Archive for July, 2009
New Victoria's Sec--erm--London Fog ad.
According to a press release [PDF] issued yesterday, Gisele is the new face, or rather, body, of London Fog.
Yes, these photos are very provocative and a bit ridiculous, considering the product she is modeling (I know I go out in the cold and rain like that all the time!).
But something else about the campaign struck me as discussion-worthy: Gisele is pregnant, but you would never guess by looking at these ultra-Photoshopped ads. Does London Fog think that pregnancy is unattractive and something to hide?
I found the press release comments regarding her pregnancy a bit strange:
Dari Marder, Chief Marketing Officer, London Fog, commented, “Nobody is sexier or more beautiful than Gisele Bündchen in nothing but a London Fog trench coat, even with her visible baby bump.
Because nothing is more gross than seeing a supermodel carrying her baby? Why couldn’t it be “especially with her visible baby bump”?
Marder added, “Although Gisele was photographed while pregnant, most of the shots have been retouched to respect her privacy during this wonderful and personal time in her life.“
I wonder whether the marketers or Gisele wanted to specifically edit out the baby bump to “respect her privacy?” It feels like what they’re really saying is: “the shots have been retouched so we don’t have to show the small amount of unattractive baby weight she’s put on at this early stage of her pregnancy.” I wish the case would have been, “to celebrate this wonderful and personal time in her life, the shots have not been retouched.”
The campaign’s press site features a few behind the scenes photos, as well as some other ads. Here are two to compare:
Behind the scenes photo from Gisele's London Fog shoot
Gisele in another London Fog ad. Can you spot the Photoshopping?
What are your thoughts on this new campaign?
source: http://www.dogmatic.com/MNR/londonfog/
-Sabrina
July 31st, 2009
"Hannah Montana"
The youngsters love Disney’s Hannah Montana, but what kind of message is Miley Cyrus sending them about how to act in real life? Whether she is wearing thigh-high boots or clutching a sheet to her naked torso (as she was in last year’s Vanity Fair), 16-year-old Miley has been shown in very adult poses.
These provocative photos, mixed with the fact that her fame comes from her popularity with the tweens and pre-tweens, results in another attempt to link youth with sexiness. Unfortunately, Miley’s image is falling pray to the pull toward a more “sexy” persona.
Case in point is her photo shoot in the August issue of ELLE magazine
Miley Cyrus in ELLE Magazine, August 2009
Short skirt, legs spread, hair tousled — take this image in while keeping in mind that most of her fan base is still in elementary school. It is true that ELLE is a magazine aimed at adults with more mature content. Why, then, did they choose to feature Miley to attract their adult audience?
Spears on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1999
The answer is in our culture’s fixation with youth being seen as “sexy.” Think back to the Spring 1999 Rolling Stone cover featuring Britney Spears in her underwear talking on the phone and clutching a Teletubby doll. This is a much more blatant attempt to mix youth with sex appeal, but the photo spreads Miley Cyrus has been involved with are much the same.
Novelist Nicholas Sparks is quoted in the ELLE article as saying:
“…she’s growing up, as much as we wish she wouldn’t… I think everybody, when they watch Home Alone, wishes Macaulay Culkin were nine years old, but he’s not. People grow up!”
What Mr. Sparks fails to see here is that while Miley might be growing up, the decisions she and the people around her (i.e. her manager father, Billy Ray Cyrus) make have a direct impact on the young people that watch and sometimes imitate her every move. However popular Macaulay Culkin was, he didn’t send droves of fans running to the stores to imitate his latest outfits.
If these types of images bother you, take action. Don’t underestimate the power you have on the kids around you. Talk to the young people who may or may not be Miley fans about why she might be taking photos like the ones in ELLE. Ask them questions about what they think of Miley’s new photos. Opening this door can help people of all ages see though the hype of marketing campaigns.
If you want to let Miley Cyrus know your feelings on her photo spread in ELLE, you can send her a letter to Miley Cyrus, P.O. Box 1459, Santa Monica, CA 90406.
You can also send feedback to ELLE using the form on their contact page.
-Ashley
July 29th, 2009
The new face of fashion
Known for larger breasts, bleached eyebrows, a sizeable gap between her two front teeth, and hips that round out between a U.S. size 4 and size 6, Lara Stone is different from what we’ve become accustomed to seeing on the runway and in fashion magazines.
(While a size 4 is still extremely thin, size 4 models are almost unheard of in the modeling business. Today, most models average between a size 0 and a size 2.)
