Every once in awhile, the fashion industry does something that makes even my jaw drop. Hard to believe, given my utter contempt for it, but recently they didn’t just hit rock bottom with their desperate attempt to garner attention, they dug themselves all the way to Hell.
In an ode to bankrupt ideals, South Korean fashion label Lewitt commissioned a short film (now yanked from every site I checked) that featured model Abbey Lee Kershaw fleeing from an unidentified danger and throwing herself off a roof. She is then shown falling over and over, in slow motion, wearing a different outfit with each fall. It’s done in a dreamy, romanticized way that is supposed to evoke a sense of “Ohh I want that”.
The problems with this are many fold. First, it is another attempt by the fashion industry to glamorize violence against women… again. Somehow this poor waif-like creature who commits suicide to escape whatever peril she is in, is supposed to be envied because she’s wearing must-have outfits. Hmm yes I want to wear what a dead woman is wearing – tres chic! We’ve seen this over and over in the past. The most egregious was the “murder as fashion” segment of an America’s Top Model episode.
Second, in doing a bit of research before hitting the keyboard, I discovered South Korea has the 8th highest suicide rate in the world, the second highest (just a hair under Mainland China) in female suicides. You would think, or hope, a company from a country rocked by numerous high profile suicides – including one of the country’s top models, Daul Kim – would show just a bit more common sense. Compassion is never going to happen, common sense is all we can hope for.
Daul Kim’s sad death at the age of 20 seems to have no effect on the people who treat women like nothing more than cattle ready for the slaughter. The fashion industry is not solely responsible for Kim’s death in Nov 2009; she was haunted by many demons that were aggravated by her career. Nor are they solely responsible for the high rate of suicide within South Korea. HOWEVER, they do bear responsibility for exploiting women and creating monumentally unrealistic visions of beauty that push girls and women to extremes to meet this phantom of beauty. The unending stream of warped images from the advertising and fashion industry must have an effect. We can’t simply say don’t watch them or worse don’t pay attention to them because this is hopelessly naive.
Blog after blog exposes the over photo-shopped models who have had limbs moved into positions that are anatomically impossible, breasts air brushed away (or in one case moved so low they were sitting just above the poor woman’s navel), thinned so badly the women look like sick bobble heads, belly buttons removed (just what is the industry’s obsession with belly buttons?), elongating arms and legs to the point the women resemble something out of a sci-fi movie, fingers elongated to such an extreme I wonder if the people doing the work even know what a female body looks like. If they want clothes hangers, stop the hypocrisy and put the damned clothes on hangers. Stop redesigning the human body to suit these warped views, and start showing women that come in all shapes, all sizes.
The industry bears a great responsibility for exploiting the notion that violence and fear is glamorous. That somehow brutalizing the vulnerable and weak is acceptable, even envied. I’ve used the term bankrupt ideals before, but it is the only phrase that can fully explain an industry that celebrates self-abuse and violence. No other industry would get away with promoting this type of agenda. Why do they get away with it? Because the world idolizes everything the industry does. They are the neo-gods of the modern world. Legions of magazines drool over every design, and quote even the most inane blatherings from designers who live in a world where they can abuse the female image and be rewarded for their efforts. They seemed to have forgotten Hubert de Givenchy’s statement on fashion, “The dress must follow the body of a woman, not the body following the shape of the dress.”
We’ve endured “heroin chic”, size zero or go home, designers who show open contempt for the female body in their battle against “plus size” models, murder as a fashion statement and now this. When is enough, enough?
There is nothing wrong with wanting tall, willowy models to showcase your work. There is something wrong with photo-shopping the models until they look like they are about to die from malnutrition or redo their bodies to suit a perverse image of what they think the female body should be. There is something wrong with using violence and emotional desperation to sell a warped image of beauty. There is something wrong with an industry that hectors it’s employees (and yes models are employees) to such an extent that anorexia and bulimia are the bywords for employment.
A remedial course in anatomy should be mandatory before anyone is allowed to work in either the fashion industry or advertising (kissing cousins in maintaining high standards of stupidity). This won’t happen until the world stops treating everything the fashion industry does with such reverence. They are employers who exploit their workers and their audience.
Suicide in South Korea
Frockwriter’s blog on the subject
Photoshop Disasters blog they spotlight the entire advertising industry’s misuse of over-touching photos.
