Bandannas

Typically, color-filled images printed in packages or glinting mannequins on display are objects of our desire. We are meant to aspire towards what is shown and so we work and count and save. In Slave in a Box, M. M. Manring puzzles over Aunt Jemima’s long life on the pancake box. She was not what anyone wanted to become. What then was her appeal? He suggests her look served as assurance of authority (white) and loyalty (black) after the Civil War, what we could call an early version of MAGA. That this unmistakable woman-in-a-bandanna icon is from the kitchen and for the kitchen should not come as a surprise.