In our society men are supposed to be attractive by doing nothing. So, whenever a man does anything or acknowledges that attractiveness there is already a question mark put next to him.
- Larry La Fountain
Beyond Ghetto Fabulous
-Vaginal Davis
Published on July 10, 2003
I remember when ghetto fabulous wasn’t so fabulous, it was just plain ghetto. I lived it, enduring roach-infested apartments in the Ramona Gardens housing project in East L.A. and Jordan Downs in Watts. My mother, three sisters and I felt downright upscale when we moved to a cramped apartment in South L.A. Ah , the glamour of growing up way below the poverty line on welfare, food stamps, Section 8 and AFDC (Aid to Families With Dependent Children).
Back then ghetto fab was whatever scraps my mother could sew together for us, foraged from late-night Dumpster raids behind fabric houses, with the occasional discarded upholstery sample thrown in. If we wore something new, it was damaged and from a mega discount outlet. My mother had a unique fashion sense. She was doing underwear as outerwear way before Gaultier. She’d don multiple bras for that haute couture six-tit Romulus et Remus effect — add some big white panties over a gingham housedress and tube sox worn over orthopedic wedgies and you had one funky Sunday going-to-meeting dress.
Hot tips: The freshest trends in nail design originate at Queen Nail (Unit E- 24) and are then co-opted all over the world. There seems to be millions of choices, from two different color swirls mixed for a hippy-dippy effect to French tips that are airbrushed with different shapes or designs such as a tribal tattoo, a beach scene or fornicating lovers. And let’s not forget the textured nails, semitransparent or opaque.
The early ghetto fabulous look that came out of New York in the late ’70s and early ’80s couldn’t match the whimsy of my mother, but it had a spark that was its own — one that was vested in equal parts earnestness and irony. “In the beginning ghetto fabulousness was authentic and creative, taking material icons and trappings and adapting them to the urban American landscape,” says Mr. Style, who formerly worked for Puff Daddy /P. Diddy’s clothing line, Sean Jean . “For example, taking the Vuitton or Gucci logo off the bag and putting it onto a velour sweatsuit or high-top sneakers — something beyond the designer’s scope of reason or reality.”
No doubt the rappers in the seminal South Bronx and Brooklyn scenes, and to a larger extent the queens of the Harlem drag balls, admired the wealth of white society and strove to acquire some of it, but for the most part they were content, like me, to create their own distinctive and more interesting version. Everything looks good on dark skin, so black folks
can get away with wearing some pretty tacky things.
When I became a part of the early punk scene with my performance art group the Afro Sisters, I mixed my mother’s outrageousness with blaxploitation fashion. My riff on late-’60s/early-’70s urban chic didn’t always sit well with certain punk and post-punk snobs, plus a lot of my looks hadn’t dated long enough to be considered retro. But that just comes with being a style pioneer. Boot-y call: These faux- fur-and-tinsel boots were big sellers at the holidays, says Alice Park of Star Shoes (Unit J-11), which also offers a wild variety of other footwear, including athletic shoes. Many stalls in the mall carry the community-supportive Fubu (For Us By Us) label in all its shrink- wrapped glory.
When rap and hip-hop developed into the dominant youth culture movement in the ’90s, its idols began to become absorbed by the corporate world, and ghetto fabulous took on a dark undercurrent. “With the loss of irony, ghetto fabulous surrendered itself to the capitalist system and sacrificed its radical voice at the altar of Mammon,” says Glenn Belverio , former New York editor of the Paris-based fashion bible Dutch magazine. “Now it’s just slavery to logos coming out of shapely assholes. It doesn’t advance the cause of improved race relations or class differences — it actually widens the class gap. Do these wealthy rappers help their brothers and sisters living in poverty? In the last few years ghetto fab has been all about being selfish, ‘I gots mine, and I don’t care about you.’”
That mentality is what has really been disturbing about ghetto fabulousness since the ’90s. These nouveau riche rappers think that white wealth is great, and want to attain it no matter what the cost to their souls. They are overcompensating. Their attitude is very anti- revolutionary and an insult to people who are economically disadvantaged. How can anyone take hip-hop and rap stars seriously these days when they are busy promoting brands?
They’ve got sole: Leather Express (Unit F-21) features more styles for men than any store in L.A., says owner Cristin Lah .
“Ghetto fabulousness has become about taking prefabricated looks verbatim,” notes Mr. Style. “There is very little, if any, creative process involved. Excessive jewelry is still the look du jour, although gold has been traded in for platinum. Ghetto fabulous is also a lifestyle, beyond the fashion. It’s about living loudly above your means — having a closet full of designer wear, huge jewelry, along with an expensive car, but your credit cards are maxed out, you rent your home, and live check to check.”
