Before I went to college, I had never so much as glanced at Vogue. To me a $40 shirt was extremely expensive, and I had no real personal aesthetic. Mostly, that was because I wasn’t much of a participant in the social world until I was 23 or so. I had written off any chance of having the kind of looks that would get you noticed, and I liked the life I lived in books much better anyway.
At school, though, I made these two friends, who we’ll call M. and A.J. M. and A.J. loved fashion. Their apartment (they were roommates) had framed Vogue covers on the wall. And because I was pretty close to M. and A.J. – still am, actually – I picked up on the models’ names and slowly, the designers. I bought the magazines and leafed through them, idly.
Prior to this I think of myself as having more or less accepted what I looked like. I did not grow up around people who put a huge value on fashion – I lived in a part of the world where fleece is eternally trendy – who wore things that would last for years. So did I. I owned solid colours, only. I still wear, sometimes, the jeanskirt I bought in second-year.
But I realized, once I started to read these magazines, I was Doing It Wrong. Those thick cotton Body Shop t-shirts made me stand out, and not in a good way. I should never wear sneakers. And I should probably try to be a little bit thinner. Maybe cut my hair differently so I could let it hang in my face.
I did not have the financial wherewithal at the time to do much about this, so mostly, I just felt bad. I developed an approach to my appearance that was much more than the unstudied indifference of the past, that assumed effort was what I needed to be a radiant beauty.
I tell you all of this because it illustrates why I viewed models, as, well, models. (It’s right there in the job title, isn’t it?) Because someone told me to. To me it’s almost irrelevant who told me. It wasn’t M. and A.J. (I really think they would laugh at the notion that they cared whether I cared about fashion.) It wasn’t Anna Wintour – I didn’t know who that was until a year ago. In the end I don’t even really think it was the models, who, they like to tell us, thought of themselves as gawky and awkward until they were plucked from obscurity for the catwalk.
No, the thing that told me to like models was the same force that teaches us that pretty will get us accepted and celebrated far faster than intellect will. Intelligence in women is a double-edged sword: too much of it, and men beat a hasty retreat. But you can never be too beautiful.
That’s why I’d like to see an end to modelling.
I am told, by fans of modelling, that it has some intrinsic purpose. But they never seem able to articulate what that might be. The obvious one, of course, is aesthetic. People like looking at beautiful things; why shouldn’t they like looking at beautiful people? The rote feminist line is, “these standards of beauty are unattainable,” which is true, but seems to me beside the point. The point, it seems to me, is that all standards of beauty are unattainable. Because no one can look exactly the same as someone else.
See, to me it’s certainly true that even models are subjected, internally, to different and subjective standards of beauty. How many internet comments do you think one could find where someone is articulating that they really don’t find [x model] all that. I’ve always found this sort of objection curious, as though it really mattered what one’s personal standard was. As though there were some “pretty” number that rises and diminishes with the amount of compliments and criticisms one receives.
See, my problem with models has almost nothing to do with what they actually look like. We know from countless historical studies that over time, models and muses have been of different weights and heights. No, my problem with modelling is right there in the word: it’s suggesting that there is some other level of beauty we should all be aspiring to. The content is almost meaningless. The destructiveness is all there in the idea that our physical makeup should meet certain set levels of propriety and acceptability.
That these standards are incoherent, that occasionally certain bodies get to be called model-pretty even if they are different from the others, shouldn’t be enough. What I am saying is that in my ideal world, we would not so much have a diversity of bodies in modelling as we would have a resistance to the very notion that anyone needs a model of what to look like. What to think, sure; what to do with one’s life, right on. But how to look?
We’ve seen all the damage it does, the hours spent trying to get rid of that last ripple above your jeans, to exercise some curves into your chest, to dye and re-dye your hair. Why don’t we try working together to stop it?
Getting rid of modelling would be my ideal first step. Not that it would solve everything, or even contribute more than a tiny bit to ending the grip that beauty culture has on us. But subverting the very notion that we should admire someone else for their “beauty” – well, that’s revolutionary, in my book.
Anything that gets us away from the rigid ideal of thin-white-young-hairless beauty can only be a good thing. Big Fashion has been hearing for years that they need models of color, models who aren’t size 0, models who are over 18. But they refuse to listen.
So yeah, count me in. I’m totally fine buying clothes that are advertised like they do on Overstock.com: suspended in mid-air against a white background.
Is this women bashing?? I KID!
