One of the nicest things about having a blog is that you can say whatever the heck you want and, yes, technically people could complain if the writer is offensive, rude, obnoxious, or even downright mean...but at the end of the day, what good does that do? The blogger can still be as offensive, rude, obnoxious, and hateful as he or she wants without any real penalty.
With that introduction, I'd like to step up on my soapbox and drift away from my usual commentary on Life in England and instead discuss a publication I read recently. And by recently I mean just now. While I do have an opinion on, uh, basically everything it's rare that that opinion is radical or extreme. And in fact I find people who feel the need to state and debate radical opinions exhausting. However, I was, only just, so irked by a well-known company’s editorial that I felt the need to share my own view on what was said.
Something as trivial as the modeling industry is hardly a thing to get worked up at. But I did. Oops. Ok, let's be honest with ourselves. What girl, what woman even, hasn't wanted to be a model at some point in her life? And seriously, in this society encapsulated in trivialities which one of us, as females, wouldn't trade in her current life to be paid (and paid a LOT, mind you) JUST for her looks. Yes, it's incredibly shallow. Duh! But if we are completely honest....That said, I try not to look too often at magazines and fashion because it's just too depressing. We all know why. We make the comparison between ourselves and what we see in print and the gap in between those two is a wide, wide gap. And whenever there is a separation between what someone has and what someone wants, that's where disappointment fills in.
But on this one rare occasion I seemingly forgot myself and clicked on to the Ford Models website. Fall Fashion Trends in Europe looked too good to pass up....or something. And that's when I spotted a link to another write-up, the Ford Fashion Editorial's headline: Karolin Wolter Jumps to Ford+. And I thought to myself, What could that possibly mean?
My discovery was that the illustrious Ford Modeling Agency oh so graciously introduced a plus size “branch” off its main skinny-mini hiring trend. Trying to appeal to a wider audience (seriously, no pun intended). Ok, fair enough. No harm in that. Well, not unless the plus-size model looks like this:
Yes, this is Karolin, the PLUS SIZE model. Are you kidding me? She's skinnier than I am, I think!! If Karolin is plus size we are ALL doomed to a fat life.
But the best part? They blatantly announced that Karolin took “a few seasons off” from modeling at Ford. Clearly she lost control of her eating during that time and really bulked up. Frankly, I'm surprised, at her size, they didn't kick her gigantic rear end right back out the door. I mean, just look at her. An insult to the Ford name.
Are you kidding me??
Here's a link to the original article if you want to get as worked up as I did:
But it got more interesting. For some reason I was eager to continue perusing their site (one I normally do not have a problem with, I'll remind you) because they were introducing a whole handful of new faces. Emily Carter was one of them. Yes, the teeny-weeny kind.
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| There she is, Miss Emily Carter |
At 16 this New York native, still a high school student, is making more money than any of you do just because she's skinnier than you, has symmetrical features, flawless skin, and incredibly long hair. You got it. But in case those qualifications aren't limiting in their own right, the writers at Ford really wanted to rub it in your face:
“In many quarters of the modeling industry finding an American amidst a sea of Brazilians, Belgians, Estonians, and Poles can be challenging. It certainly can be done, but not without effort.”
That is the first line of Emily's Introduction Profile. Nice, huh?
Basically they're saying In Their Wise Opinion Americans are fat and ugly. The fact IS that over 60% of Americans are overweight or obese (I should know, I'm a Public Health major focusing on Obesity Risks and Prevention) but honestly I think there are plenty of beautiful people in my home country. And heck, plenty of girls starve themselves to look like the models they see in magazines and they're not THAT hard to find (but that's a whole different issue). Yeah, so not everyone's huge.
Yes, we all know how trivial the whole modeling enterprise is. It may be a multi-billion dollar industry but if it were to collapse tomorrow the world could and would function without it. Yes, everyone is aware of how it classifies people, ranks them, separates the “attractive” from the “unattractive”, something that in our heart of hearts we know shouldn't be done, yet we often accept it nonetheless (if not directly buy in to it). The point is, I was surprised by how carelessly Ford published this harsh reality. Normally fashion writers in general touch on these subjects with an ounce or two of politeness but in these two cases they clearly did away with the formality of manners. And oddly enough, of all things, this made me mad. That's really what this whole post boils down to: My Opinion.
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