Henry Francis Fynn, ed. J. Stuart and D. M. Malcolm (Pietermaritzburg, 1950), 73, 164 and 293.
76. On feminine beauty as an important aspect of wealth-in-people in precolonial West Africa, see J. Guyer and S. Belinga, 'Wealth in People as Wealth in Knowledge: Accumulation and Composition in Equatorial Africa', Journal of African History, 36 (1995), 115-16.
77. C. de B. Webb and J. B. Wright, ed. and trans., The James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples, vols. I-V (Pietermaritzburg, 1976, 1979, 1982, 1986 and 2001). Quotes from vol. III, 151-2, and vol. IV, 339.
78. I. Schapera, Married Life in an African Tribe (New York, 1941), 46-8
79. M. Hunter, Reaction to Conquest: Effects of Contact with Europeans on the Pondo of South Africa (London, 1936), 222-6.
80. K. Hansen, African Encounters with Domesticity (New Brunswick, 1992)
81. Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women;
82. J. Comaroff, 'The Empire's Old Clothes: Fashioning the Colonial Subject', in D. Howes (ed.), Cross-Cultural Consumption: Global Markets, Local Realities (New York, 1996), 19-38
83. J. and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. II.
84. C. Cohen et al., 'Introduction', 3-4.
85. For other histories of beauty contests outside of South Africa, see F. Deford, There She Is: The Life and Times of Miss America (New York, 1971)
86. L. Banner, American Beauty (New York, 1983)
87. and L. Conor, 'The Beauty Contestant in the Photographic Scene', in The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s (Bloomington, 2004), 131-74.
88. S. Kracauer, 'Photography', in S. Kracauer, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans., ed. and intro. T. Levin (Cambridge, 1995), 57-8.
89. At the time of Bantu World's founding, J. D. Rheinallt Jones (SAIRR, AD843 RJ Aa3.3.2 1, letter to R. Muir, 16 Sept. 1931) noted the need for a 'magazine for Natives'. Illustrated magazines for Africans only took off in the post-Second World War period with the likes of Zonk! and Drum.
90. E. Hellmann, 'Native Life in a Johannesburg Slum Yard', Africa, 8 (Jan. 1935), 40
91. R. Phillips, The Bantu in the City: A Study of Cultural Adjustment on the Witwatersrand (Lovedale, 1938), 105
92. W. Sachs, Black Hamlet (Baltimore, 1996 [1937]), 148-50.
93. South African Pictorial: Stage & Cinema: 'Found in a Beauty Contest', 10, 239 (5 March 1920), 5
94. 'Searching for "Stars"', 10 (24 April 1920), 4
95. '"Beauty and Talent" Contest', 10, 250 (15 May 1920), 5.
96. Are You Beautiful?', South African Pictorial: Stage & Cinema, 15 (23 June 1923). During its six-month run, this contest proved popular, attracting nearly 5,000 entries, prize contributions from dozens of individuals and businesses, and the services of several studio photographers. The South African Lady's Pictorial and Home Journal ran a similar contest for 'the woman of greatest charm' in 1924-5.
97. See Cape Times (13 Dec. 1931 and 25 July 1933, supplement)
98. and The South African Annual Pictorial: A Review of 1933 in Pictures (Durban, 1934).
99. T. Couzens, "'Moralizing Leisure Time": The Transatlantic Connection and Black Johannesburg (1918-1936)', in S. Marks and R. Rathbone (eds.), Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa (New York, 1982), 314-37
100. J. Campbell, 'T. D. Mweli Skota and the Making and Unmaking of a Black Elite' (unpublished paper presented to the University of the Witwatersrand History Workshop, 9-14 February 1987)
101. R. Edgar, An African American in South Africa: The Travel Notes of Ralph J. Bunche, 28 September 1937-1 January 1938 (Athens GA,1992)
102. A. Kemp, "'Up from Slavery" and Other Narratives: Black South African Performances of the American Negro (1920-1943)' (Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 1997)
103. A. Kemp andR. Vinson, "'Poking Holes in the Sky": Professor James Thaele, American Negroes, and Modernity in 1920s Segregationist South Africa', African Studies Review, 44 (2000), 141-59.
