Senegal is 95% Muslim. Every other girl I meet tells me she is a model. The Islam here is funny. Whereas throughout the Islamic world whether women should wear the veil is often a source of intense debate (usually billed as secular modernists versus religious fundamentalists) here you are more likely to see topless women than women wearing the veil. It almost frees the women here to try to be just as superficial and consumeristic as women in the West are taught to be (they can’t do it because they don’t have the same cash).
All this to say I thought the modeling obsession here was a bit incongruent with the country’s Muslim beliefs and have been clowning the mannequin cousin who comes by frequently. But I now I feel somewhat foolish that I didn’t take her seriously because two weeks she won Miss Oscar des Vacances 2007, a somewhat impressive beauty contest. Oscar des Vacances is a dumb variety show that comes on here every summer (since the 80s they swear) on Sunday afternoons. The few times I saw it, I just remember an over-excited audience, long speeches by random government ministers, an over-animated host, wack skits, tacky costumes and crappy mbalax acts. Dominicanos imaginen Sabado de Corporan, especially cause the show seems to go on for like eight hours but with an even lower budget and happier-to-be-hosting host. The lowlight was when I saw a toddler in a du-rag rapping about something that just couldn’t have been good. The show takes pride in giving the youth of Dakar a healthy form of entertainment them on Sunday afternoons when they might otherwise be idle and be tempted to become juvenile delinquents and deviants, yall know, getting into crime, having sex, smoking weed, being poor. I think this is one of the cases where cure might be worse than the disease. On the show’s finale they crown the winner of the summer long beauty pageant. I wasn’t aware that the cousin, Mami, had made it as a finalist. I didn’t even hear it when she won, actually I couldn’t hear it because my host sisters were screaming so loudly. After Mami won the cameras showed a bunch of hysterical young women who were carried about by security personnel for having violent seizures and I had to wonder if all of these women knew the participants personally (friends and extended family?) or if this is just something Senegalese TV loves to do. It reminded me of how after the big wrestling matches they show someone’s entire neighborhood or town crying as if there had just been a major natural disaster leading to real suffering rather than it just being some random local celebrity in an irrelevant competition the result of which has no bearing on people’s real lives. The other finalists who did lost out on something tangible were carried out in ambulances crying uncontrollably. Mami’s prize includes $1,000+, a round trip ticket to Paris and several sponsorships.
Unexpectedly, Mami announced she was retiring from the modeling. An interview with her was published recently in one of the major dailies here. In it she said that she was quitting modeling because of how fucked up it could be and that instead she was going to apply to join the army. She said that too many models feel obligated to sleep with photographers and agents to advance their careers and that many women use modeling as a guise for prostitution (prostitution is legal in Senegal, but it’s still condemned). Now anyone who isn’t a naïve knows that that is how modeling works, but all of the people in my host family thought she should have said it, even if they conceded that it was true. When I asked why it was wrong to say, they all replied that there was no reason to say it. It’s only the truth.
All this to say I thought the modeling obsession here was a bit incongruent with the country’s Muslim beliefs and have been clowning the mannequin cousin who comes by frequently. But I now I feel somewhat foolish that I didn’t take her seriously because two weeks she won Miss Oscar des Vacances 2007, a somewhat impressive beauty contest. Oscar des Vacances is a dumb variety show that comes on here every summer (since the 80s they swear) on Sunday afternoons. The few times I saw it, I just remember an over-excited audience, long speeches by random government ministers, an over-animated host, wack skits, tacky costumes and crappy mbalax acts. Dominicanos imaginen Sabado de Corporan, especially cause the show seems to go on for like eight hours but with an even lower budget and happier-to-be-hosting host. The lowlight was when I saw a toddler in a du-rag rapping about something that just couldn’t have been good. The show takes pride in giving the youth of Dakar a healthy form of entertainment them on Sunday afternoons when they might otherwise be idle and be tempted to become juvenile delinquents and deviants, yall know, getting into crime, having sex, smoking weed, being poor. I think this is one of the cases where cure might be worse than the disease. On the show’s finale they crown the winner of the summer long beauty pageant. I wasn’t aware that the cousin, Mami, had made it as a finalist. I didn’t even hear it when she won, actually I couldn’t hear it because my host sisters were screaming so loudly. After Mami won the cameras showed a bunch of hysterical young women who were carried about by security personnel for having violent seizures and I had to wonder if all of these women knew the participants personally (friends and extended family?) or if this is just something Senegalese TV loves to do. It reminded me of how after the big wrestling matches they show someone’s entire neighborhood or town crying as if there had just been a major natural disaster leading to real suffering rather than it just being some random local celebrity in an irrelevant competition the result of which has no bearing on people’s real lives. The other finalists who did lost out on something tangible were carried out in ambulances crying uncontrollably. Mami’s prize includes $1,000+, a round trip ticket to Paris and several sponsorships.
Unexpectedly, Mami announced she was retiring from the modeling. An interview with her was published recently in one of the major dailies here. In it she said that she was quitting modeling because of how fucked up it could be and that instead she was going to apply to join the army. She said that too many models feel obligated to sleep with photographers and agents to advance their careers and that many women use modeling as a guise for prostitution (prostitution is legal in Senegal, but it’s still condemned). Now anyone who isn’t a naïve knows that that is how modeling works, but all of the people in my host family thought she should have said it, even if they conceded that it was true. When I asked why it was wrong to say, they all replied that there was no reason to say it. It’s only the truth.
