Body Image in Marketing
The Industrial Revolution
The industrial revolution used its machines to turn out size small, medium, and large. And with these sizes, came a competition...a competition to be the smallest and to wear the smallest clothing. So it is no wonder that our High Fashion models are size 00 in 2016.
Models have 'achieved' skeletal proportions. Models walk like the industrial machines that made them, robots that kick to make a dress flow down a runway. They give you blank expressions, just to make sure you don't feel emotion for them.
Models in France during the 1900's were given code names like "Pleasures of Love" and "The First Yes." High Fashion models began with the nicknames of prostitutes. And indeed, they all looked the same, reed-like with similar hairstyles.
So we ask: Has our treatment toward women as a sex object changed?
"FASHION IS ARCHITECTURE: IT IS A MATTER OF PROPORTIONS" -- COCO CHANEL
FASHION AND THE BMI DEBATE
In 2015, France considered a law to prevent anorexic models from walking the runway. Any tampering with the original photo in Photoshop, meaning an altering of body dimensions, would need indication.
Anyone running a model agency found employing undernourished models below a Body Mass Index of 18 would potentially receive a six-month prison sentence and a 55,000 euro fine.
However, the French fashion world has deemed the law “a dangerous confusion between anorexia and the slimness of models.”
"A FLOWER DOES NOT THINK OF COMPETING WITH THE FLOWER NEXT TO IT. IT JUST BLOSSOMS."
Condom dresses and space helmets have debuted on runways.
A dead body becomes the trend when a coat made of human skin saunters down fashion’s biggest stage. The body is identified as Annabelle Leigh, the teenager who famously disappeared over a decade ago from her boyfriend’s New York City mansion.
This new evidence casts suspicion back on the former boyfriend, Cecil LeClaire. Now a monk, he is forced to return to his dark and absurd childhood home to clear his name. He teams up with Ava Germaine, a renegade ex-model. And together, they investigate the depraved and lawless modeling industry behind Cecil’s family fortune.
They find erotic canes, pet rats living in crystal castles, and dresses made of crushed butterfly wings. But Cecil finds more truth in the luxury goods than in the people themselves. Everyone he meets seems to be wearing a person-suit. Terrified of showing their true selves, the glitterati put on flamboyant public personas to make money and friends. Can Cecil find truth in a world built on lies?
Book 1 in the Visage Series.
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