On the Sexual Objectification of the Black Male Body à la McLaren and Westwood

Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood: 

'Naked Footballer' T-shirt (SEX, 1975) 

Image via: bonhams.com 

 

By the end of the seventies the feared yet desired black male body 

had become as objectified as it was during slavery, only a seemingly positive 

twist had been added to the racist sexist objectification ... [1]  

 

 

I. 

  

The argument against the objectification of black masculinity is fairly straightforward: to reduce men to racialised sexual stereotypes and physical attributes rather than recognising them as individuals is dehumanising and degrading - stripping them of both agency and dignity (as well as their clothes). 

 

Frantz Fanon made this case over seventy years ago, pointing out how the idea of a black man as hypersexual, aggressive, and animalistic is one that originated during the colonial era and was used to justify slavery and violent oppression.

 

In his seminal 1952 study, Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon writes about the way the white world works its diabolical magic, transforming the black male subject into nothing but a BBC: "no longer do we see the black man; we see a penis: the black man has been occulted. He has been turned into a penis. He is a penis" [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Not that this particularly troubles those working in the arts who happily borrow from the world of pornography in order to appear transgressive, often relying on stereotypes while claiming to challenge social taboos. 

 

Famed photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, for example, loved to fetishise the black male body and produce homoerotic imagery for elite consumption [3].    

 

And punk fashion designers Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood were also not above jumping on this particular bandwagon in the early-mid 1970s, producing a T-shirt featuring a naked image of the NFL player Maurice (Mo) Spencer [4] with a semi-erect penis (see above).  

 

Commonly referred to as the 'Naked Footballer' (1974), this shirt was one of the very earliest designs created for SEX, their notorious boutique at 430 King's Road and is now discussed not only in the context of punk fashion, but also racial and sexual politics.   

 

Interviewed in 2008, McLaren was still defending the design and insisting that his intent was to confront the deep-rooted racial fears and sexual stereotypes clung to by the British public in the '70s - and of course garner publicity for the store [5]. 

 

Yet, as with other ideas and images intended to be radical and subversive, McLaren and Westwood's commodification of a racialised and sexualised body just to shock and perhaps terrify white onlookers is questionable to say the least. 

 

It could be argued - and argued quite convincingly - that they are simply reproducing tired historical tropes and that in this case the punk context ultimately changes very little and any positive twist had no lasting liberatory impact. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] bell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity (Routledge, 2004).

 

[2] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (Grove Press, 2008), p. 147. Fanon's original French text - Peau noire, masques blancs - was published in 1952 (Éditions du Seuil). 

 

[3] To be fair, that's a debatable statement - at least in part. On the one hand, Mapplethorpe did take explicit photographs of black men and his prints were mostly intended for wealthy white collectors and museums. But, on the other hand, defenders of his work - including some of his models - argue that his 1986 Black Book - featuring 96 nude images - was a celebration of black male beauty and classical form and didn't merely reduce black men to nameless (and often faceless) sexual objects.  

      As a queer artist working during a time of sexual liberation, Mapplethorpe's work arguably operates under different parameters, leaving the definitive judgment of his intent to the viewer. Readers who wish to make their own mind up on this subject can purchase the most recent edition of The Black Book (Schirmer/Mosel, 2010) on Amazon UK.

 

[4] Spencer played in the NFL during the years 1974-78. In late 1969, when still a teenager, he modelled for an adult physique magazine called Bob Anthony's Beefcake. When McLaren came across the image in a gay bookshop on a visit to New York in 1973, he determined that it had to be appropriated and become part of his own conceptual art project - a project that would eventually produce the Sex Pistols; at least two of whom, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, were photographed wearing the shirt.    

 

[5] "Satisfyingly for McLaren", writes Paul Gorman, "local residents complained when these T-shirts were displayed in the shop window." Later, during a police raid on SEX, the 'Naked Footballer' shirts were removed along with the (still more controversial) 'Two Cowboys' shirts. However, the authorities decided against including them in the charges of indecency that were brought against McLaren and Westwood. 

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 220 and 268.