Which brings me to beyond ghetto fabulous. Super post–ghetto fabulous is all about bringing back the originality and creative impulse to urban dressing. It’s still flashy and sexy — that will never go away — but it doesn’t drag sorry asses into needless debt. It’s about bargains, smart shopping, being anti-label in a way, or purposely buying an obvious knockoff of a designer. Beyond ghetto fabulous means having the courage to say that I look damn good in anything I wear, no matter what my size and the amount of money I spend — be it $1,000 or two bits.
Grin and wear it: For a base price of $50, you can get a slip-on gold tooth cap (diamonds extra) at Mr. Bling Bling Jewelry (Unit P-29) — but don’t wear it while you’re eating.
The Slauson Super Mall (formerly known as the Slauson Swap Meet) is the stadium-size
spiritual center of super post–ghetto fab. Located in the heart of funkytown, it offers affordable fashion that lets your imagination take center stage — and beyond. 1600–1680 W. Slauson Ave., South L.A.,(323) 778-6055.
My Response
20 August 2009
Since Dr. Davis published "Beyond Ghetto Fabulous" in 2003, I feel that what she identifies as a style revolution turned cultural disappointment has since grown into a full-fledged collective identity crisis and a profoundly complex form of racism. When she talks about the underwear as outerwear trend (circa: 1988), she goes directly to the couture source avoiding naming the middle-man of cultural contagion as Madonna. I know lots of you are rolling your eyes and sighing at the mere mention of her name, but you cannot deny that from 1988 until 1991, every nightclub of every genre was packed with women clad in bras and mens' blazers. Except for the 1% of these women who were actually wearing Gaultier, the majority of them were not imitating the Gaultier prototype. They were copping the "Madonna-look".
It's ironic that in 2000, Madonna, who in real life works to promote the possibility of racial, ethnic and religious utopia encouraged ghetto fabulousness to gain a strangle-hold on urban youth with the video for "Music" in which she played a pregnant, cigar-smoking pimp who sips champagne in the back of a gold limo while on her way to a strip club. Even though "Music" is not hip-hop (technically I suppose it's a Euro-synth-pop/French disco-inspired/sort of electro neo-dance track) she - with "Music" - in a sense, graduated ghetto fabulous from trend to movement ensuring it's longevity and capitalizing it's initials.
At first, I found Ghetto Fabulous to be exciting. I thought it was going to teach the socio- economically disenfranchised members of society about Fashion (with a capital "F"). Which would become a springboard for such communities to then learn about all things "High-end" including the visual arts. Naively, I thought that ghetto kids' new preoccupations would cause them to give up the ennui that leads to criminal activity and violence. That G.F. would inspire them to trade in guns and knives for subscriptions to Vogue and Art Forum. Instead, the last six years, have produced a number of fashion/style vultures who prey on the frailties and short- comings of their own communities. The biggest of these monsters are Puff Daddy/P.Diddy and Kimora Lee-Simmons. Would someone please assassinate them?
What white kids loved about G.F. is that it gave the bourgoisie permission to accessorize with urban signifiers in a toungue-in-cheeck way. Bandanas, custom-colored limited edition Nikes, soverign rings, initial pendants and loads of faux gold chains worn with general hipster gear make us appear to be somehow cooler and more on the vanguard of what is street to our peers. Men from the projects just read these types of guys as dorky white fags who need a good beat down not connecting them to their own culture at all. While G.F. white women are interpreted by urban men of color as signifying themselves as open to taking black lovers of a lower class.
Hip Hop, per the music theory definition is a post-modern type of vocal-less dance music created by a DJ in real time using turn-tables as a musical instrument to extrapolate and appropriate hooks or fragments of already existing songs recorded on vinyl with syncopated rhythms commonly from the disco, jazz or funk idioms. The essential part of this genre is syncopation. If a DJ creates a track from an already-existing track with a downbeat falling on
the first and/or third count of a bar, it is not syncopated, and, therefore, cannot be called Hip Hop. Rap is a vocal style commonly associated with and accompanying Hip Hop music.
Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Sean Combs or whatever his name is is a murderer with a head that looks like a raisin. In the late 1990s, he killed Hip Hop. The music he makes has nothing to do with the above definition. He is also responsible for the blasphemous interchanging of the terms "Hip Hop" and "rap". A Judas to his own race, Raisinhead, dressed Hip Hop culture up in his own brand of low-taste luxury and presented it to the white corporate system forcing his own people to unwittingly embrace the corporate beast. When Hip Hop was "indie", every artist and every small label was a significant black owned and operated business that, thanks to Raisinhead, became defunct if not absorbed by a gigantic white owned and operated label. Just another cog in the machine.
