“(Re) defining Images of African Women”

Sub-Saharan African women have been represented in various forms in Western magazines, movies, and documentaries in relation to the White Western woman. African women are continually represented as the “victim” of an unchanging African culture of violence and poverty. The body of the African woman is “read” within representational modes which make it almost impossible to view the African woman outside constructs such as poverty and victimhood. However, new images of African women are emerging. Particularly relevant to this study is the YouTube Series “An African City.” Drawing from feminist media studies and postcolonial studies, this study shifts the focus of criticism from whether it portrays the “true” experiences of African women or modern African women, to what kinds of discourses of empowerment about the new/modern “African woman” are emerging in the YouTube series. We argue that although the new images of African women are giving rise to new representational modes of African women empowerment, such representations are imbued with neoliberal and postfeminist sensibilities.