104. Central Archives Depot, Pretoria (hereafter CAD) NTS 1681, file 2/276 vol. I, Protector of Natives at Kimberley to Secretary for Native Affairs, 24 Sept. 1924
105. CAD, NTS 1877, file 75/278, Magistrate at Butterworth to Chief Magistrate at Umtata, 6 June 1928.
106. M. Craig, Ain't I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race (Oxford, 2002), 46-55.
107. Campbell, 'T. D. Mweli Skota', 6.
108. On debate in the contemporary African press over these terms, see Edgar, An African American in South Africa, 350, n. 22.
109. Quote from M. Stevenson and M. Graham-Stewart, Surviving the Lens: Photographic Studies of South and East African People, 1870-1920 (Vlaeberg, 2001), 19-21.
110. Also see Helen Bradford, 'Framing African Women: Visionaries in Southern Africa and their Photographic Afterlife, 1850-2004', Kronos, 30 (2004), 70-93
111. and C. Williams, 'The Erotic Image is Naked and Dark', in D. Willis (ed.), Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography (New York, 1994), 128-34.
112. Waterston later contributed these photos to the 'album of racial types' of the George Grey Collection of the South African library, thereby converting what was likely a personal gift into evidence for 'scientific' racial theory. Even these studio portraits commissioned and given by African women could not escape dominant white modes of representing black women. K. Schoeman, The Face of the Country: A South African Family Album, 1860-1910 (Cape Town, 1996), 68
113. National Library of South Africa, Special Collections, Grey Ethnological Album 167, INIL 14165 and 14210. On local appropriations of photography in colonial and postcolonial contexts, see P. Hayes and A. Bank (guest eds.), Kronos (Special Issue: Visual History) 27 (2001)
114. P. Landau and D. Kaspin (eds.), Images & Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Berkeley, 2002)
115. and C. Pinney and N. Peterson (eds.), Photography's Other Histories (Durham, 2003).
116. P. Harries, 'Photography and the Rise of Anthropology: Henri-Alexandre Junod and the Thonga of Mozambique and South Africa', Encounters with Photography, www.museums.org.za/sam/conf/enc/harries.htm (10 Nov. 2001)
117. I. Hofmeyr, The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of 'The Pilgrim's Progress' (Princeton, 2004), 185.
118. S. Mofokeng, 'The Black Photo Album', in Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography (Paris, 1998), 68-75
119. Mofokeng, 'Trajectory of a Street-Photographer: South Africa 1973-1998', in Democracy's Images: Photography and Visual Art After Apartheid (Umeå Sweden, 1998), 42-5.
120. For examples of photos sent in letters, see J. D. Mweli Skota Correspondence, University of Witwatersrand AD2781, letters from Zilpah T. D. Skota to J. D. Mweli Skota, 10 Oct. 1936, 17 Apr. 1941 and 2 May 1941.
121. Modern Girl research group, 'Modern Girl Around the World', esp. 251-4.
122. See Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 201, for two 1930s photos contrasting a group of smiling American sorority sisters putting on a 'glamorous, made-up look' with a group of somber members of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
123. 'The Son of Africa', 'Competition', Bantu World (22 Oct. 1932), 10.
124. Modern Girl research group, 'Modern Girl Around the World', 265 and 267-8.
125. It is possible that Ndobe's clothing, particularly the tippet, was a prop that belonged to the studio photographer. On props in African studio photography, see J. Pivin, 'The Icon and the Totem', in Anthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography, 28,
126. and Mofokeng, 'The Black Photo Album', 69.
