Facial beauty index

[imomus]

It started when the organizers of the Madrid Fashion Week announced that Audrey Marnay would not be allowed to appear on their catwalks.

"REAL women will rejoice at the news," reported the London Times. "Audrey Marnay is being pushed off the catwalk. The organisers of Madrid Fashion Week have announced that they are banning her to develop a more healthy image for the event this month. If Marnay does turn up, she will be classed as a freak in need of medical help.

"Madrid city council, which sponsors the fashion week, has ordered that every model on show must have a facial beauty index (FBI) of no more than 0.6. The average woman in Spain has an FBI of 0.5. Audrey Marnay's FBI has been measured by doctors; she scores a highly abnormal 1.0."

A week later, UK culture secretary Tessa Jowell lent her support to Madrid city council's decision. "It's categorically not an issue for government regulation," Jowell was reported as saying, in an article headlined Jowell joins condemnation of Audrey Marnay. "It is, however, an issue of major concern for young girls who feel themselves inferior when compared to the beautiful young women on the catwalk. They all want to look as beautiful as Audrey Marnay and see beauty in those terms. And I think it's fair to say that when they wake up in the morning, the first thing most 15- and 16-year-old girls do is feel their faces."

Okay, I'll come clean. If you followed those links you'll see that I've substituted the name Audrey Marnay (who happens to be my favourite model) for "stick-thin catwalk models", "skinny models", "unhealthily thin girls" and "waif-like models". And I've substituted the fictional FBI (facial beauty index) for BMI (body mass index).

I find these calls to ban "unrepresentative" or "abnormal" models from the catwalk farcical not only because I'm a thin person myself, or because I'm an artist whose work is often about beauty, and who doesn't think that art should restrict itself to merely average levels of beauty. It's also because I'm fundamentally anti-rockist. In other words, I'm against "keeping it real", and I think that claims that a catwalk show, or even a street fashion shoot, are only valid when they're "based on a true story" are overblown. (If rockism is Stanislavskian, all about realism, anti-rockism is Brechtian, about drawing attention to the fact that all spectacle produces illusion.)

The "based on a true story" thing has come up a couple of times on Neomarxisme, once when Marxy took shots at popular TV (then film) phenomenon Densha Otoko, Train Man, disputing claims that the drama was based on a true story, and once when we talked about how sumo wrestling was fixed. I raised the issue myself recently when I reported how an ex-girlfriend had told me she'd been photographed for Cutie magazine's street fashion section, but been styled (a lacy white thing had been added under her denim jacket to spice the picture up). I was disappointed to learn this, but didn't think it was finally very important. All street fashion is styled in the sense that it's sifted. And street fashion is always aspirational. Nobody really wants to know what the average person on the street is wearing. Nobody wants people selected at random, or for their averageness.

A fascinating insight into Japanese street fashion is provided by a new feature on Pingmag (this site is currently hotter than July). It's exactly the kind of first person, investigative reporting I'm always telling Marxy to try, based on simply asking people questions and trying to "see with" them when they answer. (That "seeing with" is called verstehen in sociology.)

"What is in this green bag next to your photo equipment?" Ryotaro Bordini Chikushi asks one of the Omote Sando street photographers. "Please don’t take a photo of that! This is confidential," the lensman replies. "We are sponsored by a shoe-maker today, so we look out for interesting boys and ask them to wear those shoes with their outfit for our street-shooting."

There we have it. Some product placement is going on in Japanese street photography (although I can guarantee that Shoichi Aoki's magazines Street, Tune and FRUiTS don't do that). Even when it isn't, it would be hard to say that these photographs are "based on a true story"; kids parade up and down Omote Sando in their carefully-selected clothes, hoping to be stopped and photographed. The scouts select those who best suit the house style of their own magazines. It's already highly theatrical.

The "based on a true story" claim cannot be removed entirely; there's definitely emotional power to be drawn from the fact that "real" people are wearing clothes of their own choosing "on the street", just as even a catwalk show gains emotional power from the fact that actual flesh and blood women, rather than dummies or robots, are wearing the creations of designers. But the relationship with reality here isn't contractual ("That's not true! You made false claims and let us down!") but metaphorical. And aspirational. If only reality were like that, we coo, sounding for all the world like a teenage girl waking up in the morning and feeling her face.

Politics, ideally, comes from below. But beauty comes from above. It will never be democratic.

Comments

[olamina.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for writing on this.
As much as I am concerned with overly thin women being held up as the highest standard of beauty, I am not interested in the "real women" representation propaganda being spewed. There is no one "true story" and I bristle at the idea that anyone would want to push that idea forth.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

I find it shocking that a minister or city council presumes that regulating fashion models is sensible governance, or that it addresses issues of positive self-image among women. What is the commercial fashion and beauty industry if not elitist? As you pointed out, which is more elitist -- a thin physique or a model's face? -- a $5 shirt from a thrift store or a $500 shirt from Junya Watanabe? Are they next going to ban clothing over $100, as higher-priced clothing causes depression and anxiety among the poor?