What Raisinhead and Kimora have in common are shared ghetto backgrounds each with one foot in privilege. The secrets of modern ghetto culture which they are privy to which the existing white corporate systems are not, is that the kids simply do not get irony. They reject interpretive or analytical skills necessary for the processing of extremely pointed sarcasm, sophisticated humor and nuanced wit. Those are localized in a mysterious place where the culture of women and fags overlap. A revolting, incomprehensible, and irritating mystery that speaks in a highly encoded manner. The ghetto youth cult is macho, patriarchal and misogynistic. It labels a working knowledge of literature, old movies as well as all music outside of the Top 40, Hip Hop or R&B as a sign of being fey and, therefore, weak. Familiarity with jazz is considered archaic, grandparent-like and out of touch with reality. Since sociologists deemed Ebonics an acceptable form of English, idiomatic slang has become compulsory, increasingly illogical and has de-evolved into an insulting form of baby talk. Being "ghetto" means being tremendously disconnected from cultural signifiers originating outside of one's own lifetime. Being "ghetto" means maintaining an atmosphere that strictly prohibits independent learning and encourages the construction of personal identity via the emulation of logo-encrusted models. Homogeny is the new individuality.
So, Raisinhead shows the Ghetto his version of fashion (all designed and fabricated by other parties who get no credit) and it's rejected by it's intended audience of urban males. Dismissed as being unaffordable. The underlying truth being that simulating or creating a look would force men to break out of their constant mode of nothingness. It would be self-feminizing; degrading. Like washing dishes or ironing.
Kimora, riding on the coat-tails of her own former career having been a teenaged Lagerfeld model, uses Hip Hop money to hire a warehouse full of Mexican seamstresses in Los Angeles (5000 miles away from where she lives) to fabricate bomber jackets, t-shirts and jeans covered with pussies. Her cat logo obnoxiously overpowers every garment that she never sees. Between 2006 and 2007 every girl who identified herself as G.F. was covered head to toe, front and back in slit-like pictures of cats reminding every straight boy on the block, "I'm the hole you love to fuck." As subliminal pornographic clothier to the urban woman of color, Kimora consequently came out with more extensive and expensive lines. Still never seeing any of it before it hits the racks, still branding every garment with her vagina. She adds a personal touch. A thoughtful tag. Her picture on one side. A few words on the other claiming the attached item to be authentic French haute couture which she designed and sewed with her own two little hands. Wearing the garment without cutting off the tag was the big trend for Autumn/Winter 2006 and 07. Face? Cat? Cunt? Logo? What's the difference? Over the last
three years many girls of the projects have willingly become a babymama (some more than once) in exchange for a pair of Baby Phat platform boots.
Raisinhead and Kimora Lee-Simmons, being major proponents of the G.F. Movement, are also - by default - major proponents of the new wave of fatherless welfare babies with underaged mothers. Two reasons for a decrease in abortion as in the ghetto, babies are a trophy of orgasm. Two reasons that the underprivileged will remain in their station and ensure that the next generation will stay there as well. Two reasons that an underclass is maintained. Two reasons that both black and white performers perform in black-face. Two more reasons that most people can't see the black-face. Two reasons that I am persecuted for mentioning that I see the black-face. Two more reasons that black women and Latinas are tricked into thinking Janet Jackson and Beyonce are Feminist activists.
An excert from "Extra Credt" appearing in the Oktober issue of Vogue 2009.
"About ten years ago, the catchword embellishment was everyone's superglossed lips. The girl with the most logoed-out, goldsplashed accessories was the life of the party in 1999. The narrative was all about a supposedly ironic reading of luxury branding; everywhere were lashings of embroidery, diamonds, and - sigh- bling. (Even "You go, girl!" doesn't sound as dated.)
Clearly, accessories are front and center again. But the message they're telegraphing is a century away from the epoch of the sparkle-decked Baguette bag. When we zoom in on today's all-important finishing touches - from the peak of a trilby to the tip of a wickedly painted fingernail to the toe of a black leather over-the-knee boot - our interest isn't in getting the next status buy before everyone else. It's uniqueness we seek........................................."
It's amusing how whoever wrote this column seems to be implying that the new narrative surrounding accessories is the agenda of a unified youthcult searching for truth through fashion.
