YOUR QUALITATIVE LOOK!
HOW DO FASHION AND BEAUTY MAGAZINES WORK?.... EDS: Holly Connolly: Cultures Major Xin Zhan: Societies Major Laura Valín Peñalba: Affiliate Media & Film
FASHION POLICE Holly Connolly
Fashion magazines are often derided, yet they are extraordinarily successful. The first fashion magazine ‘Mercure de France’ was launched in 1672 (Joan DeJean, 2005) and they continue to thrive in an age where print media is flagging. I intend to engage with some of the contradictions of fashion and beauty magazines by using a qualitative approach to analyse a selection of fashion magazines, to understand why and how they work. I will do this by looking at fashion magazines as objects, and conducting brief informal interviews. The success of fashion magazine surely partly stems from the success of fashion itself. Fashion is often dis-
missed as a flimsy pursuit, an assessment which its detractors qualify by pointing to its ephemeral nature, but fashion and dress are integral to how we interact with each other. They are also integral to participation in society. You can’t just ‘opt out’ of wearing clothes, and they are intrinsic to how we portray ourselves to others. Clothes enable us to make statements, and how these statements are received is context dependent. Fashion and clothes are a kind of conflation of economic and cultural capital. They work on multiple levels, enabling the wearer to display ‘good’ taste, through their ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ of what looks ‘good’, and
ER, EST
also, (especially through luxury brands) to display economic capital (a Louis Vuitton bag for instance). As much as clothes enable us to inhabit specific roles, they also allow us to establish broader identities. This is maybe most evident in terms of gendered dressing and dressing for ‘the normative’ (Entwhistle, J. 2000). We associate clothes closely with the identity of the wearer, a kind of visual expression of identity, and we make assumptions around this. As well as this, fashion does operate as a kind of language, when we consider too the ‘fashion disasters’ aspect, ‘One can have a fine sense of the nuances of language without knowing what one wants to say.’ (Clarke and