Modeling agencies and feminists often find
themselves on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to women's
issues. Not so when it comes to fashion retailer H&M's practice of
interchanging models’ faces onto a single digitally enhanced body on
their online store. Virtually decapitating models and creating a
so-called “perfect” body has raised the ire of women in the feminist
blogosphere and professionals in the modeling industry.
Which is no mean feat.
“It is disrespectful and lazy. It is the job
of the brand to properly scout for their models and find those that
represent their brand in every aspect. They need to take the
responsibility of looking deep into the model pool to find the right
people instead of digitally creating what they need,” Michael Flutie,
the creator and cast member of E!’s newest model search reality show
“Scouted,” tells Fox411. “It is [also] dangerous, especially for
teenagers who are led to believe that manipulation and the alteration of
bodies is acceptable.”
Chloe Angyal, editor of the women's site Feministing.com, agrees.
“We already live in a culture where the gap
between what we’re told women’s bodies should look like and what women’s
bodies actually look like is wide enough to drive a truck through. The
practice of digitally slicing and dicing these models to cobble together
a vision of female beauty that is literally impossible to achieve in
real life is widening that gap still further,” she told Fox411.
Jennifer Ward, a rep for H&M, defended the images, calling them “virtual mannequins.”
“The virtual mannequins are used in the same
way as we use mannequins in our stores for ladies wear and menswear,”
Ward told Fox411, adding that the company did not mean to mislead
consumers into thinking that the pictures showed the actual bodies of
the models She said the budget fashion retailer is currently holding
discussion on how to make that information more clear to the online
consumer since it does not disclose anywhere on their site that the
models used are in fact digitally enhanced.
“It is regrettable if we have led anyone to
believe that the virtual mannequins should be real bodies. This is
incorrect and has never been our intention,” Ward said. “We will
continue to discuss internally how we can be clearer about this in the
information towards our customers.”
That's not enough for Angyal.
“Defending this practice by pointing to
store mannequins doesn’t strengthen the case for this practice: most
store mannequins are so slender that if they were real women, they
wouldn’t have enough body fat on them to sustain menstruation," she
said. "That’s not healthy, and neither are the crushingly unrealistic
beauty ideals that H&M is reinforcing.”
Even digital advertising professionals are raising their eyebrows.
“One issue is that they're doing this and
not making a disclaimer, essentially trying to pass off this digital
body as a real one. Another is that it's one stock body - suggesting
there is only one ideal body type and shape, which is bad for already
poor body image in young women. And the third seems to be that it's
aesthetically off-putting,” Farrah Bostic, the creative strategist and
founder of The Difference Engine digital strategy and design company,
told Fox411.
And at the end of the day, it may just be bad business.
“They are not selling the model, that's
true. But they are selling back to the shopper ‘herself’ in that dress
or with that bag or in those shoes. They are selling her an augmented
version of herself. To put unrelatable, uncanny, or cringe-worthy women
(real or fake) in those clothes only distances women from the shopping
experience and from the clothes themselves. These uncanny valley
thinspiration models are clearly a distraction from the clothes, and
make it harder - not easier - to imagine yourself in them. And that,
quite simply, doesn't sell,” Bostic says.
Even if H&M sticks with its computer
generated bodies, the practice likely won’t collapse the modeling
industry. Digital models simply can’t walk a catwalk and so far they
can’t do high end glossy magazine photo shoots to properly satisfy the
artistic vision of fashion magazine editors.
“When it comes to selling clothes in the
pages of an editorial in a glossy fashion mag or on a runway you still
need the real thing,” Fashionista.com editor Leah Chernikoff tells
Fox411. “You still need models with unique and special looks.”
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