127. CAD, NTS 7725, file 180/333, Commissioner of Police to Sec. for Native Affairs, 25 Aug. 1931 and 25 Nov. 1931, and Sec. for Native Affairs to B. Ndobe, 23 Oct. 1931
128. E. Roux, Time Longer than Rope: A History of the Black Man's Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (Madison, 1964), x, 204 and 230-43
129. J. and R. Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa, 1850-1950 (New York, 1969), 426-33
130. A. Drew, Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left (Burlington, 2000), 105-6.
131. Bantu World (25 Feb. 1933), 10.
132. For more on Skota and The African Yearly Register: Being an Illustrated National Biographical Dictionary (Who's Who) of Black Folks in Africa (Contributions by the Leading Native Ministers, Professors, Teachers, and Doctors) (Johannesburg, 1930),
133. see Couzens, The New African, 3-14
134. Campbell, 'T. D. Mweli Skota';
135. and V. Erlmann, Music, Modernity, and the Global Imagination: South Africa and the West (New York, 1999), 53-8.
136. 'Bantu Women and the Community', Bantu World (25 March 1933), 4.
137. 'Tommy', 'Pink-Cheeked Lady and Tom: Daughters of Ham Take to Powdering Their Faces', Bantu World (11 Feb. 1933), 3.
138. Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 45-7
139. Conor, 'The Beauty Contestant', 143.
140. Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women, 193-202.
141. L. T. Baleni, 'Unnecessary Expense Incurred by Women Striving for Beauty', Bantu World (30 Sept. 1933), 10.
142. Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 4, 26-31 and 53-60.
143. Duke University, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, J. Walter Thompson Collection, reel no. 225, Marketing Reports, South Africa, Port Elizabeth, J. Walter Thompson Co. (Pty.) Ltd., 'Report for Lehn & Fink' (Sept. 1931), 2 and 9.
144. Also see, 'Correct Behavior for Business Girls', South African Business Efficiency (June 1935), 198.
145. P. Ntantala, A Life's Mosaic (Berkeley, 1993), 74.
146. The Editress, 'Disappointing Make-Ups', Bantu World (23 June 1934), 12
147. 'Over the Tea Cups: Arabelle and Isabel', Bantu World (3 April 1937), 9.
148. S. H. D. Lee Mnyandu, 'Jo'burg Ladies', Bantu World (17 Sept. 1938), 12.
149. Also see his 'Use of Cosmetics By Women', Bantu World (1 Oct. 1938), 11,
150. and "'Basuto Ladies Are Smart"', Bantu World (2 Nov. 1938), 12.
151. R. R. R. Dhlomo, An African Tragedy (Alice, 1920).
152. E. Mphahlele, Down Second Avenue (London, 1959)
153. P. L. Bonner, "'Desirable or Undesirable Basotho Women?" Liquor, Prostitution and the Migration of Basotho Women to the Rand, 1920-1945', in C. Walker (ed.), Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945 (Cape Town, 1990), 221-50
154. B. Bozzoli, Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900-1983 (Portsmouth NH, 1991)
155. I. Berger, Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry (Bloomington, 1992)
156. S. Marks, Divided Sisterhood: Race, Class, and Gender in the South African Nursing Profession (New York, 1994)
157. C. Burns, 'Reproductive Labors: The Politics of Women's Health in South Africa, 1900 to 1960' (Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 1995)
158. D. Coplan, 'You Have Left Me Wandering About: Basotho Women and the Culture of Mobility', in D. Hodgson and S. McCurdy (eds.), 'Wicked' Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa (Portsmouth, 2001), 188-211.
