Black women on magazines: A step forward or tokenism?

BBC: Walking into the offices of Elle, dozens of copies of the magazine’s September issue lie proudly on a crisp white desk.
Its cover star is 21-year-old pregnant model Slick Woods – who is the face of Rihanna’s Fenty brand and has modelled for Kanye West.She’s one of the top stars of the moment but her appearance on the front cover is seen to have bigger significance.The model is one of several black women to feature on the front covers of many of the top fashion magazines in September.Rihanna is on British Vogue, Lupita Nyong’o is the star on Porter magazine and Ruth Negga, who is mixed-race, features on Marie Claire UK.
Beyonce is on US Vogue, Naomi Campbell is on Vogue Paris, Tracee Ellis Ross features on Elle Canada, Nicki Minaj is the cover star of Vogue Arabia and Zendaya is on Marie Claire US.”This is definitely unprecedented, seeing so many women of colour on so many mass market influential magazines,” says Kenya Hunt, deputy editor of Elle UK.
“We didn’t go into it thinking we wanted to have a black woman on the cover and we rarely do. The nice thing about having a team as diverse as ours is that the diversity on the pages and covers is just a natural by-product.”So we really don’t approach it as a box-ticking kind of method.”
Editors say the magazine industry’s move towards increased diversity is a natural reflection of the way the world is changing.