I have been seeing the cover of Issue #4 of the Pigeon and Peacocks magazine for a while now. When I first saw it I thought ‘WOW. I will never get my hands on that magazine in Sydney’. So I got over it.
I walked into a random newsagency last week when I was on was on the hunt for lunch around Uni and I found the magazine. In a heartbeat I picked it up and walked over the counter. The nice old lady said to me ‘Oh I didn’t know where to put that magazine. It’s very different to all the other magazines. Do you think I put it in a good spot?’ I said ‘Well I found it. So it seems to be in a good spot!’.
I walked out quite proud of my purchase but then something dawned on me. Why did she say that the magazine was different? Was it the fact that there were black people on the cover?
I flicked through the magazine to figure out what the lady was talking about. To me, the visual content looked similar to i-D, Wonderland or Frankie magazine. Magazines which are all stocked at this newsagency, so I couldn’t understand why she thought Pigeon and Peacocks was ‘different’?
My thoughts reminded me of a talk by Dr. Virgina Mapendzahama (University of Sydney, NSW, Australia) and Prof. Kwamena Ansah-Aidoo (Swinburne University, VIC, Australia) titled The Burden of Blackness: The White gaze, everyday racism and the black African experience in Australia (Listen). I heard at the National Conference IYFPOAD last month. One example made was when a black person goes to a shop and the salesperson is rude to them for no apparent reason and then the person leaves thinking ‘Why was that person so rude to me? Is it because I am black?’
I generally don’t have those kind of thoughts, but after I left the newsagency I started to think like that!
Besides that, the magazine’s main feature for Issue #4 is ‘Black Sploitation? Opening the debate’ is great. The feature comprises of a series of articles covering African fashion and art accompanied by an electric spread titled Babes of Benin. An interesting read!