How female corpses became a fashion trend

[ismnotwasm]

For once it's not the image of Miley Cyrus herself that is controversial. It's the woman lying next to her. In a new advertising campaign for Marc Jacobs, Miley and two female models pose on a moonlit beach, Miley sitting up, staring moodily into the middle distance, a woman standing behind her, while another lies on the sand. This model isn't reclining happily, or curled up asleep; she is flat on her back, hair partially covering her face, with the stiff, sightless demeanour of a body in the morgue. A beautifully dressed one, of course.

This ad campaign was released a day after the latest cover of US magazine Entertainment Weekly, which shows the two stars of upcoming film Gone Girl lying on a gurney. Ben Affleck is fully dressed and alert, curled awkwardly around Rosamund Pike, who is in a bra and slip, pale, wide-eyed with surprise, very much dead. A tag is tied carefully around her toe.

This isn't the first time dead women have been used in fashion or entertainment, of course. Over the years female corpses, especially beautiful female corpses, have become a staple of fashion shoots, advertising campaigns and TV shows – with sexual and fatal violence against women a favourite of TV programmes looking to boost a waning audience or build a new one.

Last year Vice magazine decided to illustrate their Women in Fiction issue with a fashion shoot depicting a range of well-known writers in the throes of killing themselves, or trying to: Sylvia Plath kneeling in front of an oven; Virginia Woolf standing in a stream, clutching a large stone; Dorothy Parker bleeding heavily into a sink. The fashion credits were included in full, down to the pair of tights used as a noose.

http://mg.co.za/article/2014-01-10-how-female-corpses-became-a-fashion-trend

[BainsBane]

1. Talk about creepy

The trend really epitomizes misogyny.

I like Miley Cyrus less every time I read about her.

[intaglio]

2. There is a long history of the idealisation of dead women

L'Inconnue de la Seine

Ophelia - Sir John Everett Millais

[libodem]

3. How peculiar

Gross and dismal.

[marble falls]

4. Creepy is a mild description. Very shocking. I thought this stuff was over, once again DU has....

made me a bit less dumb. Very important post, thanks.

[geek tragedy]

5. The fashion industry is worse than porn in terms of misogyny, imo.

It broadcasts hatred of women and their bodies in a much broader spectrum, and literally kills with the obsession with skinniness leading to eating disorders. And it's managed in many cases by women, making it more insidious.

Just my take.

[BainsBane]

6. I agree

Well, mainstream porn. Not the rape porn and sick stuff about dismembering women.

[redqueen]

13. I disagree, strongly.

Mainstream porn shows women being treated like shit. Usually it's 'just' verbal insults and aggression. Often it's also slapping, choking, roughly grabbing body parts, or worse.

Again, this is mainstream stuff. The stuff on places like RedTube. Linked directly from that very popular site are the specialty sites which offer 'abuse' porn and worse.

[BainsBane]

14. Truthfully, I don't really know what constitutes mainstream porn

I suppose I was thinking of Playboy channel type stuff.

There is something profoundly misogynistic about insisting women become so thin they no longer have breasts or behinds and can no longer menstruate.

[redqueen]

17. Yeah, I agree the starved waif look is fucked up, unquestionably.

But I don't consider playboy to be mainstream porn anymore. Not for a long time.

[geek tragedy]

16. to be clear, my comment was not offered as any kind of defense of porn.

mainstream fashion industry gets away with more because it's considered acceptable, imo. porn wears its misogyny on its face, with a big nasty skull and crossbones poison label on it for anyone who cares to see it.

fashion is presumed to be mainstream and gets internalized by just about every girl and woman in society.

so, when 7-year old girls start being sexualized so clothing retailers can make bucks off of pre-teen thong underwear, it gets internalized on a mass scale and by audiences that porn doesn't reach.

one could argue that's the mainstreaming of porn bleeding over to fashion, myself i would say it's the common denominator of capitalism joined with the objectification of women and girls

[Tuesday Afternoon]

7. And, I really hate it about the fashion industry because I truly do love Haute Couture

from an Art/Craft/Artisan perspective.

Haute couture (/ˌoʊt kuːˈtjʊər/; French pronunciation: ​[ot ku'tyʁ]; French, for "high sewing" or "high dressmaking" or "high fashion&quot refers to the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing. Haute couture is fashion that is constructed by hand (without the use of sewing machines and sergers/overlockers)[citation needed] from start to finish, made from high quality, expensive, often unusual fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable seamstresses, often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. Couture translates literally from French as "dressmaking", but may also refer to fashion, sewing, or needlework[1] and is also used as a common abbreviation of haute couture and refers to the same thing in spirit.[2] Haute translates literally to "high". A haute couture garment is often made for a client, tailored specifically for the wearer’s measurements and body stance.[1] Considering the amount of time, money, and skill that is allotted to each completed piece, haute couture garments are also described as having no price tag - in other words, budget is not relevant. Each couture piece is not made to sell. Rather, they were designed and constructed for the runway, much like an art exhibition.

The term originally referred to Englishman Charles Frederick Worth's work, produced in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century.[3] In modern France, haute couture is a "protected name" that can be used only by firms that meet certain well-defined standards. However, the term is also used loosely to describe all high-fashion custom-fitted clothing, whether it is produced in Paris or in other fashion capitals such as London, Milan, New York or Tokyo.

more at link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haute_couture

[geek tragedy]

8. fashion celebrates artistry and imagination. Unfortunately, it views women as the canvass upon

which an artist works.

The idealized woman's physique resembles a clothes hanger.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

9. I know all this.

There is a whisper of change in the industry. I hold out hope and try to change it from within.

Did you see the post the other day in the lounge where the female truly was the (partially?) nude canvas upon which they were applying paint ...

[geek tragedy]

10. it's dawning on some of them that women of all kinds of shapes are

potential customers.

It literally changed my wife's life when she found a dress store that specializes in fashion forward design for all women--even has its own sizing system that rejects the ghettoization of women in larger sizes.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

11. Yes, our voice is growing louder

growing stronger every day ...

Thank you being you, geek tragedy

[ismnotwasm]

12. Best to develop your own funky style

The fashion industry is messed up. And they sell a lot of ugly shit, made by people under ugly circumstances.

No wonder they think dead women are art, or the implication of rape is art or any number of misogynist crap-- often developed by women.

[redqueen]

15. My perspective on this is completely different.

IMO most fashion is not misogynist, but most porn is.

This subthread has me smh.

[BainsBane]

18. Fashion itself is not misogynistic

but much of the industry is. The media representations that create not just unrealistic body images, but sickly unhealthy ones. Anything that sparks a trend portraying women as corpses is not pro-woman or even neutral toward women.

[redqueen]

19. It also isn't monolithic. The use of models who appear to be dead or beaten is not widespread.

It's interesting to see the entire fashion industry seemingly condemned as being more misogynist than porn.

In fashion there are a handful of ads using these images. In porn, there are millions, and they aren't used to sell clothes, they're used to arouse men and get them off.

[ismnotwasm]

20. Apples and oranges

Porn is inherently misoginistic, the fashion industry isn't. It's more a product of capitialiam.

[jakeXT]

22. I remember watching an episode of "The Day Before", where they had to work through the nights

I think it was an episode about Gaultier, but I could only find a Fendi/Lagerfeld one online

http://www.fendi.com/ii/en/the-magic-of-fendi/video-room/the-day-before


http://www.sundance.tv/series/the-day-before

[Warpy]

26. Yes, I'm fascinated by the process of producing it

but incredibly annoyed that only one body type is used, the 5'8-10" size 2 model who must live off cigarettes and lettuce to remain employed, later sized up for normal women upon whom it usually looks like hell.

It used to be that the high fashion, one of a kind items were sold to fashionably thin actresses and occasionally political wives for nominal prices because they'd sell the trend and eventually a stripped down version could be sold off the rack as ready-to-wear, keeping the designer in mink. Now the runway itself is selling the trends.

Those trends are designed only for starvelings. I love couture but I loathe fashion.

[oliviajames]

21. How female corpses became a fashion trend

Last edited Wed Jun 11, 2014, 02:51 AM - Edit history (2)

Excellent ladies acted like dead bodies are a publicizing crusade staple, including the new Marc Jacobs shoot featuring Miley Cyrus. Why does design fetishes the female body? For once its not the picture of Miley Cyrus herself that is disputable. It's the lady lying beside her. In another promoting battle for Marc Jacobs, Miley and two female models posture on a moonlit shore, Miley sitting up, gazing angrily into the center separation, a lady remaining behind her, while an alternate lies on the sand. This model isn't leaning back joyfully, or nestled into; she is level on her back, hair halfway blanket her face, with the firm, blind aura of a body in the funeral home. A delightfully dressed one, obviously.

This advertisement crusade was discharged a day after the most recent spread of US magazine Entertainment Weekly, which indicates the two stars of approaching film Gone Girl lying on a gurney. Ben Af fleck is completely dressed and alarm, twisted un adroitly around Rosamund Pike, who is in a bra and slip, pale, wide-peered toward with shock, truly dead. A label is tied deliberately around her toe.


Do individuals really need these pictures? Do they need brutality against ladies to be sexualized? There are some solid signs that they don't, from all the ladies who stand in opposition to these pictures (Vice magazine wound up apologizing and expelling their design spread from the web subsequently), to the news thing, distributed a week ago, which indicated that movies that pass the Bechdel test – which offer no less than two female characters, who have a discussion, about an option that is other than a man –outperform their partners in the cinema world. A year ago, of the 50 most elevated accumulating movies in the US, those that passed the Bechdel test earned $176m in the cinema world, while those that didn't arrived at the midpoint of $116m.
Still, there's a reason these pictures multiply. On the off chance that the sexualized generalization of a lady in our society is aloof and defenseless, the promoting business has worked out that, taken to its legitimate decision, there is nothing more charming than a dead you.
more info available here.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/jan/09/female-corpses-fashion-trend-marc-jacobs-miley-cyrus

[redqueen]

23. Thank you for posting this here.

And welcome to DU!

One issue, you may only share four paragraphs of the material with a link, otherwise you risk a copyright claim against DU, so you might want to edit the post lest it gets hidden.

[uppityperson]

24. Welcome to du. Please edit this to 3-4 paragraphs per copyright rule. Thank you.

[intaglio]

25. It's been going on a long time

Obviously there is John Everett Millais' "Ophellia" and there was Victorian Post Mortem Photographs but most creepily, have you ever heard of L'Inconnu de la Seine? She was the corpse of a young woman pulled from the Seine in about 1880. The pathologist found her face so attractive he made a death mask and this had many casts taken from it which became popular conversation pieces.

Oh, and if you ever took a first aid course it is likely you practiced CPR on a Ressusci Annie - who has the face of L'Inconnu de la Seine

[ismnotwasm]

27. Annie annie are you ok?

I'm ACLS certified.

I didn't know that-- we have new practice mannequins now, but they still have semblance of faces----that is a fascinating piece of history.