Let’s start with the bad..They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so let’s just have a look at this, shall we?

This has been blogged at Boing Boing and all over the place, and Ralph Lauren have been keen to get it taken DOWN, lodging DCMA’s with wild abandon. Unfortunately for them republishing an image like this for the purposes of “critisism and comment” is pretty much THE definition of “Fair Use” so they’re not having a lot of luck.

I don’t know about you, but my very first reaction when looking at this image is “What the F*%K??” – it looks very glaringly and obviously wrong to me. The proportions are ridiculous, and it’s just silly looking… her head is HUGE compared to the rest of her body.. what is up with that?

What I can’t understand is how this got to print.. I am presuming that between this photo getting butchered in photoshop and the magazine going on the shelves there would have been a fair number of eyes on it. Why didn’t anyone pipe up and say “Umm, this is stupid?”

It’s obvious to me that there’s something drastically wrong with this image. Is it because I don’t live in “Magazine land” that my eye hasn’t been warped beyond all sensibility?

This puts me in mind of environmental disasters – like when they are using something toxic to make homes, or in people’s food.. the people who have the highest rate of exposure get sick first, and display the most obvious symptoms.

Is this what is happening here? We know these images are damaging, to all of us – tall women and short women and fat women and thin women, young women and old women.. these images? They don’t make ANYONE feel good about themselves.. even the tiny portion of the population that actually look like the (pre-photoshop) models don’t feel good looking at these images..

And if you look at them too long, too much – your eyes get poisoned by them. Your idea of what a woman looks like gets warped. Warped so badly, you might let something like this get all the way to the printers.

This is a dramatic example of what is happening to all of us on a smaller scale.. the only thing we can do is try to limit our exposure to this posion, and balance it out with positive, realistic images of women as much as we can.

Enough of that, I think I’ve ranted enough.

On a more positive note.. the most popular women’s magazine in Germany, Bridgette, has recently announced that they will no longer be using professional models in their magazine. Their press release is below, translated more-or-less-understanably via my trusty google translator..

The fashion has changed.
The women have changed.
Our world is different.

So we start a revolution:

BRIGITTE there from 02 January 2010 only

WITHOUT MODELS

From today, all photo spreads in BRIGITTE, from fashion to beauty to living and fitness, no longer produced with models –
but with women like you and us.

Because women do not need a deputy. They can require nothing more. Because clothing is now no question of trends, but of personality. Because not only create new looks on the catwalk, but on the streets, in schools, on concert stages, in the cinema, in a café around the corner. Because we want to show fashion and beauty in the future women who are not subject to the often perverse laws of the business model, but middle of their lives.

Because there is nothing better than WOMEN.

_____________

Hmm, real women? No more photoshopping or airbrushing? That sounds like a step in the right direction to me. I find myself hoping this is a great success for them, and that other magazines follow suit.

Because I enjoy sitting down with a magazine as much as the next person.. but I’d rather some eye-candy instead of some brain-poision, wouldn’t you?

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