October 2012, Edition #227 of Crescer magazine
This just in. Don’t know why, but the makers of the Brazilian parenting magazine Crescer (meaning “growing up”) is featuring a black baby on the cover of it’s current edition. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know we discussed the overwhelming dictatorship of whiteness in a post at the end of March. If you haven’t already, we encourage you read that post to understand why we felt the need to stop the presses and post this news right now.
Our site and that of a Brazilian blogger both wrote about the invisibility of black babies on the covers of Crescer as well as the other well known parenting magazine, Pais e Filhos (Parents and Kids). If you go to the website of Crescer and click where it reads “EDIÇÕES ANTERIORES” meaning “previous editions” or “back issues”, you will see that from issues 206 to 225, 20 issues, all of the babies featured on the covers were white. There are actually many more than that, but when you click on the button for page 2 and 3 to go back further in the back catalog, the pages conveniently show an error message. Hmmm, wonder why that happened! If Crescer is like the rest of the Brazilian magazine covers, they probably haven’t featured a clearly black baby on their cover in YEARS if ever!
Just another example of the obsession with whiteness and whitening in the country that has been standard decorum in Brazil for years. This in a country of nearly 200 million where non-whites are the majority. I don’t know exactly why this happened suddenly, but as we here at BW of Brazil have discussed this issue, we’re sure there were probably foot soldiers on the ground also bringing the noise and pressure about this particular issue. This is another example of the way that black Brazilians are beginning to fight back against oppression, exclusion and racism that Brazil has tried for years to deny and/or hide. On the real side, it’s only one magazine cover. Next month, Crescer, like the other dozens of Brazilian magazines do monthly and yearly, will return to its normal whiteness. For those who have access to this magazine, enjoy this cute, brown baby on this cover; there’s no telling when you will see another black child on the cover!
Source: Black Women of Brazil
Leave a Reply