Pretty Privilege In the Industry
When you hear the word “model” what do you immediately think of? The terms that almost automatically come into my mind are “tall” “skinny” and “beautiful”, but who determines what is beautiful? It is important for me to emphasis again and again that beauty is subjective: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” what I consider beautiful might not be what you consider beautiful. But this is where society comes in, and sets these standards or rules on what is or isn’t beautiful. Beauty standards are created and maintained by the what we consume as a society. These are the standards we see in the media, the covers of magazines, on the runway, and on billboards. For decades the standard of beauty was white, skinny, and cisgendered. Individuals who embodied this standard are often widely celebrated and most definitely benefit from pretty privilege. This is most easily observed in the modeling industry. I will break this down in 3 different ways using the modeling industry 1. Race 2. Gender 3. Weight these characteristics will help show you how beauty standards are forever changing and how they affect our perceptions of who we deem attractive thus, who is “privileged”.
1. POC in the modeling indsutry
You may recognize the woman on the right if you have any knowledge of the modeling industry, Naomi Campbell is a Black supermodel who rose to fame in the late 80s.So why does race matter if this is about beauty capital? Well if we go back in time and analyze what society deemed beautiful in the 19th century, we can easily see that white women were the face of beauty. Modeling and the fashion industry were the biggest influence in the standard of beauty at one point, when you flipped through magazines or analyzed runway shows the roster of models participated often mirror the same size, stature and race, White, skinny and tall women have always been the status quo for these industries.This has a direct correlation on who society deems “pretty”, there was no place for POC to even be considered apart of the conversation until they were given a chance to participate in the modeling and fashion industry. Even once they got their foot in the door, in 2019 only 36.1 percent of the models walking the prominent New York Fashion week were POC.
2. Gender roles in the Modeling Industry
In today’s society we see a rise in the fight against gender roles and binary labels. As the representation and exposure of race does, gender can too influences our view on what we deem as attractive. As we know the fashion industry and media platforms follow whats “hot”, “new”, and “trendy”. Though gender fluidity and an individual expressing themselves should never be described as any of those terms, when facing reality we know representation is not always done genuinely, though one company may be the blueprint and start this way, other companies simply follow after seeing their success. When Fani Segerman discusses gender within the modeling industry in Sian Ferguson’s Teenvogue article “The Importance of Non-Binary Models in the Fashion Industry” Segerman notes “Sometimes, potential clients want to seem progressive by including a non-binary individual and then patting themselves on the back,” “People might want to cash in on it as a trend.” This creates a counterproductive issue that is very prominent amongst the fashion industry, when Ferguson further dives into the lack of BIPOC non-binary models they note “The fashion world is no stranger when it comes to challenging gender roles, but representation of androgynous and gender non-conforming models are limited. Googling ‘androgynous models’ turns up plenty of pictures of white, thin, conventionally-attractive people with sharp cheekbones — and not much else.” Again, the lack of representation creates a significant mold for who we deem as attractive. This also plays into the way we find straight men like Harry Styles or Brad Pitt in woman’s clothing as sexy and or strong but, when an actual queer or non binary person participates in these acts they face hate and criticism. Why is it okay for binary people to “play dress up” with others identities? It’s attractive when a “sexy” straight man does it and he’s dubbed as “in touch with his sexuality” but frowned upon when a queer and or non-binary person does it they are considered “going through a phase.” The intersectionality of this issue can definitely be seen as a double standard but, it is just as much roped into the pretty privilege aspect due to the ideals of these identities being the “hot new” thing.
3. Body Inclusivity in the Modeling Industry
Circling back to the question I asked at the beginning of this blog post “When you hear the word “model” what do you immediately think of?” Were your answers the same? Has the information i’ve provided so far changed your perception on how and why you think this way? A word that is almost synchronous to “model” is thin. Just a couple decades ago the model industry was infamous for its popular 90’s look “Heroin chic”. When Edward Helmore discusses this fashion fad in his Guardian article “'Heroin chic’ and the tangled legacy of photographer Davide Sorrenti” he explains how the look was ultimately “glamourising super-skinny, strung-out models.” Models extremely stick thin malnourished look due to drug use (or not) was all the rave wherever fashion was available and promoted. Addressing the lack of body inclusivity in the modeling industry has been long over due, because once again this is a factor amongst what we deem attractive. Though, it is no competition I would argue fat phobia is a bigger issue within the modeling industry than racism is. Seeing a bigger or “fat” model (another term is so very subjective especially in an industry where drug addiction type skinny is praised) was almost taboo. The lack of representation and marketing towards this group of individuals especially “fat” women, set the beauty standard that skinny=pretty. But like we’ve seen before, this standard shifts and evolves to where the new trend today is to represent different body types but of course theres a catch. In Gianluca Russo’s nylon piece “Dismantling The Acceptable Plus Body and Anti Fatness within the Fat Community” Russo highlights plus size models are defined by being “…not too fat where it made thin people uncomfortable, but just fat enough where bodies could still be sexualized and viewed as attractive. In and of itself, this new plus-size ideal created a divide that largely stands today of women above and below a size 22/24, erasing those of higher sizes — commonly referred to as superfats and infinifats — from the conversation.” This is very relevant conversation today, when you think of the ideal body type of the mid 2000’s what and who do you think of? Perhaps, a tiny waist, a voluptuous behind, Kim Kardashian? This body size would very well be considered “plus size” back in the 90’s but today it is what is sought after though it can often be unrealistic just like the heroin chic look.
These were 3 very general sub genres of features we perceive and dub attractive, as well as the most popular features the modeling industry and media like to define and tweak to the version of “pretty” they want to feed to the masses. Alhough I can go more in depth on how this ‘criteria’ affects almost every workspace, this is just an overview on an inustry that manipulates how we percieve others beauty and of how we utilize these characteristics from what we consume, to place value and ‘privilege’ upon others.
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