Smoothly--I do think you're not quite getting what's at stake here; I don't think Lula or anyone else is saying that it's not okay for models to be beautiful. Personally, I find Susan Bordo's work helpful. Her book on this basic subject is Unbearable Weight. But here's a more recent discussion, from the Chronicle Of Higher Education 12/19/2003.
In her earlier book she makes the case that while we "know" that 60-year old Cher can only look the way she does through plastic surgery and photoshopping, we don't completetly know this, because the images are more powerful; they override the knowledge. And, she argues this disconnect has consequences.
Here's the beginning of her more recent Chronicle article; if you want to read the whole thing, PM me, because you have to subcribe or pay to get it.
The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies
By SUSAN BORDO
In our Sunday news. With our morning coffee. On the bus, in the airport, at the checkout line. It may be a 5 a.m. addiction to the glittering promises of the infomercial: the latest in fat-dissolving pills, miracle hair restoration, makeup secrets of the stars. Or a glancing relationship while waiting at the dentist, trying to distract ourselves from the impending root canal. A teen magazine: tips on how to dress, how to wear your hair, how to make him want you. The endless commercials and advertisements that we believe we pay no attention to.
Constant, everywhere, no big deal. Like water in a goldfish bowl, barely noticed by its inhabitants. Or noticed, but dismissed: "eye candy" -- a harmless indulgence. They go down so easily, in and out, digested and forgotten.
Just pictures.
Or perhaps, more accurately, perceptual pedagogy: "How To Interpret Your Body 101." It's become a global requirement; eventually, everyone must enroll. Fiji is just one example. Until television was introduced in 1995, the islands had no reported cases of eating disorders. In 1998, three years after programs from the United States and Britain began broadcasting there, 62 percent of the girls surveyed reported dieting. The anthropologist Anne Becker was surprised by the change; she had thought that Fijian aesthetics, which favor voluptuous bodies, would "withstand" the influence of media images. Becker hadn't yet understood that we live in an empire of images and that there are no protective borders. . . . .
In my 1993 book Unbearable Weight, I described the postmodern body, increasingly fed on "fantasies of re-arranging, transforming, and correcting, limitless improvement and change, defying the historicity, the mortality, and, indeed, the very materiality of the body. In place of that materiality, we now have cultural plastic." |
