The Jet Beauty of the Week (1952- ) is the picture of a swimsuit model that appears each week in Jet, a Black American magazine. The beauties started out as centrefolds in the style of pin-up girls. Jet stopped printing magazines in 2014, but it is still online, still putting out a new beauty every week along with the rest of its content. It is one of its best known features.
Both Marilyn McCoo and Pam Grier appeared as a Jet Beauty of the Week before becoming famous (click to enlarge):
Freda Payne, Jayne Kennedy, Judy Pace, Ja’Net DuBois (Willona on “Good Times”) and Lola Falana were also Jet Beauties at one point. Two singers of the Fifth Dimension were Jet Beauties of the Week (McCoo and Florence LaRue) while a third was a long-time Jet photographer who took many of the pictures: LeMonte McLemore. You will see his name on some of the pictures below.
Jayne Kennedy:
Some of the beauties are professional models, but many are not. Some are in-house models that you can see elsewhere in the magazine.
Nearly all are Black. The idea was to present Black women as beautiful and glamorous in a country that so often presented them as not. But its sort of beauty was, is, limited in at least two ways:
- It sticks determinedly to the swimsuit model sort of beauty. From 1959 to 1993, it even provided body measurements!
- While it fought against internalized racist ideas of beauty, it was unavoidably affected by that very racism. Many of its earlier models look White or very close to it. Only slowly over time has it moved towards a Blacker sort of beauty.
Timeline:
- 1952: The first beauties. Mostly shown as centrefolds till 1969.
- 1959: body measurements become common (till 1993)
- 1969: Afros common (till 1980); the end of centrefolds.
- 1970: change to colour.
- 1984: title added: BEAUTY OF THE WEEK.
- 1994: title put in lower-case: beauty of the week,
- 2004: words in the title put in different colours.
- 2006: website address now appears (till 2014).
- 2010: title is now “Jet Beauty” or “Beauty”.
- 2014: online only. Writing no longer appears on the picture itself.
Some examples from each decade (click to enlarge):
1950s: the first one is from 1954, the other two from 1956:
1960s: from 1962 and 1965:
1970s: both from 1970:
1980s: from 1985 and 1989:
1990s: from 1993 and 1994:
2000s: from 2002 (showing Lizz Robbins, who I did a post on, back when I regularly did posts on swimsuit models) and 2009:
2010s: the first is from 2014, the other two from 2015:
The range of beauty is far broader than what you see above: I only picked pictures that I liked. Some Jet beauties are too thin or pale for my tastes. Sometimes the woman on the cover of the magazine is better looking than the beauty inside!
Compared to the women I put on Tumblr, Jet beauties:
- are less beautiful on average (because they are not always chosen according to my tastes!),
- show way more skin (as if they live at the beach, not in the city), and
- are far less likely to have a natural hairstyle.
– Abagond, 2016.
Images: Jet magazine.
See also:
- Jet: Beauty of the Week
- Abagond’s Tumblr
- Jet Beauties
- internalized racism
- “Black is beautiful”
- Other magazines with beautiful Black women:
- or with hardly any Black women:
- or with an extra helping of denigration:
566
Lola Fulana should be Lola Falana.
“While it fought against internalized racist ideas of beauty, it was unavoidably affected by that very racism. Many of its earlier models look White or very close to it. Only slowly over time has it moved towards a Blacker sort of beauty.”
Where’s the evidence for your claim? I can’t see a single woman who looks white in the pictures shown above.
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@ gro jo
Thanks for the correction. I added some pictures of Whiter-looking models.
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@ gro jo
I know that Marilyn McCoo and Jayne Kennedy are Black because I have seen them plenty of times, but if I had only their Jet Beauty pictures to go by (see above), I might wonder if they were White.
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It’s funny how popular culture shifts around on ideal body types.
The Jet Beauties from the 1950s and 1960s would be considered fat today.
They would be subject to the constant body shaming and hectoring that grocery store tabloids seem to specialize in these days.
The Jet Beauties from the 1980s look downright emaciated.
Contemporary Jet Beauties have more meat on their bones. They are also very toned since that is all the rage right now.
I recently saw a Twilight Zone episode from the early 1960s set on a Navy ship. The male actors on the ship all looked fit but a lot thinner and with less muscle definition than today’s actors. Though it was an all White cast, there was a greater range of looks—they were not all handsome and a lot hairier.
It will be interesting to see how the ideal will shift in the 2020s or 2030s.
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If McCoo and Kennedy “look white”, why the insistence on the blackness of Ancient Egyptians? Nefertiti looked whiter than McCoo. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefertiti)
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Are you saying that a man was a centrefold? Now I’ve read everything!
We need to stop using the phrase “natural”when referring to Afro-textured hair. Natural implies fruit smoothies,veganism, hairy armpits and legs, and some type of wilderness lifestyle. Its , not appealing.
More importantly, note that white and Asian women do not have “natural” hair. They ust have normal hair. So whenreferring to black women with Afro-texyured hair, please refer to them as having “normal hair.”
P.S. Great way to enf Black Women’s History Month
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@Satanforce
LOL! What about those of us who like hairy armpits and legs?
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To me, natural hair means hair the way it comes out of your head, not treated with heat or chemicals
Yes, White and Asian women’s natural hair is different, but this is Jet Magazine.
I confess I thought Jayne Kennedy looked white; I’d never heard of her before today. I’m young.
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You people need Jesus.
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@satanforce
Thanks for making my day! (chuckle)
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Satan, invest in Neet.
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@Herneith
Damn I used to use that for my bal……, I mean my baby hair.
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@ Satanforce
I think “baby hair” is wonderful. LOL!
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In your comment about racism, you say “Many of its earlier models look White or very close to it.”.
Where is blackness defined as a specific shade of color, and why do so many blacks feel light-skinned blacks aren’t “black enough”.
The irony…
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I am trying desperately to find a copy of a picture of one of Jet magazine’s Beauty of the Week. This was published in the late 1950’s or 1960’s. This copy I am looking for is of late sister who died a few ago. She tragically for years lost her fight with breast cancer. Her name Gloria Jean Walker and resided in Harlem, New York. Her was entered in a Miss Harlem Beauty Pageant and won first place. All of our memories of this time were lost years ago after my father passed away.
If someone can steer me in the right direction to obtain is information I would be grateful appreciative. Thanking you in advance, Karen Walker. My email address is kaykay2880@gmail.com.
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