When I was young, I did actually model and was much photographed by famous photographers. But I was always a bookworm. One of the achievements of our generation of feminists was to emancipate women from the division between being interested in clothes and appearance, and being serious and ambitious.
Marina Warner1
Somehow, in the popular public discussion of the lives of women and girls, the topic of glossy magazines and the images within them has become more of a focus than perhaps any other aspect of women’s lives: ‘Do models oppress girls?’ ‘Can you be a feminist and wear lipstick/heels/dresses?’ ‘Is Photoshop oppressing women?’ That these questions of surface have gained such prominence bears some examination.
A concern is often voiced that women and girls define themselves by images in women’s magazines – that they mould themselves, starve themselves and hurt themselves to conform to the images of the bodies within those pages. Yet we rarely define boys and men by the content of the magazines marketed to their demographic. There is no consistent concern voiced about the beefed-up blokes on men’s fitness magazine covers, whose bodies could be seen by impressionable young men as an advertisement for steroid abuse, nor the men seen cupping a glass of whisky, pressuring men into thinking they have to drink to be a ‘real man’. We aren’t so worried about impressionable young men and boys, it seems (despite the serious social problems associated with their demographic, including significantly higher rates of suicide and violence), and we infrequently associate men, as an entire sex, with the advertising aimed at them, in part because we see men in so many different contexts, doing so many varied things in their public lives, that their presence in public life is not so easily reduced to a one-dimensional glossy photograph. The public representation of ‘Woman’, however, remains closely tied to image and advertising, and despite the fact that men hold most of the wealth in the world, there is a tradition that associates men with wealth creation and women with its consumption. (Perhaps you’ve seen that annoying sign that sits in so many shop windows? Your husband called. He says to buy anything you want.)
One reaction to this cliché about women is to rebel against any show of interest in surface or consumption. This is a sound position but not a necessary one.
Can a feminist like looking at pretty things? Can she wear makeup? Enjoy well-made garments? Well, yes, she can. Can she peruse magazines or look at ads? Yes. No break of the essential contract there. These are not central issues. While there are issues of diversity to be addressed (the ‘symbolic annihilation’ of women who are not white, thin, able-bodied and young in advertisements and elsewhere), and also pressing issues of consumerism and ethical production, these are large, complex issues about prejudice, institutional power imbalances, the economy and public policy, and not about a bunch of women looking at pictures of other women in fancy clothes.
Wars are not waged in the name of underwear, and although it is generally true that women in developed countries spend more on grooming and clothing than men do (which can go some way towards affecting their financial status), it does not follow that this is a significant problem for most of those women, let alone the significant issue for women in general. As long as we continue to live in a democratic country fuelled by capitalism, and it remains illegal to walk around naked, we can expect to see ads about clothing and we can expect people to look at those advertisements and, if they have enough money or interest, buy what is on offer.
So how did the matter of magazines and makeup become hot-button issues for women, and not for men? Why is so much time spent debating this topic? Women’s identities have long been entangled with appearance, but is there more going on?
One thing to keep in mind in these discussions is that although all publications need to be economically viable to remain in print (likewise all productions, to a large degree), glossy magazines are designed as a medium for the promotion of goods and services – cosmetics, upcoming film releases, fashion lines, new cars or gadgets – and this advertising-heavy composition is generally one of the defining features of their format. So what we are talking about when we talk about magazines is largely or entirely a discussion of advertising and not specifically storytelling. This is not to say that the content within magazines lacks quality or art (Annie Leibovitz’s photography for Vanity Fair or Irving Penn’s for Vogue, for example, or some of the wonderful journalism found between the ads) but, rather, the forces at work in the production and distribution of the content in magazines is strongly, and in some instances entirely, driven by economic factors. This is true for all markets, though it’s particularly true of the magazines that are most often the focus in this debate about women and image: women’s glossy magazines. (It is also true of popular men’s magazines such as GQ, Esquire and the like.)
