Vagina Varsity is a South African online campaign aimed at selling Libresse sanitary products to ostensibly young women in South Africa, primarily through the medium of YouTube. In this paper, we investigate the privileging of white women’s bodies over those of women of colour in the campaign. In so doing, we tease out how patriarchy is multi-layered and experienced differently by women depending on their race and class. Moreover, we see that black South African women’s issues are being served by the campaign only to the extent which they coincide with those of the dominant group, i.e. white women in South Africa. To critically investigate this phenomenon, we use an intersectionality framework (Crenshaw, 1989) to discern latent differences in the treatment of black and white women’s bodies in the campaign. Multimodality (Kress, 2010; Iedema, 2003) allows us to analyse texts, sounds and images used in the campaign. Importantly, however, we also adopt Kulick’s (2003) notion of ‘dual indexicality’ to explore what is absent or silent in the campaign. We argue that the model of capitalism which commodifies women’s empowerment serves to multimodally exclude black women’s lived experience of patriarchy and pain.

Vagina Varsity是一个南非的在线广告系列，旨在主要通过YouTube媒介向表面上是南非的年轻女性出售Libresse卫浴产品。在本文中，我们调查了竞选中白人妇女的身体特权高于有色妇女的身体特权。这样一来，我们就可以根据妇女的种族和阶级，弄清父权制是如何多层化和经历的。此外，我们看到，只有在与黑人占主导地位的人群相吻合的情况下，竞选活动才能解决南非黑人妇女的问题。，即南非的白人女性。为了批判性地研究这种现象，我们使用交叉框架（Crenshaw，1989）来识别竞选中黑人和白人女性身体的潜在差异。多模式（Kress，2010; Iedema，2003）使我们能够分析竞选中使用的文本，声音和图像。但是，重要的是，我们还采用了Kulick（2003）的“双重索引性”概念来探索竞选活动中缺少或沉默的内容。我们认为，使妇女赋权商品化的资本主义模式有助于多模式地排除黑人女性对于父权制和痛苦的经历。