A real African beauty

By Ernest Bazanye The question, "What exactly constitutes African beauty?" has been brought to the fore once again by the recent failure of M-Net Face of Africa to find a Ugandan representative for this year's competition. Of the girls who showed up for measurement, none qualified. None conformed to what many felt were overly Eurocentric body standards. However, it can be argued that the search was for a model and not a beauty per se. But does this mean that a traditional African beauty cannot make it as a model? Enter Alek Wek, probably the most high-profile African model on the international scene; a woman whose strong African features have brought her fame and fortune. Wek fled form her war-torn homeland of Sudan at age 14 and was granted asylum in Britain. It was after she had finished school there, while she was working on a course in fashion technology, that she was spotted by the Models One agency, whose representatives asked her to join them. In one year she had put her studies aside and adopted a career as a full-time model, rising fast in the industry. Since then, she has worked with some of the biggest fashion houses in the world, including Fendi, Gucci, Vivienne Westwood, Donna Karan, Chanel and Ralph Lauren. She has graced the catwalks in London, Paris, New York and Milan– the fashion capitals of the world. Wek has won numerous awards as a model. She has been named best model, and model of the year in a slew of award ceremonies. ID magazine named her model of the decade, and Frank magazine named her one of the most influential people in fashion. One look at Wek will show that she is not one of the anorexic wispy-figured waifs the world has come to expect from the modern fashion world, but this has not stopped her from achieving success and accolades. Instead, her unique look has been a selling point and an advantage in her career, more than a setback. Often billed as a representative African beauty, she has not forgotten her home continent. She sits on the US Committee For Refugees Advisory Board, and does charity work in her native Sudan. But this does not mean she has been accepted in Africa without controversy. Debates rage over whether she should be considered beautiful at all, let alone being the being the epitome of African beauty. If the Alek Wek phenomenon sheds any light on the question, it is by showing that even without a skeletal frame and a beige complexion, it is possible for an African to succeed in international modelling. Ends