The issue of how women are visually represented is a legitimate one, and something I take interest in, but primarily in so much as women are represented far too narrowly. It’s not so much what’s found within the pages of glossy women’s or men’s magazines, but that women are too infrequently celebrated outside of that highly visual, advertising-driven domain. The problem, as I see it, isn’t that this or that model or singer is pouting in her underpants on the cover of GQ or Vogue, but that her image will commonly fit a dominant pattern of representation which positions her as the target of both disproportionate praise (goddess) and vitriol (whore), and significantly, that we aren’t hearing enough about someone else. And this brings me back to my earlier point about magazines being driven by advertising: I suspect this is precisely why we hear so much debate about advertisements, airbrushing, makeup and magazine models – because beautiful and highly successful women exist within those pages, and there are clear income streams to be made in those associations. Models, actors and entertainers are celebrated, watched and criticised down to the last microscopic detail, page after page of speculation, praise and denigration, while professional women in other fields go largely unnoticed. We don’t hear from them or about them because the promotion of their work does not so easily coincide with the promotion of something that is for sale.
The visibility of women in the public domain is dominated by those who are included (i.e. ‘celebrated’) primarily to sell products, either directly or indirectly – and sometimes even involuntarily, as candid images of famous women are now used to promote publications, weight-loss products, diets, creams and so on. This is one reason why advertising has become so entangled with women’s identities, and now feminism.
Women who work in advertising and commercial publications have powerful public voices due to the nature of their occupations and the mainstream reach of those publications. This is to be expected. I can like some of the magazines and the people in them, and agree with their arguments and intentions, but it doesn’t change the simple fact that a large amount of the debate surrounding women’s rights has been channelled towards the comparatively superficial, image-based issues that relate directly to the magazine industry, and are specific to soft targets – individual ads, bodies and images – rather than the larger system. Hence a call for a blanket banning of all Photoshop in magazines is elevated to a central issue of women’s equality. The right to ‘feel beautiful’ at any size or age becomes as prominent an idea (and then, naturally, as seemingly important) as the right to bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, and that feeling of beauty is seen as achievable only if it is reflected in an ad. The concept of feminism becomes tied up in the promotion of a soap because the ad uses a naked, makeup-free, middle-aged woman. This progress within the limited confines of the commercial world is seen as a mark of all progress.
If we take a step back – and I believe we must – we see that debates about models come with pretty pictures that are nice to look at. Inevitably, it all looks fantastic in newspapers, magazines and on TV: all visual mediums that lend themselves well to marketing soaps, vitamins, gyms, diets, health products, you name it. Some campaigns even come resplendent with supermodels liberated of every stitch of clothing, showing how they look without Photoshop – the answer being, of course, splendid. A lot of the complaints that would normally come with printing photographs of naked women are absent when the images are presented as being a win for women’s body image. Domestic violence, equal pay, reproductive choice, inequity in superannuation, the promotion of women in the sciences and women’s representation in political decision-making, for instance, rarely come with sexy pictures or a seamless product endorsement in the sidebar.
Unfortunately, the general tendency for women’s voices to be heard primarily in relation to causes defined as ‘women’s issues’ in the domain of women’s-only publications, rather than issues for society as a whole has the result of very effectively segregating thinkers and writers who are female from the public more broadly. This means the space allotted to women journalists is often the same advertising-soaked space, the very same magazines we debate about. Essentially, Talk amongst yourselves, ladies. And so we do.
Cover girls without collarbones. Models without pores. Hips as narrow as thighs and waists sliced down to the slenderness of a neck. These fantasy advertising images, as revolting as they sometimes look, are more talked about in our current culture than images documenting real-life atrocities.
I understand why there is public debate over the excessive use of Photoshop. I’ve seen the silly ads, and I imagine that if you also live in the developed world, unless you have been living under a rock, you have too. Some of it is offensive, even insulting. When a product blatantly misrepresents itself, there is an issue of ethics that needs our attention – for instance, digitally extending eyelashes and claiming this is the work of the product. (A number of cosmetic companies were recently caught out using false eyelashes to sell ‘lengthening’ mascaras, while implying in their advertisements that the look could be achieved with their mascara alone. No Photoshop needed there, just old-fashioned glue.) It is important to regulate false claims on packaging and advertisements, particularly related to drugs, health products and cosmetics. But is the invention of Photoshop really responsible for the mass oppression of women and girls?
Often the discussion of Photoshop is a rather exclusive one, and implies that without digital retouching, an image would be natural and therefore real. I don’t believe this is the case.
