VIVIANE, THE WALKING MOTHER

VIVIANE, THE WALKING MOTHER

Lebanon and Mauritania have given Senegal some colors, some flavors. This is the case with mixing, we do not always inherit what we want in a crossbreeding: we suffer, for better and for worse. The Moorish neighbor gave, among other gifts, influences to the Saint-Louisienne, in its aesthetic somnolence, with its negligently turned down “meulfeu[i]”. The Lebanese presence, historic and prosperous, has created an island in Dakar that arouses fantasy with, sometimes, hints of jealousy. With the colonial heritage, they continued, if not to define, resolutely to maintain the canons of Senegalese beauty. The Moorish and the Lebanese, like the Signare and to another extent the Fulani, continue to enjoy the prestige of color, or to be more precise, of clarity. This is how the woman in the flesh, fair-skinned, with bodily graces matched with curves, has become the most coveted object on the love market. The old polygamist loves it as much as the young first, as a tool for promotion or social prestige. And it is thus or almost, as a result, that the woman with the local good complexion, "dark" and "dark", slender and tall, sharp and natural, in a word the Sahelian, has followed the movement of the dominant cliché. Banal product, melted into the mass, almost depreciated, and which seems to want to catch up, sometimes, by the artifice of “hydroquinone [ii]” and the mirages of outrageous make-up; and who later, with a few pregnancies, catches those blessed curves that make the good Senegalese woman.

No doubt it is necessary to examine history to better situate this shift. From what moment did the standards of beauty become quite different from what national geography produces? There is something to look for in royalty and its hierarchies perhaps. There is no doubt to dig deeper on the side of colonial dispossession and the low self-esteem it engenders. Should we also see on the side of the advertising utopia and the images it conveys! Will we ever settle the question? Not sure. How does this bias persist in a deep country, where despite the offensives on the valuation of one's skin color, some women are still tempted to remain in this idea...

In the 90s, Viviane Chidid, who hadn't yet had the Ndour stuck to the train, was a modest chorister of the Super Étoile, Youssou Ndour's group. Remarkable and noticed, she already had an aura and a charisma. A voice and a presence. Audacity and candid perfidy. The still fine curves promised to thicken. The Lebanese and Mauritanian mestizo, flying the Senegalese flag, already bore within her the signs of the rise of an ambassador and a sex symbol. While the music scene was brooding over its divas, from Kiné Lam and Fatou Guewel to Maty Thiam Dogo, and long before the arrival of Titi, Adiouza and company, Viviane paved the way by capitalizing on this love of dress ceremony that characterizes both the social evenings in Senegal. What the other big names seemed to want to acquire with great reinforcements of jewels, faces patched up with powder, alluring or flashy outfits, the young Viviane seemed to have in reserve and in a natural way. She didn't need to overdo it. She kept her face, with the insolence of the certainty of a beauty that would capsize. While the others kept the sacredness of large boubous, she dared tight dresses, jeans and eye-catching slits. With this intoxication of confident youth, like that of the last wife in the polygamous couple of the film Bal dust, which comes to change the codes by refreshing the methods of the conjugal game. With the rise of the priestesses of American rap, whom the satellites imported into our living rooms, the Beyoncé, the Jennifer Lopez, the Ashanti, the Alicia Keys and so many others, Viviane entered the standards of this typical beauty. To her the 2000s.

A few more dances, suggestive outfits, even songs exalting virile desire, were enough to make her an idol of the moment, potentially exportable outside. The super star, the covers, his marriage to the brother of Youssou Ndour, will then fertilize the seed of star. The album Sama Nene, the cradle of an always lascivious work, boasting the trappings and tools of a good wife, devoted to the happiness of the male, made Viviane a star. The celebration of the loving woman, and beyond that, this abundance of the theme of love, overwhelmed her work, which found her audience. Center of an old color fantasy to which she gives youth and flesh; the breathing of national pains to enjoy, corseted by religious coercion; muse of a Senegalese charm made of primers and protocol of seduction; girl model. Its prosperity and the power its charm, established it as an essential baby of the 2000s whose years it continues to nibble. As proof, numbers of unmissable hits, engines of evenings where one could afford forbidden trips in the proximity of bodies, still resonate.

