A Victoria’s Secret recent advertising campaign, producer of underwear, awoke the mass media’s attention because its advertisement showed ten extra slim models presented under “the perfect body” slogan. The only answer had been an outcry against this body defined as “perfect”. The Daily Mail, under journalist Jill Foster initiative, published a photo where eight normal women are posing in the same way of the Victoria’s Secret ones. On the scandal wave, rode by many intellectual and fashion players, Victoria’s Secret decided to withdraw the unlucky slogan substituting it with a more neutral “a body for everybody”.
So, an act of criticism and revision of this model imposed by the big fashion brands. How much does it cost this distorted vision of the female body every day pushed through any kind of mass media channels? How long for women from all over the world will have to compare themselves with these unrealizable models if not at the cost of their own health? I dare everyone reading this post in finding in his memory a friend, a relative or a girlfriend that has not suffered of an eating disease, small or big, it does not matter. Why the majority of the big brands are persisting in showing girls at the edge between health and sickness if not over (beyond?) ? Do we want to talk about how computer graphic transforms these girls in girls without any kind of imperfection making them faked ones?
Along the history of the female body representation, the woman has been always shown with healthier and more realistic standards. Few years after the end of the Second World War, started this tendency of showing always slimmer girls. Girls forced at extreme diets. Girls creating an incurable conflict between the model and reality. Because of this conflict many of them are compelled to have a real emotional short-circuit that ends in a variety of different possible diseases or, at least, in an annoying and permanent feeling of inadequacy.
But today something is changing, people seem to start reacting at this image tendency. Advertising that go in the opposite direction are arising. Advertisings that show the beauty of the female body in a more realistic and respectful manner. A path that tends to re-qualify the beauty of normal and healthy women.
Sign of this tendency is also evident in the decision or Pirelli Group to show, for the first time ever, a “curvy” model in their annual calendar. So in the 2015 Pirelli Calendar one month will be dedicated at Cance Huffin, the curvy American model with her 90-60-90, one meter and eighty centimetre tall and 90 kg of weight. The fotographer will be Steven Meisel.
Curvy models are also increasing their popularity on the web and over the social Medias having thousands of fan and shares. It seems that now people understand more the importance of a healthy body, of a mind that is free from absurd models, it seems like a manifesto to the real female beauty. My wish is that this tendency will keep without breaks until the end, until the moment in which the actual model will be destroyed. The actual model is nothing more than a subtle and hidden form of violence against woman making them feeling unsuitable with themselves. I want to incite these “curvy” models to resist and to keep the fight helped by their photographer in order to change the model and to give more dignity to women and their bodies: come on, don’t give up!
© All rights reseverd.