Mistreatment
of models is fashion’s Groundhog Day
Rather than
thinking of models as skinny mean girls, we should recognise how
badly they are treated within their own industry
Hadley Freeman
@HadleyFreeman
Monday 3 April 2017
16.56 BST
I have been reading
a lot recently about how models are treated really badly. I thought
this had been sorted out ages ago.
Charles, by email
Yes, mysterious,
isn’t it? Rather like how we sorted out that fashion magazines were
no longer going to feature skinny models. And yet here we are again,
with models complaining about how horrendously they are treated, and
magazines not exactly lacking in visible hip bones. Huh. It’s
almost like the fashion industry … just doesn’t care?
Let’s unravel this
story one grim revelation at a time. In a long post on Instagram last
month, the respected fashion show casting director James Scully wrote
about specific instances of the fashion industry being, for want of a
better phrase, a massive dick. Along with the usual depressing
stories of racism, with one label allegedly refusing to audition any
models of colour for their show (they responded saying the claim was
“completely untrue”), Scully called out Balenciaga’s casting
directors, Maida Gregori Boina and Rami Fernandes, whom he described
as “serial abusers”. Boina and Fernandes, Scully wrote, left 150
models in a dark stairwell for hours at a time, leaving many
“traumatised.”
Boina and Fernandes
have firmly denied these claims, although models Judith Schiltz and
Mollie Gondi posted comments on Scully’s post verifying some of his
accusations. Balenciaga has said that they are no longer working with
Boina and Fernandes and apologised to modelling agencies, but Gondi
wrote, “The apology to the agencies from the fashion house is
laughable because the agents have known this for years and don’t
think twice because they want their girl in the show.”
Meanwhile, in
Australia, a news programme screened last week in which one model,
Victoire Dauxerre, was asked if she thought a woman could be a
successful model without having an eating disorder. “No,” she
replied.
“I felt like I
needed to shave a bone off. I didn’t know how to get smaller,”
another model, Edyn Mackney, said. “It is like the only ideal of
beauty today is to be skinny”.
Let’s deal with
the skinny stuff first, again, because fashion is basically just
Groundhog Day, with the same trends and issues coming round and round
and round, driving a lady to do a lot worse than throw a radio
playing Sonny and Cher at the wall. It’s not “like the only ideal
of beauty today is skinny” – that is literally the only ideal of
beauty, and it doesn’t matter how many times Karlie Kloss poses
with her kookies (geddit?!?!?) in front of her thigh gap, or how many
condescending articles fashion magazines run with plus-size model
Ashley Graham (she’s not skinny – but we accept her! Like a weird
pet!).
Emma Thompson
reiterated this point last week when she said, “Actresses who are
into their 30s simply don’t eat.” Some newspapers said Thompson
“revealed” this insight into Hollywood, but the only people who
could have found this to be a revelation had to be as blinkered as
Aaron Sorkin, who recently professed himself to be amazed “that
women and minorities have a more difficult time getting their stuff
read than white men”. The man might be able to walk and talk but
apparently not look and think.
Thin is in, and that
is not changing. And extreme thinness is still equated with the
ultimate aspiration in too many people’s minds, especially in the
fashion industry. The only thing we, the public, can do about it is
not to buy from labels that use extremely skinny models in their
adverts and shows, and write to them to tell them this. Fashion
labels can ignore well-intended if woolly edicts from politicians and
even fashion magazine editors. But they never overlook a missed sale.
As to the actual
abuse of models, stories of high-end models demanding tens of
thousands to get out of bed, or throwing their jewelled mobile phones
into the brains of cowering minions, have given the public the idea
that models are all pampered divas. But news that 99% of models are
treated like expendable dairy cattle will come as no surprise to
anyone who has ever been on a fashion shoot or to a show. As one
young woman put it in a recent survey about how models are treated,
“We have a job that millions of girls would kill for, so we should
be happy with what we’re doing, even if it has a dark and sadistic
side to it.” That pretty much sums it up, and it’s an attitude
many other young people working in similarly much-desired professions
– pop music, acting, even certain kinds of journalism – will
recognise.
It’s pretty
telling how little people talk about the abuse models have repeatedly
said they suffer, focusing instead all their outrage on how models
make them feel. And the reason for that is pretty obvious: people see
models as mean girls, deliberately making us sadface with their
skinniness, as opposed to thinking about what goes into making these
images. When stories like Scully’s come out, people say, “Well,
why don’t these models just get different jobs?”, as though
modelling were a lighthearted hobby for silly little girls and jobs
grew on trees for young women. That models are treated so badly by
the industry is an indictment of fashion; that the public is so
uninterested in these stories is damning proof that most people are
as bad as the fashion industry at failing to see models for what they
are: vulnerable young women.
Post your questions
to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York
Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com
.
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