Acting White: Super Model Gisele Goes Super Taboo

There’s a rip-roaring dialog happening in the fields (Field Negro), and other blogs, over the latest photographic escapades (here) of supermodel Gisele and Norwegian photographer Solve Sundsbo. Of course, people are debating a cornucopia of welled-up black-white emotions and meaning to the photos of the arguably most beautiful woman juxtaposed with a quartet of handsome black male hard bodies.

True to my desire not to be redundant, the pictures sent me cogitating in another direction. For the record, I understand Gisele to be looking for eye-catching manifestations of her beauty and nothing is more so than black and white tension, be it sexy, or King-Kong-ish (ala LeBron James). I’m not offended by this purposeful manipulation, and the shots certainly hit the artistic nail on the head, in my eye. My thoughts, however, went to lions and tigers – the big cats – because they too are beautiful, sexy, dangerous, and cross-cavort (mate) upon exception.

When a male lion mates with a tigress, they produce what’s called a liger – a super-sized big cat, 12-15% bigger, and presumably more dominant, than a lion, the alleged king of the jungle. Now unlike Gisele and her pumped-up photo-suitor, lions and tigers are of the same genus, but different species, taxonomically, but nonetheless can and do mate successfully. My point, however, is that the hint and attraction of crossing the lead of the species, or near species (however that is defined), is a natural curiosity that has analogs throughout history, with and without man’s help.

Pictured: Male liger "Hercules", 3 years old, 10ft. 500lbs. At maturity, 1,250lbs. 12ft.

Nearly every species (of the same genus) that ever existed has cross-bred (or attempted), including Neanderthals and Homo-Sapiens, back in the day, be it in Africa, Eurasia and other far flung locales. In some cases, the cross-breeding stuck. Just because we see tigers and lions predominantly with each other today does not mean either is not a more competitive off-spring variant of cat-versions that preceded them.

So as everybody gets their knickers all knotted up over these pictures of Gisele draped in black, and the naughty thoughts of some version of a hook-up that they suggest, just remember that there is not much under the sun and/or moon that is new, and the more we attempt to mandate our ideals, the more evolution laughs in our faces, only to proceed on its own amazing course.

James C. Collier

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