Stone’s commanding presence and comparatively curvy physique are a throwback to the times of “supermodels” like Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, and Naomi Campbell, women known for their beautiful curves and Amazonian stature.
Most interesting is the fact that designers are falling head over heels in love with Stone’s body. Just this year, Stone walked in all of the major fashion shows, renewed her contracts with Givenchy and Hugo Boss, and became the new face of Jean Paul Gaultier. In February, Vogue Paris dedicated an entire issue to Stone.
Of course, it is frustrating that it took almost 20 years for the enthusiasm for rail-thin bodies to wane. During the early 1990s, Kate Moss burst onto the scene in a highly publicized campaign for Calvin Klein. In the fashion world, one girl can change everything. No one is a better example than Moss. With her protruding bones and childlike frailty, Moss became synonymous with the terms “waif” and “heroin chic,” and the fashion industry embraced her physique as the new sought-after look for models on the runways and in advertisements.
Stone’s growing success, and the fact that designers have not pressured her to slim down, are promising signs that designers are embracing a healthier, more inclusive shape for women’s bodies. With the foundation set for fashion’s return to curvaceous, tall figures, now is the perfect time for a new “it” girl, a symbolic body that signifies the changing times. Lara Stone’s increasing success suggests it may be time for Kate Moss, and her waif-like predecessors, to pass the torch.
– Nikki
July 24th, 2009
As we found out from The Root, Mattel is releasing a new line of Barbie dolls that are getting a lot of attention. The new line, called “So In Style,” or “S.I.S.” are supposed to be African-American and to have more “authentic” facial features. The S.I.S. dolls are sold in pairs, with one adult doll and one young doll, in order to model a mentor relationship.
What makes this new line of black dolls interesting is that each character has a different skin tone, representing the variety of skin tones that black women have. Also, the dolls have straight, wavy, and curly hair. Props to Mattel for including these differences, but while it may be a step forward in representing racial diversity, it is far from far enough.
The S.I.S. dolls are just another example of how America loves to see African-Americans: as white as possible. The women most regarded as beautiful, who likely serve as popular role models for young girls, have light skin, more Anglo features, and, of course, are very thin. Beautiful black women with darker skin, more “ethnic” features, or with curves or muscles get nowhere near as much attention or praise for their beauty. What kind of message does that give to black girls and the rest of society?
In terms of hair, the S.I.S. line includes one adult doll with curly hair and a young doll with afro-puffs (not pictured). The rest of the dolls have long, wavy or straight hair — just like white Barbies.
Of course many black women do have hair like this, but most don’t grow it that way naturally. There are six different dolls — why not six different kinds of hair? To me, this lack of representation just reaffirms the notion that “nappy” or “kinky” hair is bad, while promoting long, sleek hair as the most (or only) beautiful option.
African-American women have a variety of hairstyles, natural and otherwise, that should be represented in this line. How would dolls with dreadlocks or interchangeable hair weaves fly? Would they be marketable? Would they be offensive? I don’t know. But I do think that they would provide some much needed representation for the differences within black women’s hairstyles and practices.
In the range of skin tones for black women, I would say that these dolls come in very light, medium light, and medium skin tones only. The darkest one is actually not so dark at all.
It pretty much goes without saying that Barbie dolls are going to be ridiculously skinny with impossible proportions, but if they must be the supermodels of toys, I’d like to see dolls that look like Alek Wek too.
(Left to right:) Black supermodels Tyra Banks, Iman, Alek Wek, and Kimora Lee Simmons
Seeing more representation of females with dark skin, natural hairstyles, and various facial features and body types on screen, in print, and in toys will not only help African-American girls and women feel more beautiful and appreciated, but will also provide a much needed additions to the set of characteristics our society holds as beautiful.
-Sabrina
Sabrina is a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, studying Community Studies and Sociology. Her area of focus is cultural politics and she is interning with About-Face for a field study. Sabrina is especially interested in women’s roles and representations in mass media.
July 17th, 2009
In 2006, when Lauren Greenfield’s documentary Thin came out, I watched the film on my computer in the single dorm room that had become something of a cave for me. I was in the throes of a life-threatening eating disorder, and, needless to say, the film hit home. A few months later, I saw the documentary again, though in a different context: I watched it at an inpatient eating disorder treatment facility where I would spend the bulk of my 22nd year.
Shelly talks about her feeding tube
I agree with Kate’s thoughts (“‘Thin’ Is Thick With Reality”) that the film touches on something very real, although I think there is a subtlety that may not be apparent to all viewers.
