She is proud of being African, though she prefers to wear her hair straight. She is just as interested in having a career as a Western woman, though perhaps more coy about sex.
That, at least, is how the first Kenyan edition of Cosmopolitan sees its target audience.
In a country where the position of women is in flux — caught between traditionalist attitudes and a changing society in which women increasingly go out to work and have successful careers — the launch edition of the women’s magazine showcases the transformation taking place.
What is absent from the magazine says as much as its content. There is little of the chauvinistic attitudes often exhibited in Kenyan newspapers, where agony aunts sometimes advise working women to turn their salaries over to their partners to prevent jealousy.
And there is none of Cosmo‘s trademark sexual frankness. In Kenya, public attitudes to sex remain those ingrained by Victorian missionaries.
But there is an unmistakable sense of pride in being African. The fashion pages feature a Kenyan model wearing designs tailored by a Nairobi fashion house, with beads, wraps and thick metal necklaces much in evidence.
The choice of clothing is important. The government last year launched a new national dress; a robe and wrap known as the ”Kenyan cloak”.
Kenya has never had a single national dress, and the clothing was intended to inspire unity and wean Kenyans off Western dress.
The new national costume has so far failed to capture the public’s imagination. But African-inspired fashion spreads in glossy magazines are vital if a distinctive national style is ever to take off.
Cosmo Kenya features 30 pages of local content wrapped around the South African edition of the magazine, and the contrast between the two sections is striking.
The Kenyan section of the magazine is far ”blacker”. Unlike in South Africa, where affluent white women are a key part of the audience, the cover model of the Kenyan issue is black.
So are the various women shown bounding through the surf, holding phones to their ears or practising yoga postures in the adverts and features inside.
Sex is far more openly discussed in the South African section, which features a Belle de Jour-inspired ”Diary of a prostitute” as well as ”Eight quirky signs he’s great in bed”.
South Africa has long been the most developed country in Africa, the ripest target for a women’s glossy, but the launch of this new edition of Cosmopolitan shows that Kenya is catching up.
Features looking at what’s hip in Kenya this month illustrate a growing national confidence, as well as the emergence of an assertive middle class.
Elsewhere in the first issue, there are touching vignettes of local life, as in the article on long-distance relationships illustrated by three very Kenyan stories; the boyfriend who moves abroad to study, the expatriate boyfriend, and the British tourist who became a husband.
The lives of Kenyan women vary dramatically. Poorer women typically shoulder a heavy domestic burden. Some communities, such as the Maasai, also practise female circumcision. But there are also successful Kenyan women in all walks of life, and in the shape of environmentalist Wangari Maathai, Kenya even boasts its first Nobel Prize-winner.
It is a small step, but the launch of a local edition of Cosmopolitan may be the latest sign that a new breed of Kenyan woman is emerging. — Guardian Unlimited Â