Not too threatening
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Liya Kebede, the American model of Ethiopian origin, is on the May 2009 cover of Vogue magazine, and that's supposed to be a good thing. After Michelle Obama and Beyonce, Vogue is apparently on a roll adding her to the roster of "black" faces.
I don't know how Kebede got into the modeling business. By Ethiopian standards, she is not even that good looking. She is too dark, and her features are too mousy. She looks more Somali than Ethiopian. In a normal setting in her homeland, she would be called cute (especially if she also had personality), but not a beauty.
But, in America, what they seem to want in their "ethnic" models is that they either go all the way to the extreme end of the spectrum, like the Sudanese model Alek Wek, or have just enough Caucasian features (small lips, straight nose, high cheekbones without being too strong) and dark skin to figure as an acceptable "black" model. All this without looking too Negroid. This is actually the look of the super model, and mother of them all, the Somali Iman. It is not surprising that Halle Berry, a mousy-featured favorite, is so popular. Another mousy but popular model is the Indian Padma Lakshmi. Liya, Halle, Iman and Padma could actually be sisters.
It is frustrating to look at these women as models of beauty, when all they're really doing is fulfilling some ideological need of putting non-white models, whose looks are not too threatening, on main stream fashion magazines.
