Tag Archives: Modeling

Strong is Beautiful: a note on the WTA campaign

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A few people have written me about the Women’s Tennis Association Strong is Beautiful campaign. Featuring stylized action images of a variety of current and rising tennis stars, the Strong is Beautiful initiative both reinforces and challenges our stereotypes about women’s bodies.

On the one hand, these are athletes photographed in motion, doing what they do best, often drenched in sweat with faces fixed in concentration. These are powerful women; there isn’t a passive pose to be found. On the other hand, the players chosen are perhaps less than fully representative of the upper echelons of the WTA. The Williams sisters are conspicuous by their absence, and the Strong is Beautiful campaign seems heavy on long-limbed, high cheek-boned Eastern Europeans. (Then again, the Russian invasion of women’s tennis shows no sign of losing steam. This may not be as unrepresentative a group as first appears.)

In a post on Monday, Jeff at Feminist Allies admits to some ambivalence about the ads.

All of (this) could be a small step in the right direction. There is a stereotyped idea of what a beautiful woman should be, and “strong” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind–wouldn’t it be cool if we lived in a world where “strong woman” and “beautiful woman” were more intertwined conceptually? And yet: Why the emphasis on beauty at all?

The answer, of course, is that beauty matters. While culture shapes what it is we find beautiful, the fascination with beauty (in all sexes) is a human universal — there is no civilization that hasn’t valued physical appearance in one way or another. Telling young women not to care about their appearance (and suggesting that if they do, they are either “shallow” or “victims of a misogynistic cultural discourse”) isn’t helpful. Rather, we should be working to expand the spectrum of what is considered beautiful while making sure that beauty, for all its importance, is joined by other equally important priorities in young women’s lives.

Jeff briefly mentions my work with Healthy is the New Skinny and Natural Models LA. (Thanks, Jeff!) He’s right about what we’re trying to do, which is to create a more diverse understanding of beauty. That means producing new images and new sources of inspiration. It means rejecting the suggestion that the search for beauty is invariably a source of misery in women’s lives. The misery, we argue is linked not to the longing to be beautiful itself but to the particularly unattainable ideal that dominates our culture.

Obviously, being a world-class tennis player is also an unattainable ideal. But the glamorizing of strength, the celebration of sweat that has nothing particular to do with sex — that’s tangible progress. These were not images we had a generation ago. And it is an unmistakably good thing that we (and the young women we love) have them now.

Healthy (role) models

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I have two posts up today at Healthy is the New Skinny. The first deals with the impact of Title IX on women’s body image, and the way in which the opportunity to play sports quickly became the obligation not only to be thin, but “toned” and “defined.” Obviously, as I point out, the problem isn’t with Title IX or athletic opportunities for women; it’s with the culture of perfectionism.

The second post was a rapid response to this infuriating story that ran in the UK media today, reporting on an effort to encourage “size zero” models: Forget chubby, keep it slim!.

With the exception of the last paragraph, I penned the editorial response on behalf of the entire team at Natural Models Los Angeles, Healthy is the New Skinny, and the Perfectly Unperfected Project. The images are of my colleagues and teammates, all of whom are healthy, fit, working models and activists.

An excerpt:

Clinical obesity has medical consequences. But we need to remember that one of the many causes of unhealthy weight gain is low self-esteem of the kind that comes with living in a culture where only the skinniest of women are celebrated as beautiful. The obsession with thinness does colossal damage to girls’ self-esteem. And while some diet compulsively to pursue an unattainable ideal, others respond by developing destructive overeating habits. Food becomes a drug to soothe pain – a pain made worse by the fashion industry’s relentless focus on skeletal models.

Common sense and research tell us that people develop healthy habits when they’re provided with the tools to eat right. While many girls and young women deprive themselves and suffer enormously to imitate the waif look, many more turn away from the fashion industry altogether. Many women find no inspiration in what they see in the magazines because those models don’t look anything like what they themselves see when they look in the mirror.