First, we must consider the source of the images we are discussing – almost always advertising images and editorials in glossy magazines. Then there is the somewhat more complex nature of photographing a person to advertise a product. In my decades of professional modelling I could not miss the fact that it was largely the professional makeup and hair styling, the age of the models and the elaborate lighting that once provided the flawless and rather ‘unreal’ look we associate with advertising. Light boxes, reflector boards and flashbulbs were all used, so that as a fifteen-year-old model I was surrounded with banks of light, my young skin turned flawless, shadowless and ultra-bright. (Often, you can see the large, square glowing light box reflected in the model’s pupils, and if you look at her pose, you will see that her arms are leaning on the white surface – a reflector board.) Though digital manipulation is used on many ads now, it is the manipulation of light, particularly in skincare ads, that is still most responsible for this effect. The white studio with its rows of bright lights, and the reflector boards, cannot be replicated in real life, of course. (Unless, perhaps, you live in a glowing space station.)
To be a model on a studio shoot was to be completely surrounded by white foam boards and soaked in hot lights. If on location outside, you were flanked by reflectors, held by photo assistants whose explicit job it was to aim them right at your face. The dreaded silver ones, which I came to object to (not that my protests made a scrap of difference), had a surface like tin foil. It felt like being an ant under a magnifying glass. My eyes have never fully recovered from the years of blinding reflector boards used on bright, sunny days. Many models abuse whitening eye drops for this reason, using them several times a day, against recommendations, to cover persistently bloodshot eyes. When every other human being was either in the shade or wearing sunglasses, or both, we had to look down the lens and appear relaxed, berated for any involuntary squinting. To say the set ups were unnatural would be putting it mildly. The photographer, assistant, makeup artist, hair stylist and client would all stand outside this circle of light, usually around the camera lens, talking about you in the third person, as if you could not hear, or you literally were a mannequin. This experience is different to the sometimes clumsy slicing of body parts with the digital wand, reducing a model’s size, but the truth is that even before the means existed to do that digitally, advertisers already used a vast arsenal of tools to achieve ‘unreal’ images.
I recall standing in front of a couple of thousand high school students at Sydney’s Town Hall about ten years ago and explaining what went into the creation of images, and how some were altered. In the years that have followed, many people have focused on the alteration of images, making the process of advertising more transparent in some ways – but not others. While we are discussing the digital manipulation of images, we also need to be honest about the other aspects of manipulation: the choice of model, lighting and product placement. I must stress that these are not moral choices (with rare exception, anyway). However, if you are a person who peruses ad images, and many of us are, it can be helpful to know what you are looking at. It is also good – vital, actually – to keep in mind the purpose of advertising: to sell. Nothing an ad presents to us will have been designed with simple reality or truth-telling in mind.
What is seen in an individual image may not have as profound an effect on our collective consciousness as what is consistently omitted (i.e. that issue of symbolic annihilation). This is where campaigns against excessive Photoshopping come into their own, exposing Photoshop not as a tool that makes otherwise realistic images unrealistic, but rather as a tool of visual censorship.
As there is already an excess of homogeny in commercial images, the use of digital manipulation, when used to ‘smooth out’ or ‘even up’ features, erases any natural differences in the already narrow selection of models chosen. Aspects of physical diversity are symbolically made invisible within the confines of that commercial space. This has long been a problem within commercial spaces, where lack of ethnic diversity has been and still is a significant omission, and where conventionally attractive faces (whatever that is deemed to be in any particular era or cycle of fashion) are presented within a limited ideal. Photoshop can further limit that narrow field of visibility.
Though it is true that Photoshop has the reassuring ability to remove temporary flaws – like bloodshot eyes (a frequent problem for me when on writing deadlines), or a spot of acne, the removal of which I’ll happily accept – the lovely imperfections of human beings are also smoothed out of far too many images. Yet one need only look at old photographs to see that images always have had the ability to distort reality. Even unaltered happy snaps are extremely variable and the outcomes selective. Picking the pretty, kooky or unflattering picture is a matter of aesthetic not ethical choice. The idea that the ‘camera does not lie’ is a fallacy. Photographs are not strictly a mechanical record. They are manipulated by framing, by angle, by intention, by accidents of flare and light. They are representations from a single perspective, manifested as a one-dimensional image. There are levels of manipulation and artifice before and after that click of the shutter, but photographs are not, and never have been, the real.