159. Hellmann, 'Native Life', 40
160. Hellman, Rooiyard: A Sociological Survey of an Urban Native Slum Yard (Cape Town, 1948), 78.
161. P. Bonner, 'The Transvaal Native Congress, 1917-1929: The Radicalisation of the Black Petty Bourgeoisie on the Rand', in Marks and Rathbone (eds.), Industrialisation and Social Change in South Africa, 276-313
162. K. Eales, 'Patriarchs, Passes, and Privilege: Johannesburg's African Middle Classes and the Question of Night Passes for African Women, 1920-1932', in P. Bonner, I. Hofmeyr, D. James and T. Lodge (eds.), Holding Their Ground: Class, Locality, and Culture in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century South Africa (Johannesburg, 1989), 105-39
163. Marks, 'Patriotism, Patriarchy and Purity'
164. C. Ballantine, Marabi Nights: Early South African Jazz and Vaudeville (Braamfontein, 1993), 46-50 and 82-3
165. Kemp, '"Up from Slavery"', chs. 2-3
166. N. Erlank, 'Gender and Masculinity in South African Nationalist Discourse, 1912-1950', Feminist Studies, 29 (2003), 653-71.
167. Miss Roamer, 'Beautiful Bantu Women Need No Lipstick or Powder to Aid Nature', Bantu World (4 March 1933), 10
168. R. R. R. D., 'True Beauty', Bantu World (29 Sept. 1934), 12
169. Israel Mhlambi, "'Behavior of Girls'", Bantu World (5 Oct. 1935), 12
170. The Editress, 'Weak Women', Bantu World (20 March 1937), 9
171. Dimbane, 'A Word in Season', Bantu World (27 March 1937), 12
172. 'Over the Tea Cups: Arabelle and Isabel', Bantu World (3 April 1937), 9
173. The Editress, 'A Terrible Sight!', Bantu World (29 Jan. 1938), 10.
174. Roberts, Civilization Without Sexes;
175. Silverberg, 'The Modern Girl As Militant';
176. Sato, The New Japanese Woman;
177. Peiss, Cheap Amusements;
178. Modern Girl research group, 'The Modern Girl Around the World'.
179. Walter M. B. Nhlapo, 'Girls Despised By Men', Bantu World (14 Sept. 1935), 12.
180. M.P., 'Powder and Lipstick for the Africans?', Bantu World (2 May 1936), 11.
181. Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 41-3
182. N. Rooks, Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women (New Brunswick, 1996)
183. I. Banks, hair matters: Beauty, Power, and Black Women's Consciousness (New York, 2000)
184. Craig, Ain't I a Beauty Queen?
185. Quotes from Miss Roamer, 'Beautiful Bantu Women Need No Lipstick or Powder to Aid Nature', Bantu World (4 March 1933), 10
186. R. R. R. D., 'True Beauty', Bantu World (29 Sept. 1934), 12
187. The Editress, 'Disappointing Make-Ups', Bantu World (23 June 1934), 12
188. 'Over the Tea Cups: Arabelle and Isabel', Bantu World (3 April 1937), 9.
189. Also see 'What R. Roamer Hears About Town', Bantu World (23 Sept. 1933), 8
190. 'R. Roamer Talks to the People', Bantu World (19 May 1934), 6
191. The Editress, 'Weak Women', Bantu World (20 March 1937), 9
192. The Editress, 'A Terrible Sight!', Bantu World (29 Jan. 1938), 10
193. The Editress, 'Why Put That Stuff On Your Face?', Bantu World (18 June 1938), 9.
194. On the racial politics of white men wearing blackface in southern Africa, see L. White, 'Precarious Conditions: A Note on Counter-Insurgency in Africa after 1945', Gender & History, 16 (2004), 603-25.
195. M. F. Phala and O. F. S. Koffiefontein, 'The Bantu and Colour', Bantu World (29 Dec. 1934), 8.
196. For other letters of complaint, see A. L. J. Rabotapi, 'Mr. R. Roamer Blunders Now: Some Women Behave Disgracefully in the Streets', Bantu World (21 Apr. 1934), 10
197. 'Mok Tedi', 'Ladies Must Choose Their Types', Bantu World (23 Apr. 1938), 10
198. A. A. Mgoblo, 'Ladies and Cosmetics', Bantu World (17 Sept. 1938), 12.
199. Messrs. D. Mogoje and P.J.G.M., 'Swanee Should Be Supported: Powder and Lipsticks Disfigure Bantu Women', Bantu World (9 June 1934), 10.
