Fashion Advertising Dos and Don’ts
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Posted by Paula Kamen March 15th, 2007 |
In the last few days, I’ve come across a few astonishing ads that illustrate the worst and best of how fashion advertising addresses women’s body image:
THE WORST:
MARC JACOBS ad: The newest ad campaign for this women’s wear designer is striking for its unusual choice of model: actress Dakota Fanning. Yes, Dakota Fanning, a 12-year-old girl. At first I thought it was a joke, but it’s not.
The ad, seeming to showcase the new Marc Jacobs Pederast Line, features a shot of Fanning from above, viewing her pinned against a wall as a bright light shines in her face. Although Fanning’s outfit was custom made in an extra-small size for her, she is still dwarfed by the relatively large sparkly aqua bow around her neck and ballooning metalic jacket.
It’s a seemingly casual yet very intentionally provocative photo, in the tradition of those creepy DIY-simulating American Apparel ads. But it’s even more unsettling because she’s, like, an actual girl — not even a teen or woman posing as a girl, as is usually the case. This is like a satire of a fashion ad that idealizes — and sexualizes — women as girls. It’s not even pretending not to fetishize girls and champion their impossible size for women.
In a story in on the campaign on ABC News, Marc Jacobs president Robert Duffy is quoted explaining the choice of model:
[Marc] loved the idea of having this young, small girl in the cloethes, and we made them in her size to shoot her in.
The story never questions the implication of inappropriate sexualization of a child, just viewing the ad in terms of its marketing quest to help Jacobs reach “a much younger crowd.” A crowd that isn’t yet reading these magazines and couldn’t buy them in their size if they wanted to.
I found the ad in the March 207 Elle. (It’s about page 150 — I can’t tell exactly because it’s in the middle of a large cluster of ads with no page numbers). But apparently this campaign debuted in Februrary in W and Vogue.
THE BEST: In an infinitely more realistic twist, Lane Bryant’s latest catalogue of its spring fashions, mailed to customers, shows grown-up women in their full curvy glory. I stopped in my tracks on page 12 for lingerie, in which rounded stomachs actually appear. But the effect is still glamorous and bold. The campaign shows you don’t have to give up allure to have a sense of reality. Hurray for Lane Bryant for using models in the actual representative plus sizes that it carries, which is not always the case for such designers.
I was further stopped in my tracks on page two reading a column from Chairman and CEO Dorrit J. Bern of Charming Shoppes Apparel Company, the parent company of Lane Bryant. This is another dose of social relevance. The column is labeled, “Voices: ONe Voice Can Lead To a Chorus for Change” — and it lives up to that name. Bern writes about the need to take fibromyalgia patients seriously, giving the example of a young mother suffering from it. She conveys the challenges of fibromyalgia well — describing a typical case with fatigue, widespread body pain and migraine — adding that
much like the many diseases that impact women, the reoccuring stigma of “it’s in their heads” is prevalent.
This is the first ad campaign I’ve seen tied to a predominantly women’s illness involving pain and fatigue, much less one with an accessible feminist power analysis. For these patients, whose suffering is greatly compounded by the skepticism of those around them, such public education is very comforting. It’s also a jumping-off point for greater dialogue –something of a “pink ribbon” for this large group of women who has never had such support.
I do see the point of feminists who have criticized corporate campaigns for breast cancer (like the Avon walk) for being superficial and tacky and self-serving– not addressing any root environmental causes of breast cancer. But every social movement begins with raising awareness of a problem and challenging stigmas. Years ago, breast cancer was also stigmatized, and you would not see such mainstream awareness, which is indeed a comfort to patients. “Pink ribbons” (in whatever form they come) are not the end goal, but to pain and fatigue patients, they are a start.
March 17th, 2007 19:05
Whoa, a fibro mention!
I am a fibromyalgia patient. There’s been a lot of progress in recent years. 5+ years ago, FM patients were hypochondriacs to most people. Whiners and complainers.
But the research is on our side, and more and more people are realizing it’s a real condition, with real effects on its sufferers.
The skepticism is hard to get past. I internalized it for years. I’ve had FM since birth, dx at age 12, and I spent most of my childhood and teenage years thinking it was all in my head. Convinced I was normal, just weak in spirit rather than weak in body. That I was just lazy. Etc.
It destroyed me. I almost failed out of high school. I have dropped out of college twice now, the first time disastrously — I was bedridden for months, just five minutes sitting in a car seat would bring tears to my eyes.
The sad part is that it’s not true. It’s taken me years and years to realize this, and feminism has been a huge help in giving me the confidence to do so. I’ve always been ambitious. I took extra classes in high school; I held two of three top editing spots on the newspaper (copy & tech) and did 97% of the work of the editor-in-chief. I wanted to double major in college, and blew right into my freshman year with a full 15 units, seeking a job and a possible newspaper spot. I’ve always been ambitious. I have so much I want to do with myself — and always have.
But I don’t have the physical ability to do it.
It’s taken me years to finally grasp that. And then, ONLY THEN when I grasped that, and SLOWED DOWN, was I able to live a healthy life.
I went from trying to do everything, and spending hours a day in bed trying to get over weight-crushing migraines, so bad that if I blinked or twitched a finger it would make me want to scream in pain — but because of that pain, I couldn’t bear the movement and sound that screaming would bring. Tears would come to my eyes, but I couldn’t cry, because the movement…
… to slowing down, limiting my physical activity, and finally being able to actually take care of myself. I went from showering (perhaps my most difficult regular task) three times a month to showering three times a week. From being in too much pain to microwave a Hot Pocket to being able to cook my own meals and feed myself. From the anxiety and embarrassment caused by once again, being absent (several days a month at the least) or once again, not having my assignment done… to being able to work, albeit only a few hours a week — but I have finally learned to pace myself, such that I have been able to keep up with that work, rather than having to quit two months in.
All the things I internalized were immensely damaging… as you can see. I look back on my childhood and have to immediately look away — it brings a strong emotional pain to see all that I went through. My teenage and college years, which should have been spent learning, growing, building friendships and chasing a career, were instead spent… well, growing, but I would have much preferred the growth that would have come with a healthy relationship with my condition.
My email is open if you want to know any more about this. It’s a huge issue to me, obviously.
Sorry for the long comment — it’s just so pleasantly surprising to see mention of my illness that isn’t disparaging.
Thanks,
Amanda.
March 20th, 2007 18:02
[…] Then there’s the new Marc Jacobs women’s wear ad campaign — featuring 12-year-old Dakota Fanning. Now, I’m a huge Marc fan — if I could have unlimited access to the clothing of a single designer, it would probably be him — but this is, as Perez Hilton put it, wrong on so many levels. The sexualization of a child is just one aspect, though — there’s also the fact that this ad is for his women’s line. They had to specially make the clothes for Fanning, because she’s 12. Is fashion advertising really so far gone that a pre-teen girl is now the ideal that grown women are supposed to strive for? […]