I have just finished the first article for the magazine- layout and all! It has been a slow progress but hopefully with all the ground work that I have been putting down over the last few weeks things will begin happening a lot more rapidly! layout not shown here- I need to leave some surprises for the magazine =) Here's a snippet of just under 200 words out of just over a thousand...
“If You’ve Got It…?”
Instead of condemning fashion models whose job it is to sell and display designer wares, media attention should point towards female celebrities who are using their bodies to objectify and sell themselves. Celebrities protest to being public property, but are showing us more of their privates than ever before…
It always baffles me when, approaching the visual feast that is the fashion weeks, the media begins to hyperventilate over the subject of size zero. As though the models, so exotic and ethereal, are singularly fuelling this frightening body image. Agyness Deyn and Jourdan Dunn are the current reigning pair; although these girls who are at the top of their professional game are not scarily thin at all. Agyness is lankily slim and Jourdan quite athletic. I am not discounting the fact that many of the catwalk models are quite obviously underweight, yet I struggle to believe that they should be held accountable for the body issues held by the female masses. It seems apparent to me that the likes of Cheryl Cole, touted as the nations sweetheart and a Vogue cover girl, and WAG extraordinaire Victoria Beckham, need to be taken into account . . .
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The power position of the model is a difficult one - although some of them, the 'supermodels' obviously have a great deal of influence, aren't many of them essentially just walking clothes horses? Really it's the designers and fashion executives (and journalists and editors themselves) who have much more influence over the status of an individual model and over the trends in body shape that come with the trends in clothes.
ReplyDeleteHave you thought of having someone write about eating-disorders from a psychiatric/medical perspective? I think it would be a useful topic to cover in the magazine, since anorexia / bulimia often come up in discussions of this kind - and I've realised I don't really know very much about them or the evidence linking them to media generated body image vs. more personal psychological problems.
My stance within this article is rather than accuse models each London Fashion Week- have a wider perspective on what young women are influenced by, ie; celebrities. The majority of the models on the catwalk are faceless young eastern european girls-not the women in magazines, the papers and advertising posing sexually wearing next to nothing. These are the women being aimed at girls to look up to. The Pussycat Dolls to name the one that really frustrates me!
ReplyDeleteMy aim is to highlight the sexual imagery constantly being promoted by these women- even in the advertising that targets young women and girls.