Jet Magazine’s “Beauty of the Week” of the 1970s

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Remember “Beauty of the Week,” Jet magazine’s famous page 43, which featured Black women college students, actors nurses, and everyday girls in swimsuits?

The Jet Beauty of the Week is the picture of a swimsuit model that appears each week in Jet, a Black American magazine. The beauties started out as centerfolds in the style of pin-up girls. Jet stopped printing magazines in 2014, but it is still online, still putting out a new beauty every week along with the rest of its content. It is one of its best known features.

Some of the beauties are professional models, but many are not. Some are in-house models that you can see elsewhere in the magazine. Nearly all are Black. The idea was to present Black women as beautiful and glamorous in a country that so often presented them as not.

Founded in 1951 by John H. Johnson, Jet proved a mainstay in primarily Black households across America. While Jet told real stories about real people, most readers began with page 43. With the re-set, Daylon Goff, the president of Jet, said one shouldn’t expect an immediate return of the Beauty of the Week. “It was relatable and owned by our community,” Goff explained. “The Beauty of the Week was a college student at Fayetteville, a nurse, secretary or actress. Relatable people that we all thought were attainable. But how can we be relevant to our audience in a world that’s different and the way we consume information and get information?”

For instance, Goff wondered what would happen if Rihanna were chosen as the first beauty. “Then Lizzo fans could say, what about her? And if we choose Lizzo, RuPaul could say, what about me?” Goff stated. “People would have every right to say that Jet is saying ‘I’m not beautiful.’” Indeed, Jet was social media before Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Going viral in pre-social media days meant being on the cover of Jet. Goff, whose background is brand marketing, understands that the Jet re-set is a challenging assignment. But he’s thrilled to take it on.

“I call this being re-fueled by Jet. We can be relevant to our audience in a world that’s different, and the way we consume information and get information is different,” he stated. “I also have to be relevant to an audience in a way that Ebony isn’t cannibalized. And we can do that.

“If we compare Ebony and Jet to iconic television characters, Ebony is Claire Huxtable, and Jet is Martin (Lawrence). They both speak to the Black experience but in a different way.”