Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Running in Heels
This is an article I wrote for THIIS Online Magazine a couple weeks ago. I wrote it, so it's mine right?
Jozi is my city, and I like to think I’m
worth something here but with local reality bubble gum television shows like
VUZU’s Running With The Reps and it’s newest edition to popular visual culture,
Forever Young, every Tom, Dick and Sipho in Jozi has been allowed to convince
themselves and us of their pseudo-celebrity, but who actually runs the place,
who’s the puppeteer?
As the epicenter of what has been a
political tornado for the last 50 years, one could argue that Johannesburg is where
the big dogs come to play, where leaders take their places, and you’d mostly
likely be right…but come down from your social mezzanine and bring it down to
ground. Who runs these streets? She’s a seductress, alluring, and a snake charmer
if you will. She is perfectly coifed and manicured and dressed head to toe in
glitz and glamour. She may not be the wittiest, but she knows how to play you
for everything you’ve got. Like sea nymphs and mermaids of fable, she is the
beauty that will lure you to your demise…ok maybe not that dramatic, but these
women are the new elite fraudsters exploiting our burgeoning economy. She’s not
afraid to set a standard and will dangle her good in front of you to make sure
you give her what she needs.
Take sports Minister Fikile Mbalula for
example. He is a 40 year old high profile husband and father, entangled in a
heated sex scandal with 27 year old model Joyce Molamu. With heaps of evidence
backing the fact that she consented to her illicit affair, her victim angle
falls short of inspirational. Or Chomi, ANC promotional pop puppet and the rumors
of her pregnancy by our very own president Jacob Zuma. These woman however has
successfully helped flipped the moral foothold of the political authority, and
given new fame and fortune to women labeled ‘extortionists and home-wreckers’,
abusing her youth and beauty like her biblical namesake. 2Kings 9:30, “Jezebel
also used the spirit of domination and seduction to get her ways”.
In a society powered by culture and
politics, the key figures as voted for by popular consent would likely come out
as the rich and famous. You think lifestyle tycoon, Kenny Kunene comes to mind.
You think gold digging socialite and Khanyi Mbau can’t be beat. You know what
they say, this is a man’s world, and women just live in it. Does that really
still apply? I’m thinking this is a Jezebel’s world and men just fund it. I
know too many black women who climb corporate, social and influence ladders by
dating the right people and releasing the right scandal…the funny thing is, we
love it. We disregard their confluence over consumer culture and brand
recognition. We undermine their consumer capacity not only personally but also
in the greater scheme of our political economy. ‘On the one hand, we have the
young ones who study – and I use this term loosely – at institutions of higher
learning. Heck, some are even in secondary school still’, writes Silindile
Nyathikazi of City Press Online. A BEE baby that I know from high school shed a
little light on the demise of ‘elbow grease’, I’m thinking he’s met a couple
such femme fatales…
BEE Baby: ‘With women you have the
intellectuals, the creatives, the opportunists and the settlers. The intellectuals
and creatives are easy to identify, it’s with the opportunists and settlers
that it becomes tricky. If you do not come form money or have the means of
supporting yourself, your list becomes limited and as shallow as it seems, you
have to make a decision; this is the part where you distinguish yourself. If
you realize you don’t have the intellectual or creative skills to support your
lifestyle, you search for someone who does. This is where rich and powerful men
come in. If you realize this “way out” before the age of 21; you distinguish
yourself as an opportunist. You can hate on the Mbaus of the world, but in all
honesty you have to work with what you have, and if you were blessed with
beauty and charm, do your thing.’
Me (Kenny): ‘Yoh’
But realistically, in this world only the
smart survive. If you are in a position to give yourself and your family a
better life and affect some kind of change somewhere, who’s to say that the
Mbau way of life is wrong? Yes these women represent and perpetuate the gender
ideals that society has been forcing down our throats for ages, but can we
really berate them for it if they have blue cheese with their croissants (Mbau)
and we have toast? Can we really degrade their violent repossession of female
sexuality and the overt exploitation of it (because what man in his right mind
would say know to what they got going on)? Behind every strong man is a
stronger woman in a pair of platform Louboutins and Brazilian weave. Jozi was
built on jezebels, and that foundation looks rock solid to me. At 19:00
tonight, 10 000 runners will take to the back streets of Johannesburg CBD on a
10km run inspired by Nike’s new fitness campaign, Run Jozi. But we know already
who’s running this city.
Trend Spotter - Peplum
Monday, April 23, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Athi Patra Ruga
Breaking down the borders between
fashion and art, performance and reality, South African artist Athi Patra Ruga
is the coolest homegrown to make waves across the pond. In his own words, his
work ‘subverts the body in relation to structure, ideology and politics’,
making it an eccentric and eclectic nod to the motherland. Bursting at the
seams with ‘carnal sensuality’ and a borderline sadistic undertone of dark humor,
the phoneme’s videos, performances photos and costume art impose on it’s
audience a magical world ‘where cultural identity is no longer determined
by geographical origins, ancestry or biological disposition, but is
increasingly becoming a hybrid construct. A Utopian counter-proposal to the sad
dogma of the division between mind and body, sensuality and intelligence, pop
culture, craft and fine art, his works expresses the eroticism of knowledge and
reconciles the dream with experience.’
(In relation to the earlier Infecting The City post)
Monday, April 16, 2012
Date a girl who reads...
“Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on
books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood
James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for
Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a
little like her favourite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with
strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the Winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colourful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
– Rosemarie Urquico
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