VIVIANE, THE WALKING MOTHER

As a child, I had tamed the vigilance of adult women to invite me to these reputed free, even libertine, female assemblies, where they exchanged tips, "tricks and skills", to lead their husbands to Paradise. I had intercepted there for the first time, without being able either to describe it or to understand it, the constraint of conjugal happiness and feminine devotion, with the blessing or even the prescription of the culture, for the benefit of the male; he who could thus as a lord without duties or almost dismiss his wife or threaten her with the blackmail of polygamy. This idea of ​​the "sacred husband" who stages the fairer sex into blessed brides and hated bachelors, has created this frenzy which goes so far as to boost polygamy, which has become a potable remedy or even a phenomenon praised as Coumba Kane writes in the columns of the "World[iii]". Female conditioning, from an early age, submission transmitted to the little ones as a virtue, and which goes as far as self-denial, unlike bankruptcy, still remain a laudatory discourse of the housewife. This representation crosses all the work of Viviane, guardian, at her expense, and on purpose, of this order.

It is surprising to see that this idea that we find in TV movies, in sermons, in families, has found in Viviane Ndour and her songs a great sounding board, an ambassador. She will sing the man, keeping this libidinal energy. Naively, probably unconsciously, this influence, which is already found in the capital of Senegalese women, will be in Viviane one of the elements of her aura. She embodies this figure of a mother, strolling, charms in submission, stopping at the pleasure hut. It is undoubtedly the immense task of Senegalese feminism, when it deigns not to be towed by Afro-diasporic feminism, to understand this internal and complex fact. The place assigned to women is a place magnified by cultural and religious representation. To better submit them, we celebrate them, in the classic mechanics of bottomless compliments, which recall the promotion of potiches. How to carry out a feminist fight in Senegal in this way without disalienating oneself from this assignment? Many feminist productions, notably by Fatou Sow, provide information on the complexity of this embarrassment, the need to fight on two fronts: colonization and the endogenous; and how above all the urgency of the fighting, and the fear of being called Western feminist, could have led some activists to close their eyes and to wallow in a local status quo. The new generations of feminists do not seem to be in the urgency of the fight, nor in the confrontation with the device. No privilege is easily left. No acquired either. He pulls away. The result is a cosmetic and almost laughable militancy, at a time when the revival of religion and new accommodations impose the worst on women.

To wear this to Viviane Ndour would obviously be an untold injustice. She is far from these quarrels, and for good reason. Many Senegalese women find feminism surly, imported, masculine, unsuitable for them. The “objectification” is in full swing and this whole idea of ​​decorative femininity draws a distant ancestry, which feeds on current facilities and vulgates. Viviane is a woman of her time who sings happiness where she slips social lessons as is customary in Senegalese song, where preaching is very often invited. She did it with charm, with good timing, inspiration, catchy sounds. And bingo. Besides, she hit the mark, many of her colleagues of the same generation are in the same vein, that of the luscious woman and singer-star, with varying fortunes. We must even credit the benevolence and sincerity of his songs. What could she? She was the standard bearer of a feminine, sexual, maternal idea, in perfect harmony with the national atmosphere. And this until divorce and remarriage as the perfect junction between the old and the new world.

It is very often through the audio-visual art that the clichés sediment in society. Music and cinema create a direct proximity, more than books. Viviane Ndour will be better known than Awa Thiam, a pioneer in the fight for women's rights. With her sublime voice, her audacity, her swaying hips, the emphasis on her family, she has risen to a modest level that will never make her an imperishable icon, no longer a banal decor. It is like this beat with a nonchalant tempo, this modest glory which seems to draw towards its end. A joyful train that wanders through the social alleys arousing desires and whose luster will be dulled by time. We will forgive him for the sometimes not very fair covers, in the name of moments of dance on Dekkore and many other hits, which the average Senegalese had as a form of free happiness. As a symbol of the local and the global, she is a Lebanese, Senegalese, Mauritanian, and American haired girl, who carried some national values. We could almost say, like Simone de Beauvoir: “we are not born authentic, we become so…”

[i] Outfit of Mauritanian origin, tunic folded down in the shape of a veil on the upper body.

[ii] Major component of depigmentation products.

[iii] https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2018/05/11/au-senegal-la-polygami...

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