“When the next ice age comes, the fashion models will be the first ones to freeze to death.”
(Comment posted on the Foto Decadent: Avant Garde Fashion Photography website)
I just spent the last hour or so scouring the internet for images and inspiration. Sometimes I search by photographer, sometimes by subject. Mostly I just skip from one site to the next, wherever links and suggestions take me. Today it took me to one of the most disturbing photos I’ve seen in a long time.
Let me begin by saying I have no problem with thin fashion models. Not even pencil-thin ones. I actually quite like them. And I know why they work. The easiest model is essentially a blank slate and a clothes hanger, insofar as her face should project the emotion required and her body should not get in the way of the clothes. Sound harsh? Make no mistake, it is. Let’s face it, bodies get in the way. Breasts get in the way. Hips get in the way. I’m not saying they aren’t beautiful, but when you’re churning out as much product as the fashion industry does (fashion, remember, not retail) it just doesn’t make sense to tailor clothes to infinite body types.
Sort of.
Because the problem is, we’ve embraced a single prototype to the exclusion of all others. What’s worse, we seem to have decided that it applies not only to the fashion industry, couture and runway shows, but to the retail industry and consumers as well. And that prototype slips ever more into the extreme.
Thin is easy - but at the expense of variety? At the expense of interesting?
And yet I am torn - because often, the extreme is interesting.
The image that started all this was absolutely offside, no question. Concentration Camp in Chanel (or Louboutin, as it were). But I could see what the photographer saw. There was a certain, raw, disconcerting beauty in the image. It was pure architecture. It was landscape. It was machine.
Until you realized it was also human.
So tell me:
At what point, in this context, is an image in poor taste? At what point is it irresponsible - and whose responsibility is it? (I cannot agree that the industry alone should be held accountable for curbing a practice so consistently embraced by the western fashion-consuming public.) Is it only offensive because it propels a questionable ideal already too prevalent?
If it was a single image, wouldn’t we call it Art?
Numéro Tokyo #11 (January)
Ph. René Habermacher and Jannis Tsipoulanis
Model. Siri Tollerød
I struggled with whether or not to post this picture. On the one hand, a visual is invaluable in this sort of discussion, but a part of me knows that it is also an unknown quantity. I know that young girls and women , already struggling with body issues and eating disorders, find and hoard pictures like this one, thinking they are in some way reasonable or even ideal. It becomes a question of the dissemination of information, our right to it, and at what point we are responsible for the things we put out into the world. It’s complicated.
After talking it over, Worn and I have decided to include the image, but not forever.
And obviously with all kinds of qualifiers.
g.
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February 2nd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
There is no doubt in my mind that fashion spreads are made to be inspiring. They are there to give you ideas on how to dress and what is beautiful. Many publications (if not most) have taken this even further to breakdown the steps of howto become like the girls they portray. We cannot then wonder were girls get the idea they should look like the magazine pages. This is not the goal of every publication, but let’s say a few have ruined it for the rest of us.
Fashion Magazines may not be the sole contributor to this wave of skinny cool, but they are the ones who have much of the power. They can choose who they want to grace their pages. they can at least make their difference instead of throwing up their arms and declaring that it’s not their fault, they are just givingthe people what they want.
Just what I’ve been thinking lately.
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:51 am
looking at the image here detached from a commercial spread it seems obvious it must be self-aware, but gad, maybe not? there is a tragic, cold beauty in it, and it flips the skinny=affluence equation a little bit by revealing the pained bones inside the couture. here on worn, a critical context, it speaks volumes about how an industry that’s all about humans (clothing them) becomes completely dehumanizing (hurry up and get those awkward life giving body rolls outta the way, ladies, i’m in a rush this season). but when mass disseminated alongside acres of ads i shudder to think about the effect of the image, not on conscious minds, but on unconscious or semi-conscious internal monologues in the minds of people already struggling with their own painful shit. poor kids.
i don’t know much, though, about the image or it’s original context..
February 4th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
The original context of this picture is as an editorial photoshoot featuring Christian Louboutin shoes. (Magazine, photographer and model info below image.)
The interesting thing about the shoot in its entirety is that without the last picture I would never have noticed how thin Tollerod really is. It wasn’t until after I saw the last shot that I went back, registering how tiny and frail her arms and legs were.
Ultimately, this made me wonder if the last picture was actually the most responsible of the lot - and how much information I absorb unwittingly, simply because it’s not punch-in-the-face obvious.
c.b.
February 4th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
what I was trying to say, is that by placing it a publication, it may be art with a capital A, but it still can be kept in check. I also thing the ultra skinny illustrations can be harmful to body self-image.