But yeah, I’ve never understood it when people talk about a models “craft,” give me a huge break. Photographers craft? yes. But lets be real here. They’re not “artists” or some variation thereof. On the other hand they are but a cog in an enormous multi-billion dollar industry that exists to separate women (and men to a lesser degree) from their cash, its an inherently deceptive undertaking, up to no good.
Hmm. I’m conflicted about this. I don’t think that fashion modelling is an art form, per se — although I do think that figure modelling can be, insofar as photographing a living human being is a collaborative effort. But I do think that designing clothing is an art form, albeit one with a ton of nasty issues in the right here and now (and for a lot of the past, and in a lot of other places, but not, I think, inherently). And the fact is that the proper way to display clothing is on a moving body. I’m not saying that I think New York Fashion Week is some amazing locus of artistic genius, but I think that the practice of observing clothes, especially extremely artistic clothes like couture, moving on a body is one that has aesthetic merit. Whether or not the bodies in question can be separated from the idea of modelling (being, as you say, one that suggests an ideal body) is questionable, and there’s always the problem of what serves the greater good.
So, basically, my opinion is: people posing in photos and people moving around to show off clothes are both things that have aesthetic merit and should if possible be separated from, um, the entire fashion industry as it currently exists.
I wish the clothing designed by “top” designers for runway shows *would* just be seen as art, not as something we’re all supposed to aspire to. I basically do see them that way, when I see them, which isn’t often. I’m with you, Pilgrim Soul – I avoid fashion, but when I do find myself looking at a magazine, I feel vaguely unhappy with myself. So I don’t often look.
Another reason to get rid of models – I think the sexual exploitation problem is bigger than is commonly known.
PS – Right on, sister! I’d even propose taking it a (or two) step further – including make-up, and all the other drag queen b.s. we put ourselves through on a daily basis, for what? To be judged by our looks. In this great effort to appear subjectively “prettier” than we are naturally, we are wasting our time, our money, our very thought processes and our self worth. I’m a fairly low maintenance woman and while I try, so very, very hard, to not give a fuck about how I look to the same extent that the men around me do (i.e. take care of basic grooming and look professional), I still find myself reaching for the make-up brush and the eye-lash curler.
*sigh* Susan Brownmiller’s Femininity remains one of my favorite books, if only to demonstrate the vast amounts of effort we waste on such frivolity, ensuring our secondary place as societal ornaments. Men, for a time, donned high-heels and leg stockings, wigs and make-up. And after a fairly short time, in the grand scheme of human history, realized: This is bullshit. Give me a pair of flats and get this hot-ass flea magnet off my head. And men’s fashion hasn’t really changed since. And they get functional pockets! And shoes that are easy to walk in! Grrrrr. /rant.
Keep fighting the good fight, PS!
Please to forgive my grammar, etc.
“a (or two) step further”?!? REALLY, La Chica?!
Yeesh. It’s been a long day.
This reminds me of a discussion I had with friends. I do think celebrities like movie stars have more of an influence than models.
@Baraqiel: I agree that it’s optimal to see a piece of clothing on a living person rather than in a photo or on a mannequin. But most of us manage to buy our clothing just fine without the benefit of a runway demo-maybe all of us, since even if you want to buy a piece of runway couture I’m sure you try it on first. The cost to women is too high for that argument to have real persuasiveness. The models are to the clothing what pretty table settings are to a food photo shoot-they make the object for sale look prettier but aren’t part of the actual consumer experience.
Let’s assume that clothing can be an art form. (God knows that couture clothing sure doesn’t look like it’s meant to be worn in real life, so it must be art, right?) How do we exhibit that art form without exploiting and dehumanizing the women who display it, either in a still photo or in person? The display/consumption of art generally doesn’t require the exploitation of women, so why should this art form get away with it?
@mischiefmanager – Yes, but there’s a difference between clothing and clothing-as-art. Most clothing is primarily functional rather than primarily artistic (the same is true of photography, and I think the argument could be made for film). Moreover, I don’t think that art necessarily demands public exhibition — trying on a piece of clothing in private and moving around in it is just as much an exhibition as a runway show and I don’t think one can reasonably make the argument that one is more valid than the other. I’m not trying to argue for keeping models and runway shows as they currently exist. But instead, try to think about simply the practice of looking at a piece of clothing on a body. Ideally, this makes both the clothing *and* the body look better than either does alone (or it makes the body look interesting or good in a way it didn’t before — I’m not trying to bring up a whole “disguise your flaws” conversation).