It also amazes me that anyone misses the the fact that, by banning one end of the body-type spectrum, they've begged the question as to why the other end should't be banned as well. After all, there are now more overweight people on earth than there are emaciated ones, and we're all aware of the health risks inherent in obesity. Will they ban models with a BMI of over 25? Lawsuits would surely ensue. But by picking on the other end of the spectrum, they get to discriminate with the tacit support of women who secretly envy thinner women.

[(Anonymous)]

A friend of mine went to a gallery in one of the shopping malls in Shinjuku the other day. The presentation said something about "we gave eight female photographers a camera each and let them take pictures of anything they wanted for a day". The exhibit was sponsored by Nike, and it turned out that all people that had focus were wearing Nike shoes. My friend asked one of the photographers why, and she said it was purely coincidental.

[it-certainly-is.livejournal.com]

well, i guess i'm resigned to the scrap heap, then. my ugly genes don't correspond with the objective reality of beauty. thanks, momus. i was always curious about where i and my non-skinny brethren's deep, vast, soul-destroying self-hatred comes from, but now i know. it's like a platonic form of beauty, y'know? it comes FROM ABOVE, wherever that is. and i'm not that. nope.

ps: rockism is inherantly exclusionary. a fashion show is inherantly exclusionary. with rockism it's music made after 1980/with samples or synthesizers/etc, and with fashion it's any woman weighing more than 120 pounds.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think the idea of "above" is just "anything I couldn't do, but would like to". For instance, who would read "War and Peace" if they could write it themselves, and if it simply portrayed something exactly like the life they really led?

[(Anonymous)]

How individual can an anti-rockist activist be?

[gemima-obrien.livejournal.com]

Why were Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell hailed as supermodels in the 90s?

[it-certainly-is.livejournal.com]

but who would read "war and peace" knowing that the world portrayed in it is something they can never be a part of? it goes both ways.

i guess that's what turns me off so much about the fashion industry: to me, it says that only a very small percentage of people are actually physically beautiful, and everybody else simply isn't. i find that incredibly narrow-minded and shallow. i think there's more than one standard of beauty. i've never been skinny, nor will i probably ever be, but i don't feel as though i can't truly be beautiful, nor do i think that a woman who is 5 foot 10 and 110 pounds is somehow inherantly more beautiful than a woman who's 5 foot 5 and 160 pounds. it's just different.

not that i think empty gestures like banning abnormally thin women from fashion shows is going to help anything; i just take issue with your argument that the contemporary obsession with thinness is the high standard of beauty to which we all aspire.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

It also amazes me that anyone misses the the fact that, by banning one end of the body-type spectrum, they've begged the question as to why the other end shouldn't be banned as well.

Well, perhaps the reason that people have failed to fully engage with this argument is because catwalks and magazines are noticably un-awash with obese models chomping on battered sausages. This isn't an argument you can lazily turn through 180º. Although It's possible that I'm just not attending the right fashion shows, of course.

My friends-list on LiveJournal contains several talented, beautiful and in many cases thin women who beat themselves up about their weight on a daily basis. It's tedious, tragic and upsetting to read. These aren't women who "secretly" envy thinner women. Most women I know who experience this envy don't keep it "secret". It dominates their lives and rules their every waking moment. I'm not quite such a philistine that I fail to understand imomus's argument that this is an artistic medium, it should be extreme, unattainable. But there's a difference between striving for the unattainable and gaining from it, and forcing yourself to throw up in restaurant toilets before crying your eyes out. Of course it's not Marnay's problem, but the mental health of millions of people has been skewed in a horribly unhealthy direction, and to pretend that this isn't a far bigger problem than censorship at Madrid Fashion Week is, frankly, obscene.

The reason that the idea of regulating the size of fashion models is ludicrous, and that comments like Jowell's seem so absurd is that they are utterly impotent, and come far too late to have any effect. So don't worry, the mags and catwalks won't change, and neither will the overwhelming feeling of misery and failure experienced by millions of women of a perfectly normal size.

rhodri is 35, and his excessive weight and hideousness only annoy him slightly.

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

Let's all control women! We can judge women by their appearance. When people get mad about judging women by appearance, we can react by judging women by appearance.

Down with women. Their appearance will be judged and nobody will come out without flaming wreckage and "oh, just a salad and water, thanks."

[bricology.livejournal.com]

"i guess that's what turns me off so much about the fashion industry: to me, it says that only a very small percentage of people are actually physically beautiful, and everybody else simply isn't."



Do you really think that the fashion industry is about "beauty"? I certainly don't. To me, it seems merely like signifiers of an elite which is ruled by corporations skilled in exploiting peoples' insecurities about acceptance. Fashion confers the stamp of approval for being rich, having the requisite attitude, being in-the-know and willing to dress like a clown. I think that a person is far more likely to look "beautiful" in a simple shirt and trousers or skirt from someplace like The Gap than in haute couture.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think that a person is far more likely to look "beautiful" in a simple shirt and trousers or skirt from someplace like The Gap than in haute couture.

