Banking On a Recipe of Class and Cheesecake : Images: Photographer Ken Townsend breaks ground by getting the first swimsuit calendar featuring black women into major bookstores.
Tracie Tyler said, “No way.”
Tracy Hudson wanted no part in something she figured was yet another dressed-up scheme to exploit black women.
Angelle Brooks balked at the idea of exposing her “chunky” hips and thighs for consumers around the country to see.
But photographer Ken Townsend convinced all these women--and 10 more--that they were just what he and his partner, Brian Skyers, were looking for to grace the pages of their swimsuit calendar, “The Darker Image.”
And the result is a deft enough balance of class and cheesecake to become the first black female swimsuit calendar to make it into national bookstore chains. “The Darker Image” is one of only four swimsuit calendars Barnes & Noble bought for 1995; it will share shelf space with calendars by Anna Nicole Smith, Kathy Ireland and Sports Illustrated.
“Most black calendars I’d seen depict black women negatively. They’re not really something you’d want to have hanging in your house,” said Hudson, a veteran model who appears on the cover as well as inside the calender. “But black models are always downplayed, always given the basic JC Penney outfit.”
Townsend, a 26-year-old UCLA law student and Crenshaw District native, said what he conceived as a business venture became something of a crusade to get black women a corner of the beauty-imaging market.
“It’s our job to glorify black women because magazines aren’t doing it,” he said.
“The Darker Image” seems a sure contender in the fiercely competitive calendar wars. Its titillating mix of surf-and-flora locales and exquisite models are photographed with enough soft-edged light and strategic poses to render even the obligatory thong shot aesthetic.
“When you see images of black women, they’re usually either put-upon urban mothers or rap-video sluts, but rarely just gorgeous people,” explained Townsend, a mile-a-minute talker. “That always bothered me, especially since so many women try to copy the physical attributes of black women. The relatively few black supermodels like Naomi Campbell are essentially white ideals of black beauty. Doing the calendar seemed like a way for us to start leveling the playing field.”
At least some of corporate America has been willing to see the light. Townsend and Skyers have cracked top bookstore chains--an essential step for large-scale calendar distribution--and have sold the bulk of their 10,000 copies of “The Darker Image” to Barnes & Noble and Waldenbooks, which are placing them alongside swimsuit calendar mainstays such as Sports Illustrated in about 600 outlets in 20 states. An additional 3,500 copies are going to liquor stores, barber shops and newsstands.
Bill Costello, calendar buyer for Barnes & Noble, says it’s about time.
“The market is crying out for it,” said Costello, whose company also owns Scribner’s, Doubleday, Brentano’s and Bookstar. “It’s rare that you can say in the business, ‘This is needed, there’s nothing else like it.’ In this case, it was true.”
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Needed or no, Townsend said it was a tough sell--but one well worth the effort. He believes that simply having his product displayed in mainstream outlets will begin realigning consumers’ thinking and literally make them see that black women are just as sexy and glamorous as their white counterparts. And while some would hardly call Townsend’s product social progress for African Americans, the photographer insists that it is because he is striking at the most rudimentary and pervasive of all stereotypes: that black is simply not beautiful.
“We’re just never seen that way--sexy and sensual,” said Theressa Rice, an African American actress and poet who perused the calendar at the Culver City Bookstar. “In the media, it seems like we’re either the bitch, the straight woman or businesslike to the point of being unfeminine. Uptight. It’s like we’re afraid of showing softness.
“I look at this and I’m inspired to accept myself more. I wrestle with my body image every day, but looking at this, I feel like I could model in it.”
But not everyone views the calendar as a giant step for black womankind.
“It’s a non-issue,” said publicist Bernice Sanders, who lives in the Fairfax District. The swimsuit calendar “is something I never really thought was a good idea. Black people have too many other things to do and be.”
Townsend said the scarcity of black women in glamour industries has made stereotypes of them as sex toys that much more glaring, especially in recent years: scantily clad bumpers and grinders in 2 Live Crew and Big Daddy Kane videos, incarnations of the rap-bred “bitches and ho’s” imagery.
Costello said that is exactly the sort of imagery he steered clear of as Barnes & Noble hunted for a high-caliber black calendar. He rejected the dozen or so that crossed his desk in an average year, including Howard Morehead’s perennially popular but decidedly risque “Bronze Beauties.”
“The quality of this one sold me,” Costello said. “It had to be something we could put on our shelves and not look disappointing. But we also didn’t want to buy a black calendar just because it was black.”
And rightfully so, Skyers said. “My friends are all glad that somebody finally did a black calendar right, that here’s something that can really compete with similar products,” he said. “The question now is how people will react to it. They don’t necessarily realize that they’ve been conditioned to expect blond hair and blue eyes in a context like this.”
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Two years ago, neither Townsend nor Skyers had any thoughts of launching a business project, let alone a swimsuit calendar. Friends since their University High School days, Townsend was a high-powered entertainment attorney in the making and Skyers a budding civil engineer from View Park. But Townsend said he realized during a crucial Century City law firm internship that he wanted “something more than a big desk and a secretary . . . both Brian and I wanted to make money, but independent of the system.”
Townsend got the idea for the calendar one afternoon as he lounged at home flipping through TV channels. Idly watching Black Entertainment Television music videos, he was struck by the fact that he rarely saw alluring black women except in the confines of the occasional--and fleeting--love-ballad video.
For the calendar project, Skyers agreed to put up the bulk of the capital and Townsend, a skilled but admittedly unseasoned photographer, would do the artwork.
The first calendar in 1994 turned modest profits at independent stores, military bases and college campuses, but both partners say this year’s version, with the coveted national distribution, will be the real test. The partners plan to donate a portion of the proceeds to the nonprofit Parents of Watts.
Townsend said the acceptance he’s looking for is less from “crossover” white consumers but black ones, especially men. “We want to get black males to appreciate a quality image of black woman,” he said. “We have to get away from the mind-set that buying something black automatically means buying cheaper or lower quality.”
Regae Clark, a 37-year-old black musician who picked up the calendar at a recent street festival, said products such as “The Darker Image” should help to undermine that acceptance.
“This is beauty, not exploitation,” he said. “I love looking at beautiful black women . . . so do a lot of other guys. Hey, if you’ve got it, you should flaunt it.”
