Between Shine and Porosity

Abstract

This article performs a close reading of an advertisement of Fenty Beauty's Body Lava featuring Rihanna in order to tease apart the imbrications of celebrity, sexuality, blackness, and labor by using an analytic of sweat. Since sweat is secreted by the body, this article is particularly interested in its relationship to enfleshment and what it tells us about the material aspects of black ecologies. Working through how and where sweat surfaces and doesn't in this image of Rihanna offers a way to unpack the utility of sweat as an analytic. Sweat offers insight into why shine connotes both work and sex while also giving us a way move beyond shine and toward sweating and the intimacies offered by porosity.