On a cool July day, two cousins wandered through a crowded makeshift market on the streets of Bafoussam, a Francophone city nestled in the Bamboutos Mountains of western Cameroon. Charged by their aunt with the task of getting a robust live chicken at a “bon prix,” they navigated through the crowded market, the red soil of the ground collecting on the frayed bottom of their long kabba, a type of loose-fitting Cameroonian dress women often wear in casual circumstances. Like most street markets throughout West and Central Africa, the scene that unfolded around them engaged their visual, auditory, and olfactory senses: women sold fruit and vegetables—the ripe aroma of yellowing plantains in the air—and men carried bags of shiny technological accessories to sell—shouting the prices of bright cell phone covers and shiny electric razors. Suddenly, they saw a tall Cameroonian woman arrayed in the most beautiful two-piece pagne, a traditional garment frequently worn by women in West Africa. She seemed to flow up to a hair salon in high heels on the uneven earth (Figure 1). The salon was blasting makossa, an energetic Cameroonian dance music popularized in the 1970s by Manu Dibango, and there were vivid caricatures of women’s faces in varied hairstyles and brightly colored words drawn on the exterior gray concrete walls: “Esthetic Beauty Salon,” “Cheveux Africaine,” and “Cheveaux Américain” (Aesthetic Beauty Salon; African Hair; American Hair). The cousins joked that they wished they hadn’t worn their shabby kabba to the market, as the woman made them feel so underdressed. They tried to straighten out the creases in their kabba, before carrying on with their mission. Much like the lively scene that unfolded in Bafoussam, the contributing works in this forum use interdisciplinary approaches to stimulate the senses and paint vivid imageries of women’s different bodily practices and aesthetic rituals in twentiethand twenty-first-century Africa. Each author uses gender analysis as a key instrument to capture how aesthetic and bodily

中文翻译：

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客座编辑对 20 世纪和 21 世纪非洲论坛中的身体实践和审美仪式的介绍

在一个凉爽的七月的一天，两个堂兄弟漫步在巴富萨姆街道上拥挤的临时市场，巴富萨姆是一座位于喀麦隆西部巴布托斯山脉的法语城市。被他们的阿姨委托在“bon prix”上获得一只健壮的活鸡的任务，他们穿过拥挤的市场，地上的红色土壤聚集在他们长长的 kabba 磨损的底部，一种宽松的喀麦隆人女性经常在休闲场合穿的衣服。像整个西非和中非的大多数街头市场一样，围绕它们展开的场景吸引了他们的视觉、听觉和嗅觉：女性出售水果和蔬菜——空气中泛黄的大蕉的成熟香气——而男性则提着一袋袋闪亮的科技配件出售——高喊明亮的手机壳和闪亮的电动剃须刀的价格。突然，他们看到一位身材高大的喀麦隆妇女身着最漂亮的两件式帕格尼服装，这是西非妇女经常穿着的传统服装。在凹凸不平的大地上，她似乎穿着高跟鞋流到了一家美发沙龙（图1）。沙龙正在播放 makossa，这是一种由 Manu Dibango 于 1970 年代流行的充满活力的喀麦隆舞曲，灰色混凝土墙上绘有各种发型的女性面部生动漫画和色彩鲜艳的文字：“美容美发沙龙”、“Cheveux” Africaine”和“Cheveaux Américain”（美容美容院；非洲头发；美国头发）。堂兄弟们开玩笑说，他们希望自己没有穿着破旧的卡巴去市场，因为那个女人让他们觉得自己穿得太少了。在继续执行任务之前，他们试图理顺卡巴上的折痕。就像在 Bafoussam 展开的热闹场景一样，本论坛的贡献作品使用跨学科的方法来刺激感官，并描绘出 20 世纪 21 世纪非洲女性不同身体实践和审美仪式的生动形象。每位作者都使用性别分析作为捕捉审美和身体的关键工具