Even campaigns that aim to lessen the use of Photoshop, which is a broad industry issue, can often devolve into – you guessed it – tirades against individual women and girls. The comments beneath Ashley Judd’s piece in the Daily Beast on the lunacy of criticising women for the minute details of their appearance (see chapter 10) involved plenty of moralising about how she was ‘complicit’ in women’s low self-esteem because she had ‘willingly posed for images that were Photoshopped’. I have been attacked for supposedly refusing to show people what I look like without makeup. This is usually framed as proof that I am not a feminist, by people who are not themselves feminists, and who openly state that they disagree with feminism and its aims. A man recently used the fact that I wouldn’t post a makeup-free photograph of myself on cue, at his command, to try to show that I am to blame for women’s self-esteem problems. In truth, because I have been a public figure and a model there are literally thousands of photos of me online, with makeup, without makeup, with clothes and without clothes, caught mid-speech, smiling, pouting, walking, with stitches on my cheek, with lipstick on my teeth, with puffy eyes, weight gain or loss, in images both flattering and unflattering – but the demand was that I reveal my naked face now, for him, how he wants it, because it was my duty as a woman to prove myself to him. Likewise I was recently criticised on social media for posting a blurry iPhone photo someone had taken of me and another author at a book signing. ‘It’s a shame you won’t post a clear, honest photo of yourself,’ the woman wrote.
Honest?
How is a blurry or unclear photograph dishonest? Practically every photo taken before 1930 would then be dishonest.
This person was implying: I’m better than you because my photo is ‘honest’. (With ‘makeup-free’ campaigns there is a similar moral claim: My face is ‘honest’.) The idea of honesty is central to most ideas of morality. To claim that someone is not honest is a moral judgement, an accusation of moral inferiority. To apply this not to actions and statements, but to perceptions of the images captured through the distorting lens of the camera is problematic at best (even before pointing out that the specific photograph this person was responding to was taken by someone other than its apparently ‘dishonest’ subjects).
Arguments about the evils of otherwise legal images (she’s not doing anything illegal, but she is ‘skinny’, for example) frequently centre on a convenient scapegoat. These scapegoats are often the models themselves, and almost always young women. Think of the demonisation of supermodel Kate Moss, mentioned earlier, a model who was blamed for making people anorexic, smokers and, later, drug addicts, as if the complex causes of serious conditions like eating disorders and substance addiction was really just about impressionable young girls wanting to look like a model. These types of arguments trivialise serious medical conditions, bring media attention to products worn by the scapegoat in question – say, Calvin Klein underwear, to continue with the Kate Moss example – and once again distract from other issues. The voices of those who sensibly point out that the actual company is responsible for the image – the CEOs, the shareholders, the larger industry – rather than the individual woman, are usually drowned out of the debate.
To continue with my example, we can examine one early Calvin Klein advertisement in which Kate Moss was pictured in black and white, sitting in a pair of jeans (the product). She was wearing no other clothing and was not engaged in any activity apart from the aforementioned sitting, which is really more of a non-activity. Her body is turned away from the camera slightly, so her breasts are not fully visible, and she is looking into the camera with a neutral expression. Is there any circumstance in which a slim young man simply sitting in a pair of jeans would be thought of as morally dangerous or capable of causing serious medical conditions? The controversy surrounding this image had the effect of increasing sales and there can be no doubt that the image was intended to create controversy precisely for that purpose. What does it say about our culture that a young woman sitting in jeans, not breaking any laws or engaged in any discernible activity, can cause such a (predictable) reaction of concern for young women and their morals? Why would the sight of the partially-clothed female body be regarded as having the potential to corrupt and cause physical or moral danger? And, crucially, why has advertising been given the status of moral guide – as if we believe that the ‘right’ image could keep us from harm? Is the acceptance of this level of influence not a significant conflict of public interest, regardless of the product or how the brand chooses to advertise it? Why has the increasing corporatisation of public life gone all but unquestioned while we continue to moralise about the exposure to and appearance, shape and size of the (almost exclusively female) human body?
