Adventures in the land of Otilee

Painted babies – children setting the standard of beauty for women

I apologize in advance for this extremely long blog post but this is subject I’ve been really passionate about for a long time. During the course of my BA Arts (Design) degree as well as my Honours year where the focus of my thesis was art direction and styling for fashion photography and advertising; I wrote many papers on the subject of ethics in the fashion industry (probably somewhat dated now…though if anyone is interested in reading them I’d be happy to upload them supply link – let me know!).

There have been one or two instances throughout the very very short course of my career so far where I’ve shot a model under the age of 16 (found out afterward) to market fashion to women and this is something I regret not taking more of a firm stance upon at the time.  Something I’m determined to maintain a strong stance on from here on in.

From the standpoint of someone who spends many hours in post production editing images to the standard expected by the industry – a young face has a lot less ‘work’ to do then an older one.  So from this perspective I can play devil’s advocate and say that the decision to use a younger model obviously reduces production costs in this way (among other reasons I’m sure).

However, where do you / should you draw the line between decisions based on the bottom line and decisions that are evenly balanced with ethics! Something I believe shouldn’t be too hard or much more work and something I strongly believe this industry should take more responsibility for.  I have encountered many older models with amazing skin and amazing figures so I think this is not, and should not be an elimination or casting process that includes anyone not of appropriate age (to the brief) as a requirement. Clearly, having said that if the target demographic is teenage girls then this is absolutely fine and more then appropriate.

From an advertising / marketing perspective my point is that these girls are representing women of career age and therefore adult women -  i.e. they can afford to buy the products and can therefore theoretically work to pay for them. Last time I checked, you don’t graduate high school until your 17… at least in Australia. Then even then you’re probably 18 before you actually get a job (given end of year holidays etc) or older if you go to Uni (which makes you 21 when you graduate if you do a basic 3 year degree)… So unless you’re a trust fund baby, or hell bent on racking up credit card debt… if you’re under 21 you sure as shit aint the target market so why are we using 14 year old girls to sell these products?

Even if the emphasis is taken off age and the models ARE older -  the point is they are expected to look younger (and thus the weight issue then enters the equation) – it’s easy for a 14 year old to have no hips – but a 16 or 18 year old has to try that little bit harder to keep those pesky womanly curves at bay…. that puberty is a bitch isn’t she?

Personally, and in my humble opinion… I prefer to work with a model that can emote based on life experience over someone that is deemed ‘perfectly beautiful’. ‘ Interesting’ is way cooler then ‘perfectly beautiful’, but again… that’s just my opinion and there is no reason in hell you can’t find both in a grown women.

One of my favourite models Coco Rocha posted an extremely well written blog post on the topic in response to recent media criticism of her during New York fashion week. Clearly my above-mentioned comments are in reference to still photography, however the same sentiment, I believe applies to all aspects of fashion marketing (including catwalk, as was the focus of Coco’s post).

I understand that my opinions may not sit well with some but I feel its important to open dialogue. I’m certainly not discounting the many positive steps forward in this area that are already taking place… but we need to keep the ball rolling. As far as I’m concerned this is a case of profits over people and last time I checked this society was sitting around the top of Maslow’s hierarchy… so surely we can sacrifice a few bucks as a society to do the right thing?

*rant over… steps down off soap box*