More than one news story has covered Vogue Italia’s using only black models in one issue. Is it groundbreaking, will it sell, is it a marketing ploy and so forth. Click here for the MSNBC report.
But here is a different story that you may not have read from the BBC about dalit women who got to attend an UN conference and model. Usha Chomar is a former scavanger who attended the conference. She said, “I am very happy at last to be treated like a normal person.”
For the UN this is the International Year of Sanitation. From the BBC report, “The UN aims to reduce by half the number of people without basic sanitation by 2015. But in India alone they face a huge task. It’s estimated that around 700 million Indians do not have access to safe and hygienic toilets.”
Oddly we have more coverage of Naomi Campbell mopping floors in 2007 and Anna Wintour wearing the same dress several times then we do of nameless women who are trying to do more.
