Rewriting patriarchal scripts: Women, labor, and popular culture in South African clothing industry beauty contests, 1970s-2005

Journal of Social History

Volumn 42, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 31-56

  Alegi, Peter ^a,b  

^a MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Department of History ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 53849111905     PISSN: 00224529     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.0.0070     Document Type: Review

References (187)

1. New York Times, 16 September 1993. On race, identity, and beauty in South Africa, see Nakedi Ribane, Beauty - A Black Perspective (Pietermaritzburg, 2006);
2. Lynn Thomas, "The Modern Girl and Racial Respectability in 1930s South Africa," Journal of African History 46 (2006): 461-490;
3. and Rita Barnard, "Contesting Beauty," in Sarah Nuttall and Cheryl-Ann Michael (eds.), Senses of Culture: South African Culture Studies (Oxford, 2000), pp. 344-362.
4. The term "black" in this paper refers to people classified African, Coloured, and Indian under the Population Registration Act of 1950. The collective racial terms are used only where appropriate. While "race" is a historical and social construction bound up with apartheid history, it is acknowledged that racial boundaries and identities were (and continue to be) relevant to South Africans themselves.
5. Karen Daniels interview with Josie Arendse, 9 February 1992, "Interviews with Clothing and Textile Workers," (hereafter IWC) Centre for Popular Memory, University of Cape Town, tape IWC 02.
6. Iris Berger, Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry 1900-1980 (Bloomington, 1992), 278-80;
7. and Paul Johnson " 'Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk': The Spring Queen Festival and the Eroding Family Cult in the Western Cape Garment Industry," (Oral History Project Seminar Paper, University of Cape Town, 1993), 17. Johnson's paper was the first academic study of the Spring Queen. It focused on the contest's first decade.
8. African women domestic workers, on the other hand, have been examined far more thoroughly; see, for example, Jacklyn Cock, Maids and Madams: A Study in the Politics of Exploitation (Johannesburg, 1980);
9. Deborah Gaitskell, "Housewives, Maids or Mothers: Some Contradictions of Domesticity for Christian Women in Johannesburg, 1903-39," Journal of African History 24, 2 (1983): 241-256;
10. and Belinda Bozzoli, Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy and Migrancy in South Africa (Portsmouth, NH, 1991).
11. Berger, Threads of Solidarity;
12. Solly Sachs, Rebels Daughters (London, 1957);
13. Emma Mashinini, Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life: A South African Autobiography (London, 1989);
14. Ray Alexander Simons, All My Life and AU My Strength (Johannesburg, 2004);
15. Elizabeth Abrahams, Married to the Struggle: "Nanna" Liz Abrahams Tells Her Life Story (Bellville, 2005);
16. Kally Forrest, Asijiki: A History of the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU) (Johannesburg, 2005).
17. For recent studies of labor organizing among South Africa's working poor, see Annie Deverish and Caroline Skinner, "Collective Action in the Informal Economy: The Case of the Self-Employed Women's Union, 1994-2004," in Ballard et al (eds.), Voices of Protest (2006), pp. 255-277;
18. and " 'Union Boys in Caps Leading Factory Girls Astray'? The Politics of Labour Reform in Lesotho's 'Feminised' Garment Industry," Journal of Southern African Studies 31, 1 (2005): 95-115.
19. For the most useful university studies, see Martin Nicol, "A History of Garment and Tailoring Workers in Cape Town, 1900-39," (PhD. thesis, University of Cape Town, 1984);
20. Katherine L. Angier, "Patterns of Production: Women Industrial Workers in Cape Town, 1918-1939," (PhD. thesis, University of London, 1993);
21. and Paul Johnson, "Talking the Talk."
22. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, "Gender Biases in African Historiography," in A. M. Imam, A. Mama, and Fatou Sow (eds.), Engendering African Social Sciences (Dakar, 1999), pp. 110-111.
23. Zeleza's assertion is strongly supported in Jean Allman, Susan Geiger and Nakanyike Musisi, "Women in African Colonial Histories: An Introduction," in Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi (eds.), Women in African Colonial Histories (Bloomington, 2002), 1-15;
24. Andrea Cornwall, "Introduction: Perspectives on Gender in Africa," in Cornwall (ed.), Readings in Gender in Africa (Bloomington, 2005), pp. 1-19.