The way I posit that we display clothing as an art form in a way that isn’t dehumanizing is by conceptualizing it as a collaboration between designer, piece, and wearer — akin to composer, composition, and musician. We have to think of moving in clothing as something that’s active, instead of passive, for us not to think of people wearing clothes for display as “clothes hangers”.
i feel torn about this post. i agree that modeling is part of a larger cultural problem, but i don’t see models themselves as the biggest threat. however, if we were somehow to get rid of runway models, what of female movie and television stars and musicians celebrated (and judged) for their looks? we still have those models of beauty. in fact, as someone above mentioned, i think that of those four categories fashion models hold the least cultural weight. (For example, Heidi Klum was a super model for years, but became a real icon of beauty after Project Runway became a huge hit.)
i love your point that having a ‘model of beauty’ is a messed up way to think. i am not convinced that somehow eliminating runway modeling would even touch the grip that way of thinking has on our culture.
what’s more, i think that we walk a fine line when we talk about the the ills models bring upon society. it gets awfully close to pinning some very large, systemic problems, on a handful of young women. are the models (and the movie stars and musicians) who play the game and wear make-up and fancy clothes and coif their hair–are they the problem? is it their responsibility to push back?
Martha, I’m obviously not advocating some kind of mass model assassination. (Although that’s quite the fashion editorial idea, isn’t it?) I think, though, that this is not all about cultural weight; it is about eliminating those ways in which we elevate people solely for their “beauty” in this society. I think that models can’t exist in a society where beauty isn’t a commodifiable thing, so yes, getting rid of that not only implies but requires an end to modelling.
As to the models themselves, I think of them the way I think of anyone: if you live in the world, you make compromises. Everyone’s are different. Do I think models have a responsibility to push back? Well, to the extent that all human beings have a responsibility to push back, I suppose I do. I don’t think models are any worse people than anyone else. But I do think that the potential for models to be forced to find other work is not one that tugs much at my heartstrings.
P.Soul, I think Barneys already took care–however briefly–of that “mass model assassination.” (Trigger warning, y’all.)
Even the most valued women in a patriarchy are still just grist for the mill.
That’s rather a more literal interpretation than I would want, PhDork. That stuff is downright triggering. Yeesh.
Sorry. Will amend my comment to so note.
Thanks for taking on my quesitons, PilgrimSoul.
And yikes, that window display is atrocious!
@baraqiel: But then it wouldn’t be the fashion industry, it would be the creation of art, and that’s a whole different thing.
In the list of sinners against women in the fashion biz, the models are at the bottom-they’re just the most visible face of a corrupt and demeaning industry. I don’t know how modeling works, but I don’t get the sense that most of them have the power to decide what they’re going to wear and how they’re going to wear it. For models to be the fashion equivalent of musicians, they’d have to have some control and some power of interpretation.
Also, I don’t think you’re taking into account what I believe to be the misogyny at the core of the high-fashion business. The clothes are more often than not ridiculous, difficult to wear and require overexposure of the model’s body. And the fact that models are supposed to be completely neutral is just creepy. I always get the sense that designers resent having to deal with women at all. If only their clothes could just float along, body-less, then everyone could appreciate them for themselves and not for the walking mannequin wearing them. Yuck.
@mischiefmanager — Yes, exactly, which is why I said this in my first post: “So, basically, my opinion is: people posing in photos and people moving around to show off clothes are both things that have aesthetic merit and should if possible be separated from, um, the entire fashion industry as it currently exists.”
I think there’s a clear philosophical difference between the idea of clothing and the fashion industry as it currently stands. I agree with you that the industry is misogynistic, overly profit driven, riddled with all sorts of hegemonic badness, and morally decrepit in all sorts of ways. But I still think that clothing and its wearing can be an art form.
I think there’s a happy medium somewhere in all of this. There’s a whole other tier of fashion culture below Vogue and the catwalks: the street-style blogs, and probably Lucky magazine (much more practical than Vogue). When it comes to blogs, Une Fille Comme Moi and The Sartorialist are two of the biggies; but I am actually fonder of the small, “this-is-my-private-aesthetic” blogs like Cachemire et Soie, The Cherry Blossom Girl, and The Glamorous Grad Student. These bloggers get quite a lot of their clothes from places like H&M and Zara, and they aren’t models. You get a purer dose of aesthetics without all the hauteur and advertising that comes with Vogue.
Basically, I agree with everything baraqiel said. I don’t think we need to look to the runways to find out how to be beautiful/have a personal aesthetic. But I do think that wanting to “look one’s best” is a legitimate desire, and that looking your best can be a form of kindness to the world at large. I try not to judge by appearances, but I do permit myself to experience delight when I see someone who looks beautiful and unique.
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