Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has been quoted as saying recently, “No one wants to see curvy women.” He was talking in the context of catwalks and the fashion industry in this instance. Whilst Lagerfeld may be a talented designer of clothes and has made some very successful forays into the world of fragrance, this statement alienates vast swathes of women at one broad and heavy-handed brushstroke.
More worryingly it perpetuates the idea that to be acceptable you have to be skeletal, emaciated, and possibly bulimic in order carry off looking stylish and a la mode.
This is patently nonsense of course, but it does raise a very interesting question: How can any woman ever gain acceptance of her own body image in an age where all she is presented with is images of ultra-slim and airbrushed perfection?
Women’s magazines don’t help matters either. As a photographer, I am fully aware of the techniques which can be employed to render the ordinary “more attractive.” Putting it bluntly, there are virtually no limits to what can be achieved. Actress Kate Winslet famously complained about the digital retouching that had been done to photographs of her for a cover of GQ magazine. Yes, that’s a magazine that is aimed at the male market, but women’s magazines do not fair any better.
Next time you visit a newsstand and pick up a magazine, take a careful look at the image of the woman on the cover. Do you see any blemishes, lines, uneven skin tones, or even so much as an eyebrow hair slightly out of alignment? The chances are you won’t.
The irony is that many of these magazines claim to be aimed at real women, whilst at the same time, presenting a subliminal message that real women are perfect, ageless, and she’d better be damned skinny to go with it.
The pages themselves are packed with adverts imploring the reader to buy their products to make them look younger, reverse the aging process, smell better (in all areas of the body), change hair color, lose weight, get rid of cellulite, spots, scars, etc. The over-riding message this puts out is a sinister one. It’s saying, whatever you are now, you’re not good enough, come and be improved. It preys on the insecurities the beauty industry itself relies on to generate.
The slightly more terrifying by-product of this is that young girls are now obsessing about their weight and body shape. There have been countless reports, documentaries, and articles about girls on in the first flush of puberty wanting to get breast augmentation, long before their bodies have even reached maturity.
What this speaks to, is a generation of women (and increasingly men) who can never be satisfied with their body, right from the first buds if self-awareness in childhood.
Let’s just stop the world, get off and have a think about that.
For whose benefit is this exactly? It’s certainly not the vast majority of women who will grow up and spend their lives unhappy with some aspect of themselves which actually is perfectly normal and acceptable.
I’ve spent years photographing both men and women. Ask a man what’s wrong with him and he’ll probably say “er, I could probably lose a few pounds around the middle.” Ask a woman, and you will need to sit down with a cup of coffee. I guarantee you will have finished your drink before she’s finished the list of imperfections she perceives, from the shape of her nose, her mouth, her shoulders, her breasts, hips, legs, and even toes.
The assault on the body image of a woman was not helped by advent of plastic surgery becoming a cosmetic issue rather than necessary surgical procedure. Breast implants have become common-place. As a man, I mourn this rather than celebrate it. I have yet to meet a man who honestly prefers silicon breasts to natural. A small-breasted woman who is comfortable with her body is infinitely preferably to the same woman with implants.