The vast majority of films about addiction and mental illness focus on the “rock bottom”: the shocking and devastating turmoil in the addicts’ lives and all those around him/her. Thin appears to explore something deeper: the painfully difficult yet life-changing process of recovery. However, in truth, it is stuck in the same awestruck stare that other media attention has always been — the skeletal images, the double-digit weights, the tubes and medications and blood.
When I listen to the women in Thin tell their stories, I sadly do not hear the voices of these struggling women; I hear the competitive, proud, sick voices of their eating disorders. One may think I cannot truly know what is going on in their heads — and to a certain extent that is always true — but I assure you that I know an eating disorder voice when I hear one because it makes my heart ache with empathy in a way that no other sound can.
When I watched this documentary while I was sick, I was enthralled. I compared my body and my weight to each image and number on the screen or in the book. If I weighed less, I felt like I was winning. If I was more, if their bones protruded where mine did not — I was a failure. I felt undeserving of treatment because I was not as sick as every single one of those girls. This film was incredibly triggering — a term used in the treatment of addiction to refer to images, events, people, etc. that trigger addictive thoughts or behaviors. We would say that we were “triggered” when something made us feel more compelled to engage in self-destructive behaviors or resist treatment.
Though it is confusing for those on the outside to understand, an eating disorder is more like a parasitic being that slowly takes over more and more control than merely a disease of behavior and health. That voice and personification of the eating disorder is not so much metaphorical as it is an incredibly accurate and useful way of conceptualizing a disease that so often becomes difficult to disentangle from one’s true self. A notable percentage of the psychological community has actually proposed that eating disorders be categorized as psychotic disorders due to the extreme level of disconnection with reality.
“It’s totally disgusting, I know, but I had to get it out of me” says Shelly, when speaking of purging through her feeding tube, yet she smiles coquettishly as she says it. I can see behind her eyes that even as she may be embarrassed, her eating disorder is proud and nostalgic. Greenfield gives these women the opportunity to share their most terrible secrets, and though their honesty may seem brave, I know — from my own experience and from the experiences of other women I have known — that eating disorders crave the opportunity to brag, to compete, to shock, to live in the limelight.
One of the reasons it is so hard for many women to give up their eating disorders and embrace the long and arduous process of recovery is that they have grown up or lived much of their lives getting attention, love, and nourishment (in every sense of the word) as a result of being sick. To feed into that (pun intended), to give them yet another stage on which to dwell in the sickness in the form of being the subjects of this film, is neither service to these women nor help for the viewers. It perpetuates the sensationalized image of eating disorders — the gruesome images that, like a car crash one cannot look away from — instead of focusing on recovery, treatment, and prevention. Yes, it is important to know how bad things can get. But to dwell in numbers and behaviors — in short, to dwell in symptoms — is to miss the point and to reduce these women — much like their eating disorders have — to bodies.
I long for an opportunity to tell the story I now know is my more interesting one — not the story of body hatred, of lifelong depression, of self-destruction and of pushing my body and soul to the limits of life. For a long time I thought that was the most interesting thing about me. But it is not. I have also spent the last few years fighting for my life. Not because I was starving myself or throwing up my food but quite the opposite — I have been fighting because I have stopped doing those things.
Having an eating disorder was easy. But recovery gave me a life.
- Marisa
July 16th, 2009
Anyone who listens to the radio or is remotely up to date with today’s music has unfortunately grown accustomed to lyrics that offend, degrade, or sexualize women. Nonetheless, nothing prepared me for Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” when I heard it on the radio last summer. It’s been nearly a year since I first heard the song, but when it came onto the radio a few days ago, it disgusted me just as much as it had the first time it unhappily met my ears, and I felt compelled to speak out.
Wow, where to begin?
Is it enough that Perry created an entire song about the deplorable commonality of lesbian action for the sake of male enjoyment? This alone makes me sad for the women and girls who hear this song and who, like others, think that female sexuality is not something to be owned by the woman herself, but that is at the disposal and for the benefit of male viewers.
Kissing a girl — like kissing boy — ought to be a shared experience amongst the individuals involved. Yet for many women of all sexual orientations, kissing a girl is done for the pleasure and excitement of the heterosexual gaze.
It is common knowledge — or common myth? — that all men drool over the idea of watching lipstick lesbians touching each other or viewing the highly coveted threesome. Visual creatures or not, a song in which a girl gushes over her illicit kiss with another girl is undoubtedly designed to alter some male blood flow. Perry sings “I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it.” The implication is that her boyfriend only minded if he wasn’t there to witness it.
