There’s a very civilised and mild disagreement on The Punch this week. Tory Maguire (editor) and Kate Ellis (Labour member for Adelaide, and widely regarded as the hottest chick in politics) disagree over comments made by Karl Lagerfeld, German fashion designer.
This all started because a German fashion magazine decided that it would no longer user professional models on its pages over concerns that rake-thin models promoted an unhealthy body image. Hello, captain obvious! Lagerfeld’s reply was that “only fat mummies sitting with their packets of crisps in front of the television” care about the fact that unrealistic rake-thin models are on catwalks. Rowr.
Tory says that fashion is about fantasy, so he’s got a point. Kate says that the fantasy of fashion is what helps fuel a body image crisis and that Lagerfeld should pull his bloody head in.
I think I agree with both Tory and Kate, but not the incredible “I’ll have a side of salad with my foot” Karl Lagerfeld. Hear me out here.
Herr Lagerfeld says that fashion and beauty are all about the illusion – that nobody wants to look at reality. In some ways, he’s right. We don’t want reality. Where I live, reality is super-low riding flares that were popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s, whale-tails, and tramp stamps. Oversized gansta hoodies and bleach-blonde hair with panda-eyes also abound. The hell I’m going to want to look at a fashion magazine or runway show full of that, let alone dress that way. I want an illusion, all right. I want the illusion of style, sophistication, and hipster chic that you’re never going to find in my neighbourhood – and I want to be able to fool myself into thinking it’s attainable.
I read two fashion blogs, and one fashion magazine. Spot the common theme in these…
The Sartorialist publishes a fashion photoblog of people on the street around the world. It’s real people, in real fashion. Mostly fashion on the streets of Milan and Paris, from people with more money than me. Still, real people and real fashion. One image that stood out to me, though, was a picture of a homeless man that was posted a few months ago. Not exactly the sort of person one would expect to see in a post by THE leading fashion photographer of the tubes. However, this man had done the very simple thing of having a colour thread throughout his clothing – if I recall, his shoelaces, socks, and shirt were all a similar shade of electric blue. The Sartorialist commented on the fact that even the poorest, most unfortunate people can find a way to express their personality through their fashion choices. That was the point where I thought if a guy who relied upon the kindness of others for EVERYTHING could get his shit together and express himself through his choice of clothes, maybe (just maybe) I could too.
I also read Style Rookie by a tiny little Jewish girl – seriously, she’s 13 and looks like she’d come up to my armpit. She’s a kid, and she’s got more fashion in her little finger than I do in my whole wardrobe. I don’t read it for her fashion show wrap-ups, or her commentary (although they’re awfully funny). I read it for when she posts pictures of herself in outfits she’s strung together. They’re outrageous, and I’d never be able to pull them off. She does, though, and one day I dream of wearing a tutu, black and white striped knee socks, a bomber jacket, and Doc Martens.
The only women’s interest magazine that I buy with any regularity is Shop (I’ll also buy Cleo or Marie Claire, but usually only when there’s an exceptionally interesting article, or a sampler of expensive cosmetics that I wouldn’t normally be able to afford). It’s a magazine about current “high street” fasion, nothing more and nothing less. The only professional models are in the series shoots and the ads. The women featured in the rest of the magazine are the women who read the magazine. Yes, they’re all slim. Yes, they’re all pretty (in some cases, they’re stunning). But you know what? They’re real. These are women who have real life happen to them. They might have kids, or annoying bratty siblings who go through their wardrobes and rip that nice sequined top they just bought. They probably use nail polish to hide the scuffs on their brightly coloured vinyl strappy heels. They don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on personal trainers and a stylist to make sure they look good every day.
So, I’m a sucker for fasion (bet you never knew that). Despite my religious reading of The Sartorialist and Shop, I’m never going to look like a supermodel. I’m 5′7″, I’m squidgy around the edges, and I have a receeding chin. My “beauty routine” consists of using facial cleansers once a week (when I remember), moisturising when my skin gets itchy because it dried out, and making sure I scrub my neck in the shower. I occasionally clean inside my ears. But, overall, I don’t look too bad. I’m still no model, but hey; most women aren’t models, so why should I be any different? These publications make me think, though, that maybe-just maybe-I could be fashionable and look good if I just a little more effort in to my sartorial splendour (ahem).
