URBAN GIRLS

Παρουσίαση

The word urban, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from the Latin urbs, for city, and means "pertaining to or characteristic of a city or town." In modern American parlance, urban means "pertaining to city-identified ethnicities, primarily African American." Though the euphemism was adopted as a delicate way to racially profile product, it is now used by black and white alike to describe music, fashion, literature, attitude, and yes, a new generation of pin-up girls. Black Men, launched in 1998, was the first of the urban men's lifestyle magazines. A loose mix of GQ, Vibe, and Playboy, Black Men delivered a suave, upscale fantasy of life in the city with the tagline "For men who appreciate the finer things in life." Between the hip-hop music reviews and men's fashion spreads were layouts of bikini-clad women, surprisingly modest for their imagined gritty urban roots, a new sort of girl next door blending multi-racial exoticism with demure old Hollywood glamour. The decision to keep the girls clothed was simple economics: With no nudity the magazine could get into Wal-Mart, the vast chain of Middle American cut-rate superstores. (. . .) (ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΕΚΔΟΣΗΣ)