Friday, March 14, 2014
Chairman's (Omni Shoreham)
In post-2005 France, blackness has become visible. Faces of blackness now appear on television, in the press and in ads covering the walls of underground Paris. Former Miss France, Sonia Rolland, today sides with historical figures such as Marianne to encapsulate the multicultural nature of the "black-blanc-beur" country. Black populations take this momentum in French history to represent blackness in their own terms. Not only do they complement the national narrative with a multiracial background or document the long-lasting black presence in France but they also create images that synthesize their past (French, African and/or Caribbean) and what being black and French means today. This joint objective is particularly visible in the contemporary construction of a black form of beauty. Crossing their multiple cultures with influences from African and black diasporas, black French mold pictures of a French Afro-modern figure. Beauty turns into an instrument to invent positive images of a black self "à la française". Models like Noémie Lenoir then become the icons of the "black cause" that display a "black aesthetic" in which the body represents a new black French consciousness. Based on fieldwork conducted in Paris, this paper asks several questions: How has beauty become a political tool for black French to challenge color-blindness? How does it participate in the making of a 21st century black French visual culture, influenced by African American, European as much as Caribbean and African cultures? Finally, how does the researcher's intersectionality impact the subjects' attitudes and perception of black beauty?
