A modelling roadshow gives rural women a chance to become Cinderellas of a screen fantasy. Ann Eveleth reports
GROWING up in the Transkei village of Lusikisiki, Pamela Mandisa-Singenile and her four brothers had to huddle around a small television set connected to a car battery to get a glimpse of the modern world.
Now 22-year-old Mandisa-Singenile, who spent her childhood carrying firewood and water on her head, is the Cinderella of a screen fantasy: at the weekend she was crowned Lux Model of the Year.
The marketing firm hired to figure out how to sell more soap in the new South Africa hit on the idea of rural model searches after sales skyrocketed with the endorsement of supermodel Robyn Townsend. The firm scoured the rural backwaters of the Northern and Eastern Transvaal, kwaZulu/Natal and the Eastern Cape.
Scores of hopefuls turned out to parade across the port-a- stage in their Sunday best atop the 10-ton truck as the roadshow came to town. A “model of the day” was crowned in more than 120 settlements.
The 12 finalists who glided nervously down the catwalk in front of the mostly white audience at the Swiss Chalet in Umhlanga Rocks could be sure that the event was explicitly geared to mark Lux’s official entry into majority marketing. From the choice of the guest master of ceremonies — Shaka Zulu star Henry Cele — to the four junior “contestants to be” who strutted half-shyly across the stage, the evening was clearly calculated to mirror the new South Africa.
And if the organisers missed a nation-building beat here or there — looks of frustrated confusion flickered across some of the women’s faces as they strained to understand the English questions — the new South African women on stage set them straight. One demanded a Tswana translator before she would answer the question on which her future rested. Ex-Miss South Africa Amy Kleinhans helped pick the winner.
Mandisa-Singenile knocked her crown off her head in excitement as she hugged first and second princesses, Michelle Mtyingwana from Butterworth in the Eastern Cape and Pearl Ntshangase from Mtubatuba in Northern Natal.
She insists her new life “is not going to change me at all” and, speaking proudly of her Pondo heritage, asserts that Lusikisiki will always be her home, “as that’s where my father’s bones are buried”.
She says she will continue teaching and may become a psychologist one day.
“Although I want to go to New York, I will always come back to Lusikisiki so I can share my experience with others in my community.” One wonders how appealing the Lusikisiki thrift shop will be after a few days of TLC from the staff at Bloomingdale’s.