25. In southern Africa gender history is no longer synonymous with women's history; see, for example, Robert Morrell (ed.), Changing Men in Southern Africa (Pietermaritzburg and London and New York, 2001);
26. Peter Delius and Clive Glaser, "Sexual Socialisation in South Africa: A Historical Perspective," African Studies 61, 1 (2002): 27-54;
27. Graeme Reid and Liz Walker, "Sex Then and Now: Exploring South Africa's Sexual Histories," South African Historical Journal 50 (2004): 77-83;
28. and Marc Epprecht, Hungochani: The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa (Montreal and Kingston, 2004).
29. Kathleen Canning, Gender History in Practice: Historical Perspectives on Bodies, Class, and Citizenship (Ithaca, NY, 2006), 62.
30. Some of the southern African social-cum-labor historians who influenced my work were: Ari Sitas, "Traditions of Poetry in Natal," in Liz Gunner (ed.), Poetry and Performance: Theatre, Poetry and Song in Southern Africa (Johannesburg, 1994), pp. 139-161;
31. Helen Bradford, A Taste of Freedom: The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924-1930 (New Haven, 1987);
32. Keletso E. Atkins, The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843-1900 (Portsmouth, NH, 1993);
33. and Dunbar Moodie with Vivienne Ndatshe, Going for Gold: Men, Mines, and Migration (Berkeley and Johannesburg 1994).
34. Some of the ideas in this paragraph draw on Jon Lewis, "South African Labor History: A Historiographical Assessment," in Joshua Brown et al. (eds.), History from South Africa: Alternative Visions and Practices (Philadelphia, 1991), pp. 165-182;
35. and Penelope Hetherington, "Women in South Africa: The Historiography in English," International Journal of African Historical Studies 26, 2 (1993): 241-269.
36. Colleen Ballerino Cohen and Richard Wilk, with Beverly Stoeltje, "Introduction: Beauty Queens on the Global Stage," in Ballerino Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje (eds.), Beauty Queens on the Global Stage: Gender, Contests, and Power (New York, 1996), p. 2.
37. For a North American comparison, see Mary Margaret Fonow, Union Women: Forging Feminism in the United Steelworkers of America (Minneapolis, 2003).
38. Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Tum-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986), 8.
39. A. Holly Shissler, "Beauty is Nothing to Be Ashamed Of: Beauty Contests As Tools of Women's Liberation in Early Republican Turkey," Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, 1 (2004), 107-122.
40. Natasha B. Barnes, "Face the Nation: Race, Nationalisms, and Identities in Jamaican Beauty Pageants," in Jennifer Scanlon (ed.), The Gender and Consumer Culture Reader (New York, 2000), pp. 355-371;
41. Maxine Leeds Craig, Ain't I a Beauty Queen? Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race (Oxford and New York, 2002);
42. and Sarah Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (Berkeley, 1999).
43. Rick A. López, "The India Bonita Contest of 1921 and the Ethnicization of Mexican National Culture," Hispanic American Historical Review 82, 2 (2002): 291-328;
44. Jon Schackt, "Mayahood Through Beauty: Indian Beauty Pageants in Guatemala," Bulletin of Latin American Research 24, 3 (2005): 269-287;
45. and Carlota McAllister, "Authenticity and Guatemala's Maya Queen," in Ballerino Cohen, Wilk, and Stoeltje (eds.), Beauty Queens on the Global Stage: Gender, Contests, and Power, 105-124.
46. Susan K. Besse, "Defining a 'National Type': Brazilian Beauty Contests in the 1920s," Estudios Interdisciplinarios De America Latina Y El Caribe 16, 1 (2005);
47. Jennifer Robertson, "Japan's First Cyborg? Miss Nippon, Eugenics and Wartime Technologies of Beauty, Body and Blood," Body and Society 7,1 (2001): 1-34.
48. Studies of beauty contests in contemporary India tackle similar themes and raise new ones as well; see Shoma Munshi, "A Perfect 10 - 'modern and Indian': Representations of the Body in Beauty Pageants and the Visual Media in Contemporary India," in James H. Mills and Satadru Sen (eds.), Confronting the Body: the Politics of Physicahty in Colonial and Post- Colonial India (London, 2004), pp. 162-182;
49. and Rupal Oza, "Showcasing India: Gender, Geography, and Globalization," Signs 26, 4 (2001): 1067-1095.