Not only am I incensed over the way in which this girl-on-girl kiss is promoted as an object of straight male lust, it also sends a powerful message about lesbian relationships in general. “It felt so wrong” Perry coos, “It’s not what/Good girls do/Not how they should behave.” Good girls don’t kiss other girls or when they do it’s wrong? Yikes.
This song celebrates female sexuality only in so far as it is experienced by the male outsider. It is only okay that she kissed a girl because she expressly calls it experimentation. Perry describes it to avid male listeners and sends the message that it’s “so wrong,” which is meant to add to the excitement anyway.
The video takes this message even further. Just a few seconds of the three-minute video makes it clear that Perry is selling sex to a male audience. It’s hard to think how much more you can objectify women than by making them faceless lingerie-clad bodies moving mindlessly in the background.
Perry does not acknowledge her fellow females nor interact with them in any way. Meanwhile, her lyrics describe her female sexual interaction; an interesting contrast, the meaning of which is far from transparent. Is Perry provocative enough to lip sync about kissing a girl but not quite bold enough to take that on screen? Or does this just add to the tease to hear her describe a girl’s “soft lips” while touching her own body and not another’s?
With a video that basically just shows Perry dancing provocatively surrounded by anonymous women (and a “pussy” cat on her lap?) combined with appalling lyrics, “I Kissed a Girl” is an over-the-top insult to and infantilization of the gay community as well as a despicably direct message to men and women alike that female sexuality is a plaything of men.
When are women finally going to be told, “Your sexuality and your body belong to you and you alone and nothing about that is wrong?”
-Marisa
July 8th, 2009
HBO's "Thin"
Brittany started dieting at age 12 because she wanted to look like her classmates. After gaining weight in an eating disorder treatment center, the under 100-pound teen grabs at the skin under her chin, sobbing. She thinks she has a double chin.
Shelly has a tube that runs out of her stomach because she’s so sick, and she’s found a way to push her stomach the right way so the food she’s eaten is sucked out. At just over 80 pounds, Shelly thinks she is “big.”
These women are among those documented in the 2006 film, “Thin,” a powerful and candid documentary I watched for the first time this week. I was immensely moved by it, and recommend every young girl, woman, and woman’s advocate rent it. Director Lauren Greenfield captures the secret lives of those living with this crippling diseases of anorexia and bulimia.
Here is a clip from the documentary with commentary by the director, Lauren Greenfield. Some of the images are graphic.
These women are addicted. They’re addicted to routines. They’re addicted to chewing food as slowly as possible, drinking water between each bite, hoarding away packets of ketchup and mustard to flavor the incredibly small portions of food they do eat. They’re addicted to their under-200-calories-a-day diets, and have panic attacks when presented a birthday cupcake. Seeing triple digits on the scale is the end of the world to them (Shelly says if she reaches 110, she’ll die), but they can’t see that their slow hearts, low blood pressure and damaged livers will be the real death of them. They are prisoners to their eating disorders–the crippling diseases of anorexia and bulimia, which are influenced by genetics but exacerbated by their environment and their insecurities.
As an aspiring documentary filmmaker, I was extremely intrigued by the cinema verité style of this film — where the camera crew act as flies on the wall, capturing everything — and amazed by how comfortable the girls were with the cameras catching them in their most intimate moments — being weighed, crying, even purging. One of the subjects, when interviewed after the film, said she felt misunderstood and wanted to show the world the truth behind her disorder. “Hey, if there is somebody out there who could benefit from this, then I would like to participate,” she said.
These women identify themselves by their ability to lose weight, by their years-long routines of avoiding meals, purging, and shrinking in size. They know they have to gain weight, but it terrifies them. They’re also terrified they’ll lose the part of them they know, the girl who loses more and more weight. It’s sad because I know they have so much to offer to the world besides their low jean size.
Throughout the entire film, I wanted to jump into the screen and yell at the women, tell them they’re beautiful. I wondered how they could hate their lives so much when they have beautiful children, supportive families, and college degrees. I wondered how they can possibly think what stares back in the mirror at them is ugly.
Which made me think… how often do I look in the mirror and criticize what I see? How often am I hard on myself?
While the girls are dealing with hardships in a treatment center that I can’t imagine, I can absolutely relate to their concern of body image. The film was a wake-up call. Look what body obsession can do to you. Look how much these girls have to offer the world and look how they are, literally, wasting away. Be grateful for all the support that surrounds you and be grateful for the beautiful body you have.
Check out the web site for this film and go see this movie. And if you or someone you know is suffering from an eating disorder, it’s time to seek help immediately. Here are some resources.
-Kate
July 3rd, 2009
