Nia Franklin, Miss America 2019, on Instagram
A native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Nia Franklin holds a master’s degree in musical composition from the UNC School of the Arts. After being accepted into the Kenan Fellow program at Lincoln Center Education in Manhattan, she now lives in New York where she exercises her talents as an opera singer.
It took a lot of persistence to get here.
Nia Franklin
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“It took a lot of persistence to get here”, also commented on the new Miss America soon after victory. During the competition, the young woman also described at length how music helped her find her identity as a black woman. “I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian school and there were only five percent minorities, and I felt so out of place because of the color of my skin.”, she explained, “But growing up I discovered my love for the arts and through music it helped me feel positive and know who I was.”
Miss America, an event with heavy liabilities
This election comes at the end of a year spent under the sign of controversy for the organization of Miss America. Its former CEO, Sam Haskell, had to resign after the publication in the press of emails in which he made sexist comments about participants. Other members of the leadership had followed him in his fall.
The committee, now taken over by an ex-miss, known for her feminist and pro-MeToo positions, is looking for a new identity not to say “virginity”: affixing to her name of Miss America the “numerically correct” 2.0, and even going so far as to dare to alienate his old fans by abandoning the traditional parade in a bikini. (Minimum revolution: this year, the participants hid the bottom of their two-piece swimsuits with a sarong briefly tied on the hip, editor’s note)
Nia Franklin is not the first young African-American woman to receive this coronation. But it has been a long road for so-called “different” candidates, whether they have darker skin or do not fit the ethnic or religious norms of conservative white America.
An article in Le Monde in August 2018 recalls that in 1945, “When, for the first and only time in its history, a Jewish finalist, Bess Myerson, wins the competition, she is strongly advised by the organizers to change her last name in favor of a more American-sounding pseudonym. The girl opposes it firmly.” The journalist explains that when she toured the country, the young miss had to look away from the signs “Forbidden to Jews” stuck on the doors of hotels or country clubs in South America where she was to fulfill her role as ambassador.
I wanted this demonstration to put an end to this complex as old as the world where millions of black women end up convincing themselves that their physique does not meet standards of beauty.
J. Morris Anderson
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Miss Black America VS Miss America
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-Until the 1930s, the competition rules stipulated that “participants must be in good health and be of the white race.” This last rule was abandoned in the 1940s. In fact, in 1968, no black candidate appeared on the list of finalists. So in that same year, another contest was born, the Miss Black America, under the impetus of a black businessman, J. Morris Anderson, whose little girls only dream of one thing, one day becoming Miss America. “I wanted to, explains to the daily J. Morris Anderson, that this demonstration put an end to this complex as old as the world where millions of black women end up persuading themselves that their physique does not correspond to the standards of beauty. I also wanted to give my daughters a different horizon, a manifestation where their beauty would be valued at its true value, instead of lying to them or telling them about an unattainable dream. ”
Vanessa Williams was the first black miss in 1983. But not for long … Faced with criticism and the controversy that her election arouses, the young woman ends up returning her crown, before experiencing a period of depression. A story very badly lived then by the African-American community, judging this case discriminatory and as proof of racism towards it. It is suddenly his runner-up (finish 2nd in the competition), Suzette Charles, also African-American, who recovers her title, thus becoming the second black Miss America in history until today.
But Vanessa Williams did not stop there, she has since become a famous singer and actress, known to the general public for her role in the hit series. Desperate Housewives. Thirty-two years after her election, while she was a member of the Miss Usa jury, she received a public apology from the committee, which presented her with her crown and her title.
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Since Miss America 1983, the context is very different, in the meantime the United States has had a black president, even if the changes hoped for by human rights defenders in favor of the African-American population have been only limited ( not to say zero …). Discrimination, police violence, and it is no surprise that women are still on the front line.
A Wakanda effect?
Nevertheless, some observers believe that they are witnessing a kind of Wakanda effect ? The expression comes from a CNN reporter, using the name of this imaginary country used as the backdrop to the film “Black Panther”, whose global success marked the winter of 2017.
In this pre-fall 2018 return to school, two female icons of world pop, Beyoncé and Rihanna, find themselves on the cover of two issues of the most famous world magazine on the planet, Vogue, whose September editions are better known as “septembre issue“, a key moment for the prestigious women’s press. If these back-to-school issues are law in terms of trends, they are also and above all an opportunity to attract as many advertisements as possible. In short, a major financial issue which almost determines the annual budgets of these newsrooms.
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-In American Vogue, Beyoncé confides. “When I started 21 years ago, I was told that it was difficult for me to make magazine covers because black people didn’t sell. (…) Clearly, this (my cover) proves that this is a myth. ” The Rnb star, whose feminist posture is sometimes contested by feminists themselves, specifies that she was able to sign the captions and choose her photographer, Tyler Mitchell, also black, a first in the magazine’s 126 years of history.
Rihanna, her colleague and nonetheless competitor in the music scene, especially among the youngest, was chosen for this other institution that is British Vogue, a first for 102 years. Last year, the newspaper had already made an unprecedented choice by recruiting its first black editor, Edward Enninful. This one explains why he picked Rihanna for the September issue: “It doesn’t matter how good the style is, because even if it’s experimental you never lose her in these pictures. She’s still Rihanna.”, he writes, “We all have a lesson to learn from it. However you choose to dress this season, be inspired by the look and most of all be yourself.”
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-And it’s not over. Lupita Nyong’o, actress Oscar winner in 2014 for “12 Years a Slave” by Steve McQueen, on the cover of Porter magazine; Tracee Ellis Ross, one of the stars of “Blackish” (TV series about a father tormented by his identity as a Black American, editor’s note) makes that of the She Canada, and actresses Zendaya and Tiffany Haddish are featured on the covers of Marie Claire and Glamour.
While these covers have generated a lot of enthusiasm on social media, it should be noted that they come at a time when the United States under Trump’s helm (puff?) Feels more divided than ever on inter-community issues. . “Looking at the magazine covers this month, there’s a lot of #blackgirlmagic”, enthuses a journalist from Stylemagazine.
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(Nothing about me right now is perfect but I’m perfectly Serena)
So a real political choice or a fad? Background movement in the wake of “Black lives matter” or simple surface foam? Tennis champion Serena Williams, who made the front page of Time magazine in August 2018, remains still and always the target of sexist (and racist) attacks, as she again denounced during the final of the tournament of the US Open, during a violent clash with the referee. “I am fighting here for women’s rights and for women’s equality and for all kinds of things. For me!”, she said in the post-match press conference.
And to add to the controversy, the drawing of an Australian cartoonist describing in his own way the anger of Serena on the course has since created a huge “badbuzz”, on the planet twitter, relegating it must be said to oblivion the performance of the winner of the tournament, Naomi Osaka, a young mixed race Japanese-Haitian, barely 20 years old.
Something to stay on guard, then. Hope this #blackgirlmagic will not be just a magic trick, appear to (re-) disappear.
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