50. I borrowed the concept of "strategic engagement" from Heidi Gengenbach, " 'What My Heart Wanted': Gendered Stories of Early Colonial Encounters in Southern Mozambique," in Allman, Geiger, and Musisi (eds.), Women in African Colonial Histories, 19-47.
51. For further discussion of the press in South African history, see Les Switzer and Mohamed Adhikari (eds.), South Africa's Resistance Press: Alternative Voices in the Last Generation under Apartheid (Athens, OH, 2000); South Africa's Alternative Press: Voices of Protest and Resistance, 1880-1960 (Cambridge, 1997);
52. and Keyan Tomaselli, Ruth Tomaselli, and Johan Muller (eds.), The Press in South Africa (London, 1989).
53. Inspired in particular by Roy Rosenzweig's Eight Hours For What We Will: Workers & Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (Cambridge, 1983), and Tony Mason's Association Football and English Society: 1863-1915 (London, 1980), I employed a similar approach in researching my first book;
54. see Peter Alegi, Laduma! Soccer, Politics, and Society in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg, 2004).
55. See Jeremy Baskin, Striking Back: A History of Cosatu (Johannesburg, 1991);
56. Berger, Threads of Solidarity ;
57. and Shireen Singh, "Garment Workers: A Huge New Union," Work in Progress, 59 (June/July 1989): 24-29; online at: http://www.disa.ukzn. ac.za (accessed December 27, 2006).
58. For further details, see Sachs, Rebels Daughters;
59. and Berger, Threads of Solidarity.
60. See, Baskin, Striking Back, pp. 17-29.
61. ACTWUSA was formed in November 1987 by a merger of the National Union of Textile Workers, the Textile Workers Industrial Union, and the National Union of Garment Workers. GAWU was the product of a merger in December 1987 between the Garment Workers' Union-Western Province and the Natal-based Garment Workers' Industrial Union.
62. Clothes Line, 22 September 1989.
63. Baskin, Striking Back, p. 394.
64. Mohamed Adhikari, Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African Coloured Community (Athens, OH, 2005), 2.
65. For an evocative biographical study of Coloured identity, see Jonny Steinberg, The Number: One Man's Search for Identity in the Cape Underworld and Prison Gangs (Johannesburg, 2005).
66. Adhikari, Not White Enough, Not Black Enough, 2-3. Of course, not all Coloureds were poor, spoke Afrikaans as a first language, or joined the Dutch Reformed Church. The Muslim "Malays," for instance, have been among the most important Coloured subgroups.
67. John Western, Outcast Cape Town (Minneapolis, 1981);
68. Martin West, "From Pass Courts to Deportation: Changing Patterns of Influx Control in Cape Town," African Affairs 81 (1982): 463-477.
69. Daniela Casale and Dorrit Posel. "The Continued Feminisation of the Labour Force in South Africa," South African Journal of Economics 70, 1 (2002): 156-184. It is interesting to compare the Cape clothing industry's history of heavy dependence on women's labor (90% of the workforce) with the increase in the percentage of women in the South African labor force as a whole: 23% in 1960; 36% in 1985; and 41% in 1991.
70. Baskin, Striking Back, p. 377. In the Cape food processing sector, white supervisors conducted strip searches of Coloured women at shifts' end - a most humiliating treatment that continued as late as 1989; see Forrest, Asijiki, p. 21.
71. Baskin, Striking Back, pp. 354-357, 369-384;
72. and Naidoo (ed.), Unions in Transition: Cosatu into the New Millennium (Johannesburg, 1999), pp.75-79.
73. Baskin, Striking Back, p. 371.
74. Berger, Threads of Solidarity, p. 276.
75. Cf. Robert Davies and Dan O'Meara, "Total Strategy in Southern Africa: An Analysis of South African Regional Policy Since 1978," Journal of Southern African Studies 11, 2 (1985): 183-211.
76. Allister Sparks, The Mind of South Africa (New York, 1990), p. 337.
77. Devandiren Pillay, "Trade Union and Alliance Politics in Cape Town, 1979-85," (unpublished PhD. dissertation, University of Essex, 1989), chapters 3-4.
78. William Finnegan, Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of Apartheid (New York, 1986), p. 174.
79. A brief overview of these dramatic events is found in Vivian Bickford-Smith, Elizabeth van Heyningen, and Nigel Worden, Cape Town in the Twentieth Century: An Illustrated Social History (Cape Town, 1999), pp. 207-211.