Personally, I am more offended by the ongoing policing of, and demonisation of, the female body than I am by pictures of bodies that are not like my own. I am more alarmed by the idea that young women cannot think for themselves and need moral guidance and policing that young men do not require than I am by the sight of a young person sitting in a pair of jeans, whatever their sex or size (Though of course the choices made so often fit the larger pattern – white young female). We have no such moral panic about the boys and men who are exposed to images of other men, whether they be fully clothed or naked (though there are many specific types of images of men we omit from popular culture, like those I referred to in the chapter ‘The Beautiful Man’).
When not singling out a particular scapegoat or source of corruption – Twiggy, Kate Moss, Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé and so on; take your pick – the popular discussion of mainstream entertainment and advertising images tends to lean the way of either a) mass censorship of certain images and bodies, presumably with the aim that only acceptable bodies are shown (though one wonders who gets to decide that), or b) active participation in marketing a ‘different look’ for the purpose of selling products to a demographic who prefer their ads to look a different way. In current discourse, the term ‘real’ is frequently employed in these campaigns. There is merit in encouraging a broader range of models and types of images (I encourage this), though pretending that ‘unreality’ in clothing advertisements is a key ethical problem strikes me as terribly misguided, when unreality is the essence of the consumer exchange. Notably, the kinds of ads we are talking about are the ones selling things we don’t need. The ones that sell us things we do need – like washing detergent or vegetables – are rarely, if ever, targeted for being damaging.
When we speak of how unrealistic advertising images are – and magazine covers and editorials are first and foremost advertising, hence the list of products and prices listed in association with each image – we tend to assume that advertising images are less realistic now than they were previously, and that images are or at least ought to be realistic. This argument does not account for the fact that advertising was, until well into the fifties, traditionally made up of illustrations, and content was previously less – not more – regulated than it is now. It is only very recently that the idea that advertising images told the literal truth became popular. Like many people, I find the odd crooked tooth or freckle charming in older advertisements, and I wish for the return of those human qualities, not to mention some wrinkles, more size diversity, racial diversity and so on, but by the standard of ‘real’ used in many Photoshop debates today, literally all advertisements of the past were less, not more real than they are now, because they were drawn by commercial illustrators.
While we can reasonably believe that (distorted and in many cases problematic) depictions of real life can be found in storytelling – fables, fairy tales, documentaries, books, film and television – and the role of cultural or moral teacher has long been tied to such mediums, advertising’s role is quite specific. Perhaps changes in the aesthetic content of advertising images are not as significant as our changed relationship to those images. Culturally, we have allowed business and advertising to take centre stage, and those images have been created with increasing precision thanks to the wealth of knowledge about consumer habits and advertising effectiveness now at the disposal of big corporations. In many countries, more people now gather in shopping malls than parks, town squares or churches combined. It was the same for me. Growing up in Canada, we met at the local mall or at the convenience store after school. For many, the corporate has become the cultural and that part of our culture has indeed become powerful.
The very fact that we now accept the idea that it is normal to look to advertising to be culturally informed, to ‘find’ ourselves and help form our identity, and that advertising is an unavoidable part of our daily lives, a near-seamless wallpaper surrounding our experiences, is a relatively new development and is of great significance. And this creates a real, unresolvable conflict of interest.
Advertising images will only present an aesthetic someone finds more ‘real’ if they think that will do a better job of making us buy something. (The Dove ‘Real Beauty’ campaign, discussed earlier, is an example of this.) If you want to present the argument that we should be advertised to differently, I am all for it. Variety and diversity is lacking in the mainstream advertising world. Companies aim to give us what we collectively desire, and on that score it’s worth noting that in European ads we tend to see more character, more wrinkles, irregular teeth and pale, natural skin. They use retouching sparingly for a different aesthetic (one I happen to prefer). In advertising and the modelling of clothes in publications and on runways, it seems logical that adults model for adults and children model for children. I support the initiative in the fashion industry to stop using underage models or models known to be suffering from eating disorders, primarily because this is a clear issue of occupational health and safety. (‘Known to be suffering from eating disorders’, of course, is no guarantee at all, as these disorders are not always detectable and many people are just naturally thin.) As a consumer I’d also like to see more range of size, shape, cultural background and age reflected across media forms because it makes sense and, frankly, having all models look the same is boring and it doesn’t make me want to buy things. So when MAC runs that ad with fifty-seven-year-old Jerry Hall looking drop-dead gorgeous in a Halston gown, I stop and notice, and I like it. I enjoy the image, but I know all the while that it’s not, in the literal sense, real life I’m looking at. It’s a product promotion. I’d rather see Jerry Hall with brightened eyes than not see anyone over twenty-five at all. I’m being sold to, sometimes rather well.