It’s all an illusion, of course. Only on very special occasions do I put effort and thought into what I wear. The thing is, though, it’s only an illusion because I’m a lazy bugger who can’t be arsed exercising with any regularity or putting thought into my wardrobe choices. So, for a lot of people it’s not an illusion. I know a few women (not many, mind you, as I’m not a girly-girl) who put serious thought into their outfit every day. They dress well, and they look good. By putting good-looking but ‘normal’ people in magazines, these people who actually put effort in are being told that beauty is, in fact, attainable.
So, Tory-the-Editor, you’re right. We all want illusion in our lives – nobody wants to be a normal person. The desire to be something that we’re not is what gives rise to the entire fashion industry. If we were content to just be ourselves, clothes would be nothing more than protection from the elements. It’s our desire to stand out, to be marked as individuals, that means there’s a fashion industry in the first place. For us then to demand the fashion industry be realistic is, quite frankly, silly. Mind you, so is the current obsession with SF shoulder pads.
And guess what, Kate Ellis MP? You’re right too. When that desire for illusion goes beyond a desire for difference and into dangerous fantasy, we have a problem. Pushing unrealistic body images on people is what causes a very pretty – and already tall and thin – 14 year old to swing between anorexia and bulemia (one of my best friends in years past). It’s what causes my beautiful best friend to stand in front of me and say that she doesn’t want to wear outrageous makeup because she’s not confident enough about her appearance to draw attention to herself. Her definition of “outrageous”, by the way, was anything that made her look like she was wearing makeup.
And finally – Lagerfeld, you’re dead wrong. It’s not just fat mummies with crisps in front of the telly who care about unrealistic body images. I’m not fat, I’m not a mummy, and I hate crisps. That doesn’t stop me despairing about the way an industry I love to follow is taking a dangerous path.
Posted on October 15th, 2009 by Bosun McShiny
Filed under: Fashion, Pontificating
A running theme in the writings of Guy Rundle (Crikey journalist and social commentator) is the influence of social atomization and individual freedom on the development of the modern individual. He ties together pop culture (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) politics (Dreams Of My Father) – and free market economics (the erosion of traditional intergenerational identities ie ‘factory worker’) to explain alienation, anxiety, anorexia etc. Each generation is more and more able to make their own meaning, define themselves in the way they see fit, with all the opportunity and anxiety that entails.
I think body image problems are part and parcel of this bigger picture – being forced to reach out into the cultural smorgasbord and put ourselves together, to try and forge an identity out of emulation and exploration. I’m sure you – and many a psychologist – will agree when I say that a glossy magazine does not a mental illness make. It’s strange, then, to see so many words expended on so many pages, all pondering whether unhealthily thin women and girls should be struck from the public sphere. Rundle says we are afraid to confront the possibility that the fluid, postmodern world we are creating might be starving us of our basic human needs. If you want to read it in more beautiful prose than I can hack together, read Rundle’s Quarterly Essay from 2001 entitled ‘John Howard and the Triumph of Reaction’. It’s available on the Adelaide uni database.
All this aside, I do think that you raise some good points. Would I be correct in supposing you would favour community pressure for change rather than state-sponsored regulation? If so, we’re on the same page. A feminist friend of mine, though, raises an interesting objection to any sort of intervention. A former president of a university Law Students’ Society, she believes that the difficulty in managing confrontation she experienced while in that role can be traced to a lifetime of ’sheltering’ social attitudes. She is of the view that the well-intentioned ‘defensive’ campaigns for such things as realistic body images in the media actually reinforce beliefs in female weakness and helplessness. As she put it, if she’s too muddle-headed to safely watch Video Hits, how can she argue with an aggressive private-school boy about a fundraising ball?
PS Good to see you blogging again