80. Gillian Hart reminds us that in the 1980s "struggles in the factories and the townships intensified, although they assumed locally specific forms that reflected far more complex and varied dynamics than the simple linking of township and workplace protests." Gillian Hart, Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Berkeley, 2002), p. 152.
81. "How to Enter Yourself for our Spring Show," Clothes Line, 22 August 1980, p. 3.
82. Berger, Threads of Solidarity, fn. 60, p. 351.
83. Author interview with Rachel Visser, 23 May 2006, Salt River, Cape Town.
84. Author interview with Felicity Andrews, 7 June 2006, Salt River, Cape Town. Johnson, "Talking the Talk," 13.
85. Interview with Visser.
86. Clothes Line, 22 August 1980, and 29 August 1980. Launched in 1979, Clothes Line was edited by Peterson's son Cedric.
87. Les Switzer and Mohamed Adhikari (eds.), South Africa's Resistance Press: Alternative Voices in the Last Generation under Apartheid (Athens, OH, 2000).
88. On media discourses and pageants in the United States, see Bonnie J. Dow, "Feminism, Miss America, and Media Mythology," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 6, 1 (2003): 127-160.
89. Ruth Fredricks and Edith Adams, members of the National Union of Clothing Workers, both employed at Jaff & Company, won the 1965 July Queen and 1967 "Miss Garment Worker" titles respectively. Cited in The Garment Worker, 8 October 1965, p. 1, and 10 February 1967, p. 1.
90. For more evidence on "Miss Garment Worker" at the Kimberley NUCW branch, see The Garment Worker, 8 November 1968, p. 1.
91. The Garment Worker, 26 October 1973, p. 1, reported that Anna Ramagaga was crowned the 1973 "Miss South Africa of the NUCW."
92. See also a brief article on the 1975 contest, won by Cecelia Zikalala, in The Garment Worker, 30 January 1976, p. 1;
93. and on competitions in the 1980s: The Garment Worker, 21 February 1986, p. 1.
94. The Garment Worker, 12 November 1965, p. 1. The Miss Black South Africa contest has not yet received full scholarly treatment, but for an introduction see Ribane, Beauty, pp. 92-96.
95. My thanks to Anton Ehlers, Stellenbosch University, for bringing this information to my attention.
96. Cf. Thomas, "The Modern Girl";
97. Rita Barnard, "Contesting Beauty";
98. Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham, 1996), esp. pp. 181-193.
99. For insights on indigenous conceptions of beauty in the pre-colonial period, see Ribane, Beauty, pp. 19-22;
100. and Thomas, "Modern Girl," 469.
101. Interview with Visser.
102. Craig, Ain't I A Beauty Queen?, p. 12.
103. Monica Wilson and Archie Mafeje, Langa: A Study of Social Groups in an African Township (Cape Town, 1963), 145.
104. I borrowed the concept of "cultural sovereignty" from Marissa Moorman, "Feel Angolan With This Music: Music and Nation in Colonial Luanda, Angola, 1945-75," (PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2004).
105. My thanks to Adam Ashforth for sharing with me his field notes on the "Little Miss Lekoka Street" pageant-the source for the quote above.
106. Clothes Line, 22 August 1980, p. 2.
107. Clothes Line, 21 November 1980.
108. According to Valerie Jacobs, younger clothing workers were more defiant than older ones (interview with V. Jacobs, IWC tape 7). On generational tensions and their political ramifications in the 1980s, see C. Bundy, "Street Sociology and Pavement Politics: Aspects of Youth and Student Resistance in Cape Town, 1985," Journal of Southern African Studies 13, 3 (1987): 303-330.
109. Cf. Berger, Threads of Solidarity, pp. 276, 278-80;
110. Johnson, "Talking the Talk," 17.
111. Anne Emmett and Msokoli Qotole interview with Reinhardt, 16 May 1992, quoted in Johnson, "Talking the Talk," p. 25.
112. Quoted in Johnson, "Talking the Talk," 25.
113. Johnson, "Talking the Talk," 33.
114. Karen Daniels interview with Awal-Tief Jacobs, July 1992, IWC tape 4.
115. Robert Edelman, Serious Fun: Soviet Spectator Sports (New York, 1993).
116. Karin Barber, The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theater (Bloomington, 2000), p. 7.
117. Author interviews with Jane Kennedy, Woodstock, 22 May 2006;
118. with Ann Delport, 7 June 2006, Salt River; and with Visser and Andrews. Daniels interview with Arendse; Emmett and Qotole interview with Reinardt; Emmett interview with Pinto; Paul Johnson interview with John Eagles, 21 May 1993, IWC tape 17.
