Rigid gender norms in Nigeria’s religiously conservative society are challenged through a commitment to documenting unconventional lives.
Richard Akuson, a lawyer whose magazine calls for situations with inflexible gender norms in Nigeria’s religiously conservative society, understands all too well the nature of the challenge. He lived it.
“In Nigeria, as in many other places, other people treat a very limited edition of masculinity as if it were sacred, as if challenging it was immoral,” the 23-year-old said.
“If, as a man, you just need to put on makeup or cross-dress, you can’t live an open life in Nigeria. “
Akuson unveiled its culture- and fashion-focused website, A Nasty Boy, in February.
“I sat in the legal categories while participating in the online page; A lot of other people who sat me for months thought I was applying for a site,” he says. “I called him Nasty Boy to disarm other people. “
The magazine documents unconventional lives in Nigeria. It features visual essays of transvestites and young men in makeup, unabashedly intimate in public but empty places.
A visual essay on the website, titled No Place to Call Home, features two male models on a beach wearing soft-toned makeup and sequins, eyeliner and mascara. The images, through Terna Iwar, are intimate and withdrawn; They are imbued with a sense of loneliness, of the absence of community.
“I wanted the magazine to be charming and about creativity and fashion, but also to explore otherness,” says Akuson.
Nigerian fashion-focused media tend to forget about other people considered androgynous or reflecting socially taboo identities, Akuson says. “To me, the online page is about creating that visibility for the lives that exist. “
Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission does not record the number of attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and gay people, but several NGOs have begun in recent years to document cases of abuse reported by victims across the country.
According to the Equal Rights Initiative, attacks on sexual orientation and gender identity are systematically ignored by the state, which fails to recognize the right to freedom of expression obviously enshrined in Nigeria’s constitution.
Cross-dress and perceived expressions of gender fluidity are not illegal, however, a cultural agreement with homosexuality and a perceived unnatural anomaly makes other people who dress vulnerable.
“There are very few individual celebrities like Bobrisky [a fashion celebrity] who dress androgynous, but inhabit an area that doesn’t require acceptance. In this sense, A Nasty Boy is an area, because those lives are at the forefront and, hopefully, a repository of shared experiences.
Nine months after its inception, the magazine has about 12,000 readers per month. Although most are registered in Nigeria, they have gained a developing Nigerian diaspora and a foreign community, many of them in the United States.
Akuson is lately raising the budget for a semi-annual print edition.
The reaction to the mixed magazine. Although politics in Nigerian and foreign media has been largely positive, Akuson has earned threatening and abusive messages. A style he used for one of the visual tests was abused after the photographs were published.
“Some of the threats literally shook me in a moment, other people called me and all kinds of things. But now, I don’t focus on them. I’ve received so much positive feedback from other people that it’s easy not to. “Focus on that. Even other people who wouldn’t possibly leave comments on posts will email me saying they like what the site does,” Akuson says.
Mayowa Davids (not her real name), 31, an employee of the Lagos network, says A Nasty Boy’s visibility into gender issues is vital. They don’t like it, but it’s vital to question that. “
Davids described cross-dressing as a component expression and a component living in a fantasy. Compete to see who is the most productive diva. Sometimes it’s very funny but also herbal for me, in the sense that it’s something that’s inside me.
In the works of his children’s boarding school he assumed the roles destined for female characters. “It was a way of dressing in a public space without the need for privacy or fear. It was a wonderful feeling.
For Akuson, the reports shared in A Nasty Boy have resonance.
“When I was about six or seven years old, my parents did a photo shoot of the circle of relatives. To dress better, I also raised my eyebrows and put on powder and lipstick. My dad reacted and told me to come in and cut it off. , so I went back to my room and dimmed it down, but I didn’t completely erase it. In the photo, you can still see it on my face, only it’s more subtle.
“In Nigeria, many other parents would have allowed it. For a country like this, I couldn’t ask for more.
In a sense, Akuson needs A Nasty Boy to be a bolder projection of the circle of relatives photography. much bigger place. “