Well, there's something in that: the most beautiful of the three photos of Audrey I ran is the one where you just see her face, relatively un-made-up. But it's funny that you should mention The Gap. You know that the spot on Omote Sando where all the street fashion pictures are shot is right outside a big branch of The Gap, which can often be seen in the background of the photo. But in all my years of reading the captions to such photos, I've never seen a single person say they bought an item of clothing from The Gap. The Gap is, in a sense, the standard or average against which all these people are rebelling -- the building's there in the background, but there's a yawning gap between its values and those of Harajuku dandies.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Oh, they're out there. Google "Lane Bryant"+fashion and you'll see.


If ever there was an indicator that we live in a society of infinitely extended adolescence where people are unwilling to take responsibility for their own identities, it's blaming the fashion and beauty industries for poor self esteem among women. Why stop there? Let's also blame them for bulimia and suicide! Lawsuits all around!

The fashion industry doesn't hold a gun to any woman's head and insist that they conform to their particular standards. Women buy into whatever beauty standard they do, and for a variety of reasons, but none of them involve powers beyond their control. To me, it seems roughly the same as men complaining that the standards of masculinity embodied by professional sports are unrealistic and cause poor self-images among many men who would be unlikely to be able to attain Mike Tyson's physique. That only matters if a man chooses to wish to have a physique like Mike Tyson.

There is no shortage of men and women who conform to neither of these artificial standards and yet are considered quite attractive.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

So don't worry, the mags and catwalks won't change, and neither will the overwhelming feeling of misery and failure experienced by millions of women of a perfectly normal size.

And neither will athletes stop taking performance-enhancing drugs which push them to phenomenal achievements which make the rest of us feel like cripples in comparison... and applaud wildly.

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've always been bemused by that juxtaposition -- the Fruits magazine shots with The Gap in the background (although I had thought it was their store in Shibuya). I was just using The Gap as an example of the most generic of stores; as far as one can get from haute couture.

I love the way that Japanese kids remix and create, and that they have the freedom to wear things like that without fear of some jackass in a pickup trying to run them over because they look like "freaks". At least among the young, I see more stylistic homogeny in the West than in Japan.

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClM3GnhuK_g

[bricology.livejournal.com]

"And neither will athletes stop taking performance-enhancing drugs which push them to phenomenal achievements which make the rest of us feel like cripples in comparison... and applaud wildly."

I presume you're using the editorial "we" there. I somehow doubt that you feel physically insecure relative to professional athletes, or that you applaud their "accomplishments". I know I don't.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes. I'd much rather see Audrey Marnay putting her own looks together like these kids (http://www.fashionsnap.com/snap_page/snap_08-17-06.htm) than dressed up by the West's typically top-down creators, designers, stylists and so on.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

The fashion industry doesn't hold a gun to any woman's head and insist that they conform to their particular standards

This is such lazy, woolly thinking. Yes, people should take responsibility for themselves, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't maybe step back for a moment or two and consider why millions of women have found themselves caught up in cyclical patterns of self loathing. Does it? Or shall we leave these women, "unwilling to take responsibility for their own identities", to sort these problems out for themselves? Do we ignore the fact that there may be a link, and consign another generation of girls to the same fate?

Why stop there? Let's also blame them for bulimia and suicide! Lawsuits all around!

Extending the argument like this doesn't make the original argument stupid. It certainly isn't stupid to take on board the notion that - just maybe - the relentless images of unattainable body shape over several decades might - just might - have something to do with widespread mental issues among young women.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Strangely irrelevant response, there.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

We live in a society (and the contradictions are more clear in Britain than anywhere else, I think) which loves to hate the special. In other words, it's obsessed with celebrities and freaks, utterly fascinated by them. But also very ready to condemn them for their difference. The final result of this is the absolutely insane self-contradictoriness of the UK tabloid press, in which the boosting and the crucifixion of exceptions has become one and the same gesture.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

Maybe my responses have been irrelevant to your original point. I just don't see how a discussion about Marnay can fail to include some kind of analysis of the state of mind of women obsessed by their weight, and the effect that, er, images of thin-ness might have had on them. Maybe there's no link. Maybe it's all caused by a wider malaise in modern society. But don't ignore the issue just because you like the way Audrey looks, that's all I'm saying.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Well, being way too thin to function is clearly A Bad Thing. Audrey Marnay is not way too thin to function. In fact, her body shape fits her perfectly to her profession (as long as she doesn't plan to work as a model under exclusive contract to Madrid City Council). Furthermore, women shaped like Audrey will probably do very well in our society; they'll get nice jobs, find no problem attracting nice mates, and so on. I don't think we can say that Audrey is in any sense dysfunctional. But I wouldn't say that not looking like Audrey is dysfunctional either. Appearance is only everything for the fashion industry.

Irony

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1798990,00.html

Perhaps Tessa Jowell would like to experiment with thinner role models as a means of tackling the 'crisis'? Fashion models for instance? Obviously the current crop aren't thin enough.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Appearance is only everything for the fashion industry.

In other words:

Because appearance is everything for the fashion industry, appearance is everything in everyday life. WRONG.

Because appearance is not everything in everyday life, appearance should not be everything in the fashion industry. WRONG.