119. Ballerino Cohen and Wilk, with Stoeltje, "Introduction: Beauty Queens on the Global Stage," p. 11.
120. A comprehensive list of the growing literature on the historiography and history of leisure and popular culture in Africa is not possible here, but see Emmanuel Akyeampong and Charles Ambler, "Leisure in African History," International Journal of African Historical Studies 35, 1 (2002): 1-16;
121. Karin Barber, "Introduction" in K. Barber (ed.), Readings in African Popular Culture (Bloomington, 1997), pp. 1-12;
122. Alegi, Laduma! Soccer, Politics, and Society in South Africa;
123. Laura Fair, Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar (Athens, OH, 2001);
124. Phyllis Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville (Cambridge, 1995);
125. Christopher Waterman, Jújù: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music (Chicago, 1990);
126. and David Coplan, In Township Tonight! South Africa's Black City Music and Theater (New York, 1985).
127. Sunday Times, 10 November 2002, p. 24.
128. See, for example, Clothes Line, 23 October 1987, 1-6; and the documentary film Cinderella of the Cape Flats. Workers had fond memories of employers who served fast food at the event.
129. See interview with Awal-Tief Jacobs;
130. Anne Emmett interview with Gladys Pinto, Cape Town, 1 July 1992, IWC tape 10;
131. Karen Daniels interview with Bernice Calvert, 10 August 1992, IWC tape 11.
132. The relationship between dress and power is investigated in detail in Jean Allman (ed.), Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress (Bloomington, 2004).
133. Western, Outcast Cape Town, p. 64.
134. Interview with Visser.
135. 1987 Spring Queen Shariefa Abrahams, a practicing Muslim, recalled how a modeling agency called her repeatedly after she won the title: "They wanted me to model a bikini, but I can't do that, because I'm Muslim. I can't model that. They kept on phoning ... for the bikini not for the dresses. I said I could do it in any other clothes, but not that." Anne Emmett interview with Shariefa Benjamin (neé Abrahams), 20 July 1992, Cape Town, IWC tape 8.1 wish to thank Corvell and Faith Cranfield for translating the interview from Afrikaans into English.
136. Emmett interview with Pinto. Since the early 1990s, transvestite men also participate, but only at factory level and they cannot progress to the semifinals. "It wouldn't be fair" to the women I was told.
137. Interview with Delport.
138. Interview with Andrews.
139. Interview with Visser.
140. Karin Barber, "Preliminary Notes on Audiences in Africa," Africa 67, 3 (1997): 347-362.
141. Karen Daniels interview with June Hendrickse, 6 August 1992, IWC tape 12.
142. Daniels interview with Hendrickse. Jansen had won the 1970 Miss Africa South crown, an apartheid pageant for African, Indian, and Coloured women excluded from the whites-only Miss South Africa contest. Between 1970-76 South Africa sent two representatives to the Miss Universe competition: one black, one white. As a result of international protests against apartheid, South Africa was banned from Miss World in 1977 and from Miss Universe in 1985.
143. Emmett interview with Abrahams.
144. Emmett interview with Abrahams.
145. Quoted in Cinderella of the Cape Flats, directed by Jane Kennedy (SABC, 2004).
146. Karen Daniels Interview with Awal-Tief Jacobs, July 1992, IWC tape 3. Daniels interview with Arendse.
147. Interview with Delport. In an interview with Anne Emmett, Isabelle Patience, a long-time shop steward in the GWU, also linked the Spring Queen's decline in the late 1980s with the arrival of progressive unionism: "When COSATU came in it sort of died out." Cited in Emmett interview with Isabelle Patience, 11 September 1992, IWC tape 14.
148. Johnson interview with Eagles.
149. Anecdotal evidence seems to support this view; SACTWU members from KwaZuluNatal, whom I met on a flight from Durban to Cape Town in June 2006, were amazed to learn from me about the existence of the Spring Queen.
