This week, there was quite a stir about a Ralph Lauren ad that featured an unrealistically thin female. Many were shocked by this image. I was shocked that so many people were shocked.
New York Fashion Week Spring 2010 occurred recently. Normally, I avoid looking at runway pictures, but wanting to see if there was a Michelle Obama influence at the shows, I decided to look. On the sites that I visited, people were commenting on how beautiful -- or how ugly -- certain outfits were. I barely noticed the clothes because I was so distracted by the models underneath the garments. Line after line, show after show, model after model looked the same: jutting chest bones, sharp clavicles, bony knees, and so on.
As someone who has struggled with eating disorders, I was particularly disturbed by most of the models. I've been to inpatient and outpatient eating disorder facilities and more support group meetings than I can count. When I was looking at a lot of the models from Fashion Week, I thought the same thing: That model looks like girls I met in treatment. She needs to be hospitalized right now. In an inpatient facility. For months. And she needs feeding tubes.
It wasn't just their thinness that triggered these thoughts -- after all, there are plenty of healthy, naturally thin women. It was that a lot of them looked eating-disordered sick.
After seeing a dozen or more runway shows and then seeing the Ralph Lauren ad, all I thought was, Okay, another unreasonably thin model. I didn't -- and still don't -- understand why so many people were unbothered by severely underweight runway models but are disturbed by a severely underweight -- albeit edited -- magazine ad model*. They're all unhealthy and unrealistic images.
*10/14 note: The Ralph Lauren model Filippa Hamilton, who, it turns out, wasn't severely underweight, talks about her RL experience here.
I recently saw the new issue of Prevention, which featured FLOTUS on the cover in an attractive Jason Wu dress. Then I saw a picture of a model wearing the same dress during his Fall 09 runway show. I thought the dress looked much better as a form-fitting frock on Michelle than the draping piece on the model.
I don't expect fashion shows to feature more realistically sized females any more than I expect fashion ads to stop excessively trimming their models. That's how the fashion world is. The models and images aren't there to help us feel better about how we look. They're there so we can feel inadequate but tell ourselves, If I wear this outfit or if I buy that accessory, maybe I'll look and feel better. I do hope, however, that seeing images of healthy, strong, beautiful women like Michelle Obama will encourage us to feel more comfortable with ourselves and celebrate our bodies.
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Emme: Industry-Wide Intervention at Executive Level Needed
We're disposable. Interchangeable. "If you don't do what I want, there are a hundred other girls who would kill for your job."
A beautiful, young, dependent woman being treated like a thing -- not a fully human being -- is normal in a patriarchal culture.
That's why the casting couch, the outrageous demands for self-starvation, the whole Svengali thing with young women in ballet, in modeling, in Hollywood, in the music industry persists.
Young women are quite literally putty in the hands of wealthy, powerful, demanding control freaks (mostly men) in all of the so-called arts. Zero ethics, zero morality, zero female self-respect is allowed to intrude on the power brokers while they are using up and then tossing on the proverbial garbage heap a string of "girls".
If you don't starve yourself into the correct shape, if you don't allow yourself to be f---ed by "the man" if he wants you, if you don't smile or scowl prettily on command, if you don't allow their favorite plastic surgeon to nip, tuck or enhance you upon their command, if you use your voice to speak the truth, so say 'no' to the abusive control-freak? You're OUT.
The whole fashion industry is sick -- it's a window into the patriarchy that is utterly obvious once you let yourself see it.
I hope designers will impose rules like those in effect in Spain, where models whose BMI is less than 18 cannot appear in fashion shows or magazines. And that designers will make more clothing available to average sized women who are not fat, just not emaciated.
Prior to the 20th century the ideal of feminine beauty was anything but gaunt. Check out the great paintings of Renoir and Reubens and Titian and a host of other, all celebrating fleshy female nudes. In 1890 Lillian Russel was considered the most beautiful woman of her times; she weighed near 200 pounds. Modern times have bought a lot of changes, not all of them have been for the better.
Nowadays the normal women of our culture have been deemed plus sized, and this is insanity. Perhaps some day we will rise out of this stupor, and reclaim our right to be happy with what we have been given. Perhaps before long fashion shows will be peopled with models of all shapes and sizes, all of them natural and all of them healthy. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!
If I'd seen that dress on the model first, I'd never have considered it attractive. But on Mrs. Obama, a woman with healthy curves, the dress really looks lovely.
http://wonkette.com/404190/michelle-obamas-hell-colored-election-night-dress
but when you put a dress you want to be nice with it...
It is not a question of beauty or weight! It is marketing!
A friend of mine who's designed outfits for a few fashion shows said that a designer told her that the models are essentially supposed to be hangers - the items on which the clothes are hanging. That way, people will focus on the clothes and not the models.
That makes me even more excited to see someone like Michelle Obama wearing an outfit that complements her (or perhaps, rather, SHE complements the outfit) than something that something that tries to render a model invisible.
Besides the fact, these poor girls need to be allowed to be healthy.
Your reply to my comment shows in the notification area, but not here on the thread.
I was responding to theredqueen's remark that she cannot bring herself to call Michelle Obama "FLOTUS". I agree completely and don't use "FLOTUS" or "POTUS" myself. In fact, I don't recall seeing any blogger using the acronym in a column about fashion. as has Adia Colar.
Sure, I use other acronyms such as the ones you mention, but those are not shorthand for people's names. "FLOTUS" and "POTUS" are more like ROBOT names, plus they just sound kinda gross and are completely unnecessary to use for anyone but the FBI and SS.
Here's an acronym for you, just to prove that I do indeed use them; JMO.
atlantic: history of flotus: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97oct/wordimp.htm
whitehouse website (yes): http://www.whitehouse.gov/search/?keywords=flotus
flotus is a term frequently used in press pool reports. heaven help us from having a secret service and fbi so imbecilic that they describe the first lady by such a well-known term that's been used for over least 23 years.
CLASS.
Good for you for deciding which magazines don't benefit you and avoiding them.
greetings from germany.