200. On imbola, see P. Pinnock, Xhosa: A Cultural Grammar for Beginners (Cape Town, 1994), 28.
201. 'The Son of Africa', 'Great Progress!', Bantu World (22 Oct. 1932), 10.
202. L. N. Msimang, "' Girls Despised By Men"', Bantu World (5 Oct. 1935), 12.
203. S. Ngcobo, 'Articles on Lipsticks Dance, Dresses and Love Become Boring', Bantu World (29 Sept. 1934), 15.
204. 'R. Roamer Talks to the People', Bantu World (9 June 1934), 8, and (4 Aug. 1934), 8. The letters were authored by Miss I. R. E. of Maseru and S. W. Y. of Zeerust.
205. S. White and G. White, Stylin': African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca, 1998), 188-91.
206. number of scholars of black beauty culture in the United States and South Africa have similarly argued that hair straightening, in particular, should not be reduced to 'the desire to be white': Maxine Craig, 'The Decline and Fall of the Conk; or, How to Read a Process', Fashion Theory, 1 (1997), 399-420
207. Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 41
208. Banks, hair matters, 9-10
209. Craig, Ain't I a Beauty Queen?, chs. 2 and 6
210. P. Russell, 'Styling Blackness: African American Hair Styling Practices in Late Twentieth Century America and the Phenomenology of Race' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 2002).
211. In a recent essay, Zimitri Erasmus ('Hair Politics', in Nuttall and Michael (eds.), Senses of Culture, 380-92) recalls her own experience of hair straightening in 1970s and 1980s South Africa as partly about 'aspirations of whiteness in the coloured community in which I grew up' and partly a 'ritual of affirmation for me as a young black women'. For Erasmus, while black hairstyles are always 'mediated through racial imagery', they are not 'eternally trapped by "race"'.
212. J. Walter Thompson Co. (Pty.) Ltd., 'Report for Lehn & Fink' (Sept. 1931), 10.
213. 'Swanee', 'Women Should Not Use Lip-Sticks and Powders as Toilets', Bantu World (19 May 1934), 12.
214. Powdered Face, 'Women Want Good Constructive Advice From Their Critics', Bantu World (28 June 1934), 10.
215. Examination of other contemporary black South African newspapers including Umteteli wa Bantu, Ilanga lase Natal and Imvo Zabantsundu revealed no advertisements for make-up. Bantu World and other black newspapers had previously run ads for hair straighteners, possibly imported from the United States. These ads often featured photos of black men. Switzer ('Bantu World' in the Journal of Southern African Studies, 367-8) has calculated that cosmetics - defined to include soaps, dyes, toothpastes, shaving equipment, razors and razor blades, as well as hair and skin products - accounted for about 10 per cent of all items advertised in Bantu World during the 1930s. Health products and services dominated Bantu World advertising, accounting for just over 30 per cent of all items.
216. Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 108-9. For a nineteenth-century complaint about African American women wearing white face powder,
217. see Rooks, Hair Raising, 37.
218. White and White, Stylin', 189-90.
219. Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 207-13.
220. R. Hull, American Enterprise in South Africa: Historical Dimensions of Engagement and Disengagement (New York, 1990)
221. J. Campbell, 'The Americanization of South Africa', in R. Wagnleitner and E. May (eds.), 'Here, There and Everywhere': The Foreign Politics of American Popular Culture (Hanover, 2000), 34-63.
222. Apex ad, Bantu World (15 July 1933), 10
223. 'The Opening of Vast Unexplored Market', Bantu World (26 May 1934), 1.
224. Rooks, Hair Raising, 81-5.
225. 'Remarkable Business Acumen of Negro Woman Shown in Her Work', Bantu World (11 Nov. 1933), 10.
226. 'The Opening of Vast Unexplored Market', Bantu World (26 May 1934), 1.