150. Baskin, Striking Back, p. 395.
151. Interview with Visser.
152. Baskin, Striking Back, p. 376.
153. Naidoo, Unions in Transition, p. 75.
154. Daniels interview with Awal-Tief Jacobs.
155. Interview with Visser. Emmett interview with Pinto. Emmett interview with Patience.
156. Interview with Delport.
157. Johnson interview with Eagles.
158. Interview with Delport.
159. Johnson interview with Eagles.
160. Johnson interview with Eagles.
161. Johnson interview with Eagles. Confirmed by my interview with Delport.
162. Naidoo, Unions in Transition, p. 76.
163. Jeremy Daphne quoted in Forrest, Asijiki, p. 81.
164. Denise Walsh and Pamela Scully, "Altering Politics, Contesting Gender," Journal of Southern African Studies 32, 1 (2006): 8.
165. Adam Habib and Imraan Valodia, "Reconstructing a Social Movement in an Era of Globalisation," in R. Ballard, A. Habib, and I. Valodia (eds.), Voices of Protest: Social Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Pietermaritzburg, 2006), p. 232.
166. For insights on how this process unfolded in areas of KwaZulu-Natal, see Hart, Disabling Globalization.
167. Christi Van der Westhuizen, "Women and Work Restructuring in the Cape Town Clothing Industry," in Edward Webster and Karl Von Holdt (eds.), Beyond the Apartheid Workplace: Studies in Transition (Pietermaritzburg, 2005), p. 339.
168. Alan Hirsch, Season of Hope: Economic Reform under Mandela and Mbeki (Pietermaritzburg, 2005), p. 129.
169. "China's Cutting Back on Clothing and Textile Exports," Cosatu Weekly, 23 June 2006; online at: http://www.cosatu.org.za/news/ weekly/20060623.htm (accessed 10 October 2006);
170. and "SA Trade with China Hits Textiles Hard," Cape Times, 17 March 2006, p. 4.
171. "A Festival of Fashion," Mail & Guardian, 26 May-June 1 2006, p. 30.
172. For insights of CMTs in the Western Cape, see Van der Westhuizen, "Women and Work"; on Taiwanese companies in KwaZulu-Natal, see Hart, Disabling Globalization.
173. People's Daily Online, 5 September 2006, online at: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200609/05/eng20060905_299581.html (accessed January 2, 2007)
174. http://www.nedlac.org.za (accessed 3 January 2007).
175. http://www.proudlysa.co.za (accessed 3 January 2007).
176. "Rex Trueform Factory Reopens," Mail & Guardian Online, 25 January 2006, online at: http://www.mg.co.za (accessed February 26, 2006). Rex Trueform is the site of the documentary film Cinderella of the Cape Flats. The 2003 factory Spring Queen, Beverly Julius, the main protagonist in Cinderella lost her job and was not among those Rex workers who were rehired to make suits for House of Monatic; interview with Kennedy.
177. "Cape Town Fashion Festival 2006: Events," online at: http://www.sactwu.org.za/events.asp (accessed January 3, 2007).
178. Interview with Visser.
179. Ebrahim Patel, "Address at Cape Town Fashion Festival," Cape Town, November 2004, online at: http://www.sactwu.org.za/nov2004ctffspeech.asp (accessed 6 October 2006).
180. For example, see "Crowning Glory for Rag Trade Queens," Cope Argus, 8 August 2005, p. 1; "Race Heats Up for Spring Queen title," Cape Argus, 12 September 2005, p. 5; and "Dancing Debs Step Up for Spring Queen Final," Cape Argus 9 November 2005, P. 9.
181. Interview with Visser.
182. Interviews with Visser (quoted) and Delport.
183. "Spring Queen Sets Her Sights on Miss SA Title," Cape Argus, 23 November 2005, p. 10.
184. Nakedi Ribane's account of race and the beauty industry in South Africa appears to support this conclusion; see Ribane, Beauty, chapters 4-6- For comparisons with African-American cultural history, see Craig, Ain't I a Beauty Queen, esp. pp. 73-74, 104-108;
185. Noliwe M. Rooks, Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African-American Women (New Brunswick, NJ, 1996).
186. Interview with Visser.
187. For a similar interpretation in an American context, see Robert H. Lavenda, "It's Not a Beauty Pageant! Hybrid Ideology in Minnesota Community Queen Pageants," in Beauty Queens on the Global Stage, p. 45.