Dragone and Savorelli either don’t understand or have chosen to ignore the tremendous harm that the fashion industry’s fixation on thinness has done to women around the world. As a result, they’ve given us a false choice between anorexia and reckless overeating. But they’ve missed the real solution.

The solution is simple: promoting health means promoting images of healthy models. It means using models committed to living a balanced lifestyle. It means recognizing that beauty and health happen on a size spectrum between the destructive extremes of emaciation and morbid obesity…

Women are hungry for images of models that are happy and fit as well as beautiful. Give them those images, and we’ll not only change the fashion industry, we’ll change how women see themselves. That’s the transformation that will be the most effective weapon against unhealthy eating — and the misery that causes it.

The Beauty Spectrum: changing how we talk about the body ideal

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I wrote last week about my work with Natural Models LA, Healthy is the New Skinny, and the Perfectly Unperfected Project. We debuted our PUP program at Placer High School up north last Wednesday morning. Featuring stories and images designed to inspire young people to think differently about beauty and the body, it was very well-received by the students on the Auburn, California campus.

In the comments below last week’s post, and in feedback I’ve had from many quarters since coming on board with the PUP Project and Natural Models, there’s been concern that we’re simply reinforcing beauty culture rather than dismantling it. There are echoes of an old argument in this, one that continues to rage in feminist circles even now. How should we talk to girls about their appearance? Should we who care deeply about young women’s self-worth encourage them to resist beauty culture entirely? Ask them to turn off “America’s Next Top Model” and throw away their subscriptions to Vogue and In Style? Should we make the case that the pursuit of beauty is guaranteed to end in tears, and redirect that energy towards worthwhile pursuits? Or should we recognize that like it or not, we live in a culture where appearance matters deeply to young women? Shouldn’t we be working to expand and broaden the understanding of what beauty is — and can be — rather than simply dissuading young people from doing what we know damn well most of them will do anyway?

I’ve chosen to work with an industry about which I have many deep and well-founded misgivings. But I’m doing so because I believe that fashion models are role models to millions of young women, and that it is through models themselves that we have a unique opportunity to reach girls with a message of self-acceptance. When you’re working with teens, credibility is everything; deservedly or not, models have a powerful credibility with that audience. Models tell us what beauty looks like, they tell us how beauty stands and walks and dresses and speaks. The obsession with thinness grows ever more extreme, and the bodies of models today ever more at odds with the reality of women’s frames. (Cindy Crawford, one of the iconic faces of the supermodel era, recently mused that she would never have been able to be a top model had the standards in place today been around in the 1980s.) But while some of us are deeply concerned by the emaciated images we see, a generation of young women is coming of age longing for the very bodies we find repulsive. (We did our own survey at Placer High School in advance of our visit. At this “average American” semi-rural high school, 80% of the female students expressed a desire to lose weight, and almost all rated the “ideal size” for a girl as between 0 and 4. Other studies show similar results).

In the face of this, we need models with counter-stories and counter-images. And we need a counter-language to go with it. Continue reading →

The “Perfectly Unperfected Project” comes to Placer

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I’m in a Holiday Inn Express in Roseville, California, a few miles outside of Sacramento. It’s almost 11:00PM, and I’m getting up in five hours to get myself to Sacramento airport, catch the first flight down to Burbank, and get to my 9:00AM conference time at Pasadena City College. I got three hours of sleep last night and three hours the night before. I’ll be catching up this weekend!

I’ve been up here for the last 36 hours to participate in the exciting launch of Healthy is the New Skinny, the latest initiative to take on the enduring (and worsening) problem of young women’s poor self-image. What makes HITNS unusual is that it’s a program that comes from within the modeling industry itself, growing out of a brand-new Southern California agency, Natural Models LA. The first program to come out of Natural Models and HITNS is the Perfectly Unperfected Project (PUP), which carries to high school students a powerful and inspirational message of hope, transformation, and practical tools for combatting the culture of destructive perfectionism.