227. Couzens, 'A Short History of "World"', 77.
228. The Editress, 'The Advertisements in Your Paper', Bantu World (5 May 1934), 11
229. For women's accounts of their visit to the exhibition, see 'Woman Visitor to Bantu World Show Writes About It', Bantu World (20 May 1933), 10
230. and 'A Woman Correspondent', 'Bantu World Trade Exhibition Promises to Surpass Last Year's', Bantu World (3 March 1934), 10.
231. 'R. Roamer Talks to the People', Bantu World (2 June 1934), 8.
232. Couzens, 'A Short History of "World"', 77.
233. Valmor ad, Bantu World (22 Feb. 1936), 17. This same Valmor ad appeared in a 1935 issue of the Gold Coast Independent, a West African newspaper, suggesting a broader effort by the company to tap African markets.
234. Suggesting that Bunche drew distinctions between Valmor and older black cosmetics companies like Madame C. J. Walker, Apex and Poro that appealed to race pride, he 'put her on to Poro': Edgar, The Travel Notes of Ralph J. Bunche, 177.
235. Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women, 119, 158-61 and 180-202
236. Modern Girl research group, 'The Modern Girl Around the World', 275. In a future piece, I will examine the manufacturing and marketing of skin lighteners in the United States, South Africa and Kenya.
237. During the 1930s, African American missionaries also noted how black South Africans admired their appearance and 'marveled at the curled and marcelled hair' of those featured in African American periodicals. Responding to such interest, Luella Graham White taught hair care to her female students at the Wilberforce Institute and even established a beauty salon. The result, according to White, was that 'Wilberforce girls were known wherever they went by their tidiness and attractive hair' and 'took greater pride in themselves': A. White and L. White, Dawn in Bantuland: An African Experiment (Boston, 1953), 79 and 198-9.
238. Also see C. Wright, Beneath the Southern Cross: The Story of an American Bishop's Wife in South Africa (New York, 1955), 47-50.
239. Quotes from Rilda Marta, 'Miss Rilda Marta's Trip to the United States Full of Excitement', Bantu World (29 June 1935), 12
240. 'Miss Rilda Marta's Trip to United States of America Full of Interest', Bantu World (6 July 1935), 12
241. 'Miss Rilda Marta's Trip to America', Bantu World (13 July 1935), 12.
242. Also see Rilda Marta, 'My Experiences in America', Bantu World (28 Sept. 1935), 14.
243. For letters from women readers thanking Marta for her contributions and requesting more, see Kathleen Khomphiri, 'Miss Rilda Marta', Bantu World (27 July 1935), 12
244. and Mrs. P. Melato, 'Play on the Game in the Home', Bantu World (17 Aug. 1935), 12.
245. Quotes from 'Miss Rilda Marta's Trip to United States of America Full of Interest'; Bantu World (6 July 1935), 12
246. 'Miss Rilda Marta's Trip to America', Bantu World (13 July 1935), 12.
247. Kemp, '"Up from Slavery "', quote from 6
248. see 156 for Kemp's discussion of one of Marta's articles. For an account of another African American woman who provoked ambivalence and admiration in South Africa,
249. see I. Berger, 'An African American "Mother of the Nation": Madie Hall Xuma in South Africa, 1940-1963', Journal of Southern African Studies, 27 (2001), 547-66.
250. R. Nixon, Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood: South African Culture and the World Beyond (New York, 1994)
251. Dolby, Constructing Race;
252. F. Cooper, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge, 2002), 152-4
253. M. Hunter, 'The Materiality of Everyday Sex: Thinking Beyond 'Prostitution', African Studies, 61 (2002), 99-120
254. A. Mbembe and S. Nuttall (guest eds.), Public Culture (Special issue: Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis), 16 (2004)
255. J. Hyslop, 'Shopping During a Revolution: Entrepreneurs, Retailers and "White" Identity in the Democratic Transition', Historia, 50 (May 2005), 173-90.