Anyone else watch? I keep getting her shorts on my YouTube feed.
Ugandan influencer who used to be a model and now makes videos about her seemingly-idyllic village life in rural Uganda.
Something always rubs me the wrong way about her content. Like this:
You're cooking and you ran out of salt, and you just HAPPENED to have a cameraperson there already capturing it. You go over to your neighbour's to borrow some, cameraperson still present, and your neighbour makes no remark on the fact you're filming them, isn't even surprised or confused. You then proceed to converse in English, for no apparent reason.
A LOT of her content is very staged in this way.
I also find that she leans a lot into the racist "noble savage" stereotype - emphasising the simplicity and reciprocity of rural Ugandan life and contrasting this against Western lifestyles. There's never any mention of the impacts of poverty, conflict, sexual abuse, disease, inequality etc in the region. It's an incredibly rose-tinted view of a place.
She often refers to it as a "traditional African village". This is so obviously catering for an ignorant Western gaze. The phrase "traditional African village" is utterly meaningless - Africa is so massive and diverse, it's impossible to find a common thread between ALL rural ways of life across the continent - yet she uses the phrase "African" to make sweeping statements about how it is in Africa as a whole.
She also claims to live in this incredibly bare and empty mud hut with only a handful of possessions, yet has all this camera equipment and a different outfit for every video, including some really nice clothes from her modelling days.
Basically it all comes across as highly staged, pseudo-inspirational poverty porn, designed for the Western gaze.
Would be interested to hear what others think as I haven't found any criticism of her online so far (although people in her comments do ask where she keeps all these gowns). Especially interested to hear from anyone with a connection to Uganda who can shed some light on the accuracy of her portrayals of life there.
Ugandan influencer who used to be a model and now makes videos about her seemingly-idyllic village life in rural Uganda.
Something always rubs me the wrong way about her content. Like this:
You're cooking and you ran out of salt, and you just HAPPENED to have a cameraperson there already capturing it. You go over to your neighbour's to borrow some, cameraperson still present, and your neighbour makes no remark on the fact you're filming them, isn't even surprised or confused. You then proceed to converse in English, for no apparent reason.
A LOT of her content is very staged in this way.
I also find that she leans a lot into the racist "noble savage" stereotype - emphasising the simplicity and reciprocity of rural Ugandan life and contrasting this against Western lifestyles. There's never any mention of the impacts of poverty, conflict, sexual abuse, disease, inequality etc in the region. It's an incredibly rose-tinted view of a place.
She often refers to it as a "traditional African village". This is so obviously catering for an ignorant Western gaze. The phrase "traditional African village" is utterly meaningless - Africa is so massive and diverse, it's impossible to find a common thread between ALL rural ways of life across the continent - yet she uses the phrase "African" to make sweeping statements about how it is in Africa as a whole.
She also claims to live in this incredibly bare and empty mud hut with only a handful of possessions, yet has all this camera equipment and a different outfit for every video, including some really nice clothes from her modelling days.
Basically it all comes across as highly staged, pseudo-inspirational poverty porn, designed for the Western gaze.
Would be interested to hear what others think as I haven't found any criticism of her online so far (although people in her comments do ask where she keeps all these gowns). Especially interested to hear from anyone with a connection to Uganda who can shed some light on the accuracy of her portrayals of life there.