I am a co-founder and co-director of PUP, and also serve as a professional consultant to both Natural Models and HITNS.

One of the co-owners of Natural Models, Katie Halchishick (herself a successful plus-sized model) was contacted a few months ago by a student at Placer High School in Auburn, California. This student, Kristin Close, wanted to bring Katie to come and talk about her experiences as a model and as an advocate for body acceptance. Katie, her boyfriend and business partner Brad, and I were working on other projects together, and we realized that the Placer invitation represented an opportunity to design a multi-media, multi-platform program to reach out to young people — but to do it from within an industry that holds such great sway over their lives. From that, PUP was born.

Today, our team of 18 — models, consultants, musicians — held two assemblies on the Placer High campus. We did separate presentations for the boys and for the girls, sharing with them stories and images of strength and hope and offering them a “counter-story.” Counter-stories are stories that run against the grain of pop culture and received wisdom; our chief counter-story is not just that “healthy is the new skinny”, but that with effort and partnership and courage, we can fight against oppressive perfectionism and the tyranny of unattainable thinness. Katie and Bradford shared their stories and their wisdom, as did a wonderfully talented plus-size model (and mother of two) from Seattle, Angela Jones. I served as emcee of the event, framing what was happening for the two enthusiastic (indeed exuberant) audiences, and other models from Natural Models interacted with the Hillmen (Placer’s mascot here in the Sierra foothills), answering questions and engaging with the students. A great new group — Coleman and Chris, whose first record is on its way out in 2011 — performed. Tears, cheers, and all that you would expect.

I’ll have more to say about Healthy is the New Skinny and the Perfectly Unperfected Project in the near future. For now, please check out our websites, and if you’re interested in what we’re up to, follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well. And if you want to see reactions from some of the Placer students, check out this Twitter hashtag: #healthynewskinny.

It’s a big week for high schools: tomorrow afternoon at 3:00PM, I’m talking about young women, perfectionism, and body image at Arcadia High School.

“We love your look, but lose 15 pounds”: a reprint on modeling, privilege, vulnerability and choice

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From March 2008.

One of my students came to me yesterday with a question. “Carine” is twenty, and has already taken four of my classes here. She’s getting ready to transfer on to a four-year school, and she’s doing so — to my considerable delight — as a women’s studies major.

Carine is an independent student, and has lived on her own for several years. She’s entirely self-supporting, and her parents have contributed nothing towards her college education. (This is a very common story here.) She is taking a full load of classes, and working a great many shifts as a server in a West Los Angeles restaurant. Though the tips are good, she’s barely scraping by. Her twelve year-old Camry is on the verge of complete collapse. Something’s gotta give.

Since she was in high school, Carine has done a little bit of modeling here and there; it’s provided a little extra pocket money from time to time, nothing too significant. But now, with transfer looming and the economy hitting the restaurant business, she’s decided to investigate making her modeling more serious. She has the right look, and earlier this week, she met with one of the better-known agencies in town. They loved her face and her portfolio, and were quite willing to sign Carine to a “conditional” contract. The “conditions”: lose three inches off her hips and drop fifteen pounds off her already lanky frame. The agency would check in her with regularly to assess her “progress”; if she did as she was asked, she could be assured of steady work. There’s no question that taking this contract would make a huge difference to Carine. It will enable her to transfer, to stay on course for her degree (in women’s studies, heaven be praised), to remain independent.

Carine is a self-described “staunch feminist”. She took my women’s studies class and was hooked; she regularly e-mails me for “more books, please!” I send her reading suggestions at a staggering rate, and she ploughs through them just as fast. And Carine, like so many young feminists I’ve known, was worried about whether taking this contract would compromise those infamous “feminist credentials.” She said something like: “I know the fashion industry sends a lot of destructive messages to women. If I lose this weight, do I become part of that destructive message? Am I hurting other women as well as myself?” Continue reading →