An advertisement would not be effective if it didn’t make us feel we were missing out on something – the specific something it is selling. The Latin ad vertere translates roughly as ‘to turn towards’. Advertisements exist solely to turn someone towards something, so that person acts in a prescribed way: buying a product or service, or, in political advertising, casting a vote for a particular party. As John Berger writes in Ways of Seeing (he describes all ads as ‘publicity’):
For publicity the present is by definition insufficient . . . The publicity image which is ephemeral uses only the future tense. With this you will become desirable. In these surroundings all your relationships will become happy and radiant.2
This is the contradiction in so much advertising – it intentionally creates a lack, a sense of not being whole without the product.
Make no mistake. Advertisements do not represent you or any other real-life person. Ads represent products and the interests of the businesses who bought that media space. Will the product actually enhance our lives in the way the advertisement implies? Perhaps. But we must remain clear-eyed about the intention of the images while we enjoy these beautiful, glossy, ephemeral bits of product promotion.
The primary issue that has arisen stems from our changed relationship to advertising rather than any significant change in the content of that advertising. Although popular culture has for some time been tied up with things that could be purchased – a painting, a book, a movie ticket – only relatively recently has the advertising itself come to be seen as art, as a central part of our culture, as an influential educator and guide to life, part of our personal identities.
There is a clear and important need for reform within areas of advertising to increase business ethics and transparency, but I cannot bring myself to accept advertising as a moral influence or cultural teacher in the way fables, film, literature and other forms of storytelling have traditionally been. Advertising’s avowed purpose must remain forefront in our minds when we encounter it. Enjoy it or despise it, but do not forget what it is, because if art and storytelling were once primarily used for guidance, even moral teaching, as a way of understanding the world and our place in it, how can we now hope to interpret the lessons in advertising? There can only ever truly be one message: Buy.
We need to ask ourselves: How did the advertising of products become so entangled with mainstream culture, our ways of seeing and socialising, relating to our bodies and private lives? How did it become so entangled with female identity in particular? How did advertising cease to be a thing that existed to try to turn us towards something, but actually became as real to us as the thing itself?
As many of us move increasingly towards a lifestyle where we meet in shopping malls instead of public parks, where we discuss the content of commercial magazines – even commercials themselves – more than books; where our movie theatres offer us advertisements before our films instead of news reels or cartoons, and the actors in those films sell us skin creams and colognes; where we socialise online in the space between advertisements; where we are required to walk through banks of product displays to catch a plane and pass hundreds of advertising billboards on the way to work; and where athletic activity is contained between commercials (as with hugely popular televised sport) and adorned with banners and logos, we must stop to question this new, central role of advertisements. Does it suit us and what we want from our lives? Are these promotions still a convenience? If so, for whom? Is this a moderate exposure to commercial pressures? Is it the right balance? Do we want to be sold to, and if so, how often? How much do we want to buy? Where is the tipping point when it ceases to make us happy to buy, gaze at what can be bought, and buy again – or wish we could, if only we had the money?
Over forty years ago Germaine Greer wrote that ‘Women must also reject their role as principal consumers in a capitalist state . . . I am considering ways to short-circuit the function of women as chief fall-guys for advertising’,3 and all these decades later, with the measurable rise in the polarisation of wealth – a polarisation that serves most consistently to impoverish women, children and the elderly, with the richest 10 per cent of people in the world owning 86 per cent of the world’s wealth4 – this consideration seems more urgent, not less. There is a place for advertising and consumption, for products, shopping and debt, but just how big a space in our lives should it inhabit? If people are truly being damaged by advertisements, perhaps one solution is to make it at least possible to avoid them.
So while we continue to debate, seemingly endlessly, the content of advertising and the ethical concerns raised by individual images and bodies, let’s also have a broader debate. Let’s ask ourselves: How much of our world and the living things in that world should be commodified? How much of our bodies, our lives and our public spaces ought to be decorated by and influenced by advertisements? Is our consumer-driven lifestyle, this constant looking to advertisements, really working for us, or are we working for it?