Quote:
Originally Posted by elrod-tom
WRT the OP, there is a certain expectation when one makes their living in the pretty people business. There's a given reality that (with some exceptions) when one hires a model they have certain expectations. Not the least of which is that the person pays attention to those things upon which he or she makes his/her living. . . . Like it or not, the advertiser is looking for a certain image. If you have that certain look, they will pay you to model. It's not necessary IMHO to get all bunched up about the shallowness of it all - the models know their side of the bargain going in. Oh, and as someone already noted, it's not all about women. . . .men have to make the same sacrifices.
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Ah, but the problem is not simply that the original poster is complaining of the model failing to live up to her part of the agreement. It is the somewhat insulting way in which he dealt with the situation, both in real life and on this thread. Before anyone else wrote a word in response, I winced at the following phrases:
"In her Maxim and portfolio pics, she was HOT and slender but the pics we took looked like we picked up some 'crack whore off the street' as one of my coworkers called it. . . . Personally I was grossed out by how she looked in some of the pictures. . . ."
If this were really a matter of a simple business proposition, then why is AC salivating at how "HOT" the woman looked in previous pictures? Why does he sound more like a disappointed blind date than a dissatisfied employer? Am I alone in cringing at the use of the word "HOT" in this context? I can't console myself by making banal reference to some human irritant who happens to be female, like Paris Hilton ("she's a woman and she says it about other women, therefore it must be OK"). The argument doesn't hold, because the remark's reductive sexual context is the problem, not gender, which is a huge red herring.
It doesn't matter whether the worker who dismissed the model as looking like a "crack whore" was male or female -- shallow summations based on appearance issue from both sexes constantly. It is no revelation that this is so -- no need for posters to reiterate the idea endlessly, as if it were a magic incantation that somehow nullified all of Plainsong's arguments. "People can be shallow and fashion is a shallow industry" -- yes, we get it. Perhaps Plainsong's expectation that the entire industry change its modus operandi beginning with AC1 is unrealistic. But it isn't unrealistic that AC1 refrain from telling us he was "grossed out" by the model's physical appearance, as if her lack of physical beauty -- as
he defines beauty -- were so distasteful that the model should be kept in a Camp somewhere, out of his sight and out of his suffocating mindset.
Nor is it anything less than offensive when people insult a female poster by suggesting in this thread and others that she is unduly strong-minded or overbearing. The great male insult toward women seems to be to accuse them of being overly self-sufficient, as various campaigns against other women with whom people disagree vociferously (Hillary Clinton, Margaret Atwood, random co-workers, etc.) show repeatedly. To dismiss a woman as
Xena is tantamount to using the b-word. Not to dial it up, elrod-tom, but there are less prejudicial ways of attacking a woman's arguments. There are also less offensive ways of criticizing models.
It amazes me is that people continue say "thin is simply fashionable," as if the impossibility of voluptuous thinness for ordinary women were not at the heart of thinness's in-ness. I suspect the advertisers' point is to make a near-unattainable body type desirable and then associate it with easily attainable products. In other words, advertising, the music industry, sports and fashion manipulate the consumer into desiring certain physical characteristics and then employ slogans suggesting the
consumer is in control. Hence the cliche of the American "rebel" who believes in advertising archetypes the way ancient Greeks were supposed to believe in Zeus. Hence the futility of assuming that Vogue's emphasis on being thin is due to some natural phenomenon that has its roots in social anthropology. Adorno predicted as much; the culture's merely fulfilling his prophesies.
