To an average white Westerner, generally ignorant about
the traditions of indigenous communities all over the world, the lip plates worn by some African peoples are the ultimate symbol of a primitive,
alien culture. This body modification,
in which the lower lip is sometimes stretched to 20 cm in diameter, seems impractical,
extreme, perhaps even horrifying.
But if we set aside our cultural biases and examine the
practice objectively, we have to ask: is it any more bizarre than, say, elective plastic
surgery—an invasive medical procedure with the risks of complications and infection? Or tattoos—using
dozens of tiny needles to inject ink deep into the dermis? Practices that, yes, we might be judgmental
about, but we don’t look upon as particularly extreme, and certainly not as primitive? Anthropologist Shauna LaTosky, who lived among the Mursi people for several months, compares their tradition of
lip-stretching to her own choice to wear three-inch stiletto heels to
dance competitions and the "pulsating pain of stretched arches" that came with that choice.
LaTosky interviewed Mursi women—the only gender in that culture
which wears lip plates—about their own feelings about the practice and found a
range of attitudes that should be unsurprising. Many of the women considered their lip plates
to be a source of pride, and when wearing them believed that they walked more upright and felt more confident in public and around the men in
their lives. But others,
particularly some younger women, worried that foreigners would stare at or mock
them. For similar reasons, some
young men also preferred women who had chosen not to stretch
their lips. And the local government,
which had been backed by the USSR for a couple of decades, had repeatedly
threatened to ban the practice and considered it “uncivilised” and backward.
The film Black Panther
prominently features a man (credited as “River Tribe elder” and presumed by some
audiences to be Nakia’s father) wearing a moderately-sized plate in his lower
lip, as well as a pair of plates in his stretched earlobes. The plates are always color-coordinated with his clothing, both during T’Challa’s coronation, when he
wears traditional robes, and during a meeting of the elders, at which he wears
a bright green Western-cut suit. Among
the scenes of street life in the Wakandan capitol, we also see a young man
wearing a lip plate and showing off some futuristic Wakandan tech to his friends,
who are not wearing lip plates.
In Wakanda the lip plates are clearly unremarkable—no more
attention-grabbing than a nice pair of stilettos.
Wakanda is meant to represent Africa in its purest form, untouched by colonization, the slave trade, or Western influence of any kind. One might imagine that a culture free to
evolve without the pressure of Western judgments about what is fashionable and
attractive—that is uninfluenced by and, frankly, uninterested in Western ideals
of beauty—would not feel the need to abandon its time-honored dress in the way
that even a highly traditional tribe like the Mursi feel now.
By presenting these lip plates as ordinary accessories, worn
by a respected and fashionable person in a highly modern world, Black Panther throws our
Western assumptions about beauty and fashion back in our faces. It points out, blatantly, that beauty is cultural,
that the West does not have a monopoly on determining what is attractive or
fashionable, that there is nothing inherently primitive or uncultured about
traditional African accoutrements like lip plates.
In fact, the opposite is true. The entire film is a celebration of both past and future Africa, a love letter to the religions, fashions, and languages of pre-colonialist Africa and
a statement about their intrinsic value. It makes the bold claim that Africa has a great deal to offer the world
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