The Reasonably Prudent Law Student

You might have heard by now about the Italian model (who’s had a long-standing professional relationship with the Ralph Lauren brand) who was HORRIBLY Photoshopped in a recent RL catalog. I don’t mean that that she’s actually really fat and they Photoshopped her to look like Megan Fox. I mean that they Photoshopped her so horribly that her head is wider than her pelvis.

No joke.

The picture first showed up at Photoshop Disasters. Take a look.

Hideous, non?

DUDES. HER HEAD IS WIDER THAN HER PELVIS. TELL ME YOU DON’T SEE IT.

Ugh, she looks like a lollipop.

And before we go any further, I’m not one of those people that has anything against super thin models. I don’t. the whole size 0 ban, while well-intentioned, is a little over the top, in my opinion. I agree to a certain extent with Karl Lagerfeld (oh, God, I can’t believe I just wrote that) about fashion being about illusions. It’s one thing to have stylish clothing available for women that are of larger sizes (which is something that I applaud whole-heartedly).

But we’ve already elevated fashion and Paris and runways and all that to these illusory levels (in the sense of idealizing all that stuff, AND in the sense that the models wear stuff that no normal woman, no matter how fashion-forward, would EVER be caught dead in), that banning crazy-thin women from the industry shows just seems to be against the whole culture we’ve created for fashion.

Plus, I happen to think that some clothes just ‘hang’ better on super thin models. I don’t check out Fashion Week pictures so I can see how clothes would fit on someone like me; I check out Fashion Week pictures so I can see the clothes, so I can see the lines and the designs and the attention to detail and what statement any given line is making about the year, about the times, about women, about the designer, etc. Rail-thin models let the clothes hang, for one thing, and because they’re not very curvy or substantial on their own (I swear I’m not trying to be derogatory, and I totally realize it’s coming off that way), the clothes usually wear the model instead of the other way around, and that is totally fitting (pun intended) for the purpose. Keep your eyes on the clothes, not the charismatic, bright bombshell wearing them. That’s why we often hear criticism of these runway models being rail-thin with vacant eyes and no boobs and enigmatic little smiles, very puerile in appearance. That’s half the point.

[picapp src="4/3/e/4/Paris_FallWinter_200910_5585.JPG?adImageId=5575549&imageId=5331608" width="500" height="751" /]

I, um, think this proves my point pretty well.

And to those that for some reason think that fashion shows and catalogs and all that are supposed to show us what the clothes would look like ON US, well, that’s a little ambitious, don’t you think?

I’m a petite person, just barely over five feet, but I’m not built like every other petite girl out there. I have a teeny waist that’s a little below the measurement it should be, but I do have normal hips. Another woman that’s tall and statuesque isn’t built like every other tall girl out there. We’ve had this discussion in the plus-size BSC posts as well: some plus-size women are only ‘plus-size’ because they have huge sweater puppies. Others are only plus-size because they have a bit of a tummy. Others are only plus-size because they have super curvy hips.

Expecting catalogs to feature models that represent all the different body types out there so that we can get a hold on what certain clothes would look like on us is just…not realistic. Go to the store, find something you like, try it on, and look in the mirror. THAT is the best way to figure out how something looks on your body.

Very few women are built in such a way as to be perfectly proportional EVERYWHERE – bust, waist, and hips – and thus be able to simply look at a dress in a catalog like the ones Ralph Lauren puts out and order it right away and have it fit perfectly. They’re the lucky ones.

The rest of us, we have to see something in a catalog that catches our eye, check the dimensions/proportions, make estimations about our own body given those measurements, and then take a gamble. And their return it or get it tailored a little. That’s what I end up doing with all the Indian clothes I have to buy. The shirts are always WAY too big because I have a 23″ waist and the pants are always a little too long because I’m so freaking short. So I either don’t get the outfit, or I get it and shorten the pants and take the tunic in. We have to make these adjustments.

ANYWAY.

So what was Ralph Lauren’s initial response when criticism flared up over this horrendous Frankenmodel? They sent cease and desist letters to any website displaying their copyrighted image, of course.

Yeah. I know.

THEN, sensing what a bone-headed thing to do that was, they put out some bogus half-assed apology that took a long time to say nothing.

So what’s happening now?

Oh, well, the model, Filippa Hamilton, says she was fired in April by Ralph Lauren for being overweight.

Yeahhhh.

Except she basically looks like this currently:

Even in white, a color that makes a rail-thin girl look 3-dimensional for a change, this woman is still ridiculously thin at 5’10″ and 120 lbs. Or maybe my standards for the modeling industry are a little warped. I don’t know. All I know is that I’d love to look like that. It looks like she gained weight in her bust, which is hardly unforgivable, really, and that in addition to the few pounds she may have gained otherwise was probably enough to get her fired for violating her contract.

FATTIE CAN JUST GO FIND ANOTHER GIG!

Ugh. Sorry, that was Eustace. My life’s been kind of miserable since he learned how to channel my fingers into typing for him.

Now, Hamilton feels that Ralph Lauren owes the American woman an apology and feels that a role model should be healthy. I agree with that to a certain extent. A ROLE model should be healthy. I wouldn’t want women like Michelle Obama or Zadie Smith or my mother or Amira Al Hussaini or Toni Morrison, among other women that I admire for different reasons, to always look emaciated, with slightly visible rib cages, boyish hips, brittle-looking legs, and large, usually surgically enhanced sweater puppies.

(And yeah, in case it’s not obvious, I don’t think of actresses or singers – THAT brand of celebrity – in even remotely ‘role model’ terms unless they’ve done something of significant worth, like Angelina Jolie with her UN ambassadorship and her international charitable ventures, or a tweenie like Selena Gomez who promotes green lifestyles and travels the world for UNICEF, etc. What, I’m supposed to think Taylor Swift is a role model because she sings cutesy songs, hasn’t flashed us her knickers, and got upstaged by Kanye? I like the girl just fine, but no, thanks. Being famous and being a role model are not equivalent.)

As for models…in as much that we know we elevate fashion to this world of fantasy and illusion, I think most of us also know that models are NOT healthy. When I see a particularly thin model, the first thing I think is not, “Oh, that’s how a normal woman should think.”

No, no. It’s more like, “Huh, I wonder how much of an 8-ball she had to do every day to look like that.”

:-P

I’m an ass, I know.

But I stand by it: looking at the pretty little waifs that strut down catwalks in gorgeous clothes, I know full well that most of them (not all, not all, I’ll be fair) did not achieve that particular look through healthy means.

So to say that Ralph Lauren owes the American Woman an apology and that this is bad for blah blah blah seems a little….over the top. We all know that normal women don’t look like that. We all know that female celebrities go to great lengths and spend a lot of money to look like that – it’s basically a full-time job for them.

The philosopher Megan Fox put it best, believe it or not, when she said her job was to get up, shower, do her hair, and be attractive. That is almost verbatim from some GQ interview I don’t have the constitution to go look up.

And if we didn’t already know that normal women don’t look like that, we know it now because we’ve tried. And we’ve failed. And we’ve nearly killed ourselves in the process.

So yeah. Ralph Lauren screwed up. And it sucks that 23 yo Ms. Hamilton got fired, but she’s a beautiful girl and she’ll find more work. And the laughably heinous cover, plus the horrible publicity that resulted from it, is pretty hilarious.

I guess what I’m saying is…whatever.

Plus, let’s not pretend that any of us expected any better from Ralph Lauren, or any other fashion giant. The only thing that happened was that they went so far this time – on accident – that they exposed the phoniness of a culture that we all knew was fake to begin with, because we made it fake to begin with.