Alek Wek: Beauty Redefined

I decided to move my search onto a more recently discovered black model and found Alek Wek. Elle Magazine chose Alek Wek for the cover of the November issue in 1997.

Alek was considered a risk at first: a dark-skinned African woman on the cover of one of the most infamous American magazines did not, theoretically, sell issues. Now why is that? It's not like its the first time anyone has seen a Black woman, but I guess was still a soft issue even during the 90's.


However, the result.. a monumental reader responded, with letters to the editor from women and men, ecstatic about seeing the standards of beauty in fashion redefined.

Alek was born in southern Sudan, in 1977. When a civil war erupted in the mid 1980's, Wek talked her way onto a military plane that led her out of Khartoum, and then to England as a refugee. Her transition from the Sudan school in London was not pleasant. She was constantly teased because of her "African" look. Her long legs, dark skin, and clipped hair adorning a near-sculptural head excited interest, placing her features in the exotic "tribal" category.


Some find fault with Wek's look, seeing her rise as evidence of a new form of stereotype from the other end of the spectrum, the "primitive" or "exotic" tag.


Elle's editor, Gilles Bensimon shot the cover, placing Wek in white on a white background. "With starkly contrasting colors". He was trying to project the idea that "Nobody is out, everybody is in" and said "I thought, if I was African-American, I never would see myself in the magazines"


This related to a topic discussed in class. That whiteness is not always invisible in aesthetic representations. Whiteness becomes visible only if you've got blackness" This whiteness is more than just a color, it is a race as well and can be seen as positive, beauty, purity, innocence, and percection. I love Bensimon's arrangement of Wek in white, on a white background because he is allowing the world to view a dark-skinned person as pure, innocent, and in fact, beautiful.

Wek says "In my village there is no problem because we all look the same. Here there is so much difference in skin-- so much is thought about it, and that's sad."


Now that is something to think about..