03 Oct Are We Finally Growing Up?
First published on FM magazine -Sep 2010
“The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly, heavily, and cruelly, images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us…
During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty… and 33,000 American women told researchers that they would rather lose 10 to 15 pounds than achieve any other goal…
More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers.”
(The Beauty Myth, 1991, Naomi Wolf)
A fashion model’s career is usually over in a flash. For many many years, successful models had to be so young and so skinny that most look liked they fell off the back of a school van and onto the catwalk. However, in recent years, a shift seems to have happened. Somehow, underage, underfed, dried up stick insects stopped being the only ‘type’ that the fashion industry would consider, and slowly we started seeing more and more 40 to 50 year old attractive women boldly representing big cosmetic and fashion brands.
Some ex-models, who had long thought that their career days were over, are now being called back and strongly sought out to get back on to the catwalk and in front of the cameras. They had assumed that their modeling days were over, and left the profession to pursue alternative careers or to have families, and now, they are being called back to the industry and can hardly keep up with the bookings.
Just a few days before her 48th birthday, Sharon Stone was signed up for Christian Dior’s new campaign. As expected, at 48, Stone had formed a firm opinion about the situation in Tibet, and soon enough she had to be dropped from all of Dior’s Chinese advertisements for controversial comments that she passed during the Canes Film Festival. Miuccia Prada then signed up Kim Basinger, 52, for her Miu Miu, and Versace contracted drop dead 52 year old diva, Madonna. British model Angie Hill who was very popular in the 80s, and one of Europe’s highest paid models, had left the modeling world at the age of 24. She then joined her husband’s fashion design firm and went on to have two children. 18 years later, at the age of 42, she is being called back and has signed a major contract with Garnier.
Industry experts think that this new-found preference for older models is a result of audiences being fed up of seeing waif-like girls, barely of age, showcasing clothes that most people would look horrible in. They now believe that audiences are after seeing something more realistic.
In recent years, Dove applied this theory, taking it to a particular extreme. They used 95 year-old Irene Sinclair in a campaign dubbed the “Campaign for Real Beauty”. The advert candidly posed the question: “Wrinkled or wonderful?” and it was followed by a long series of ads featuring Merlin Glozier, 45, which asked the question: “Grey or gorgeous?”
But personally I wonder… is this sudden demand for older, mature models really aimed at satisfying the audience’s need for more realistic role models? Or have designers woken up to the realisation that it’s this age group’s spending power that keeps luxury designers and cosmetic brands in business? Have they finally realised that their target customer is not a 16 year old who eats once a week, but is more likely to be a middle-aged women with hard-earned disposable cash? Has it finally sunk in that it is more likely for the same older women to part with her spare income if she identifies to the images that she’s presented with?
In 2006 Marks and Spencers also tested this approach when the mainstream fashion chain revived Twiggy – forty years after she was first discovered in 1966. They used her across all media and within 13 weeks M&S sales rose by 2.9 %, whilst the share price rose by 50%. As famous and desired as she was, Twiggy had retired at the of age 20, and now, four decades down the line, she is back in high demand and has even appeared as a judge on the hit reality TV show, America’s Next Top Model.
The result? We are now surrounded by images of preternaturally young, strangely plasticized, airbrushed, photo-shopped, digitally and surgically enhanced images of older women. The saddest part is that celebrities are not the only ones falling victims to the plastic-youth look, because with editors and designers overdoing it with these images, we’re all starting to think that we’re the only unlucky ones who did not apply enough sun protection during our youth, who never chose the right products to suit our skin, and who never invested enough in our appearance.
In the past, mature women used to look at magazines and rationalize that the pictures in front of them were of much younger women, or rather girls and therefore incomparable, but with today’s trend of using older models, there’s no such excuse that we can cling to.
It is no wonder therefore that almost two decades after Naomi Wolf wrote ‘The Beauty Myth’, 99.9% of us women still think that our thighs are too big, our breasts are too small, and that our clothes are just all wrong, so off we go, like we did back then, to purchase whatever these models happen to be endorsing, thus keeping the fashion industry thriving and well in business.
For original Feature on FM click here
