{"id":25376,"date":"2016-09-30T09:39:56","date_gmt":"2016-09-30T14:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=25376"},"modified":"2016-09-08T13:25:22","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T18:25:22","slug":"contrasting-aesthetics-for-high-end-and-commercial-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/09\/30\/contrasting-aesthetics-for-high-end-and-commercial-models\/","title":{"rendered":"Contrasting Aesthetics for “High End” and “Commercial” Models"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Does the modeling industry fetishize whiteness?<\/p>\n

It turns out that the answer is: it does and it doesn’t.\u00a0\u00a0Ashley Mears, a model turned sociologist, found<\/a>\u00a0that high fashion models are overwhelmingly white, but that commercial modeling — the kind you see in catalogs for stores like Target, TJ Maxx, and JC Penney — is much more racially inclusive.\u00a0 Similarly, extreme thinness is more pronounced among high fashion models, whereas commercial models tend to have a few more inches around their waists.<\/p>\n

Mears says that the difference has to do with the contrasting purposes of the different modeling worlds.\u00a0 High fashion is supposed to be, by definition, unattainable.\u00a0 The women used in\u00a0high fashion, then, should be the most idealized, with bodies that are among the most difficult to attain and beauty that is the most rareified. \u00a0In this context, whiteness is a marker of elite status because white femininity, thanks to white supremacy in U.S. culture, is the most purely feminine femininity of all.<\/p>\n

In contrast, the commercial market is actually designed to sell clothes to everyday people.\u00a0 In this case, they want consumers to identify <\/em>with their models.\u00a0 Their models aren’t supposed to signify social distance, they’re supposed to be just like us.\u00a0 Using more diverse models and models who are less waif-like helps accomplish those goals.<\/p>\n

Screen shot from the JC Penney catalog<\/a>, thanks to reader Chelsea S.:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Originally posted in 2010.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. Does the modeling industry fetishize whiteness? It turns out that the answer is: it does and it doesn’t.\u00a0\u00a0Ashley Mears, a model turned sociologist, found\u00a0that high fashion models are overwhelmingly white, but that commercial modeling — the kind you see in catalogs for stores like Target, TJ Maxx, and JC Penney — is much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":69344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,244,225,2089,2103,129,23703,283,285,20063,1757],"class_list":["post-25376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-fat","tag-clothesfashion","tag-gender-beauty","tag-gender-bodies","tag-media","tag-marketing","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/2-1-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25376"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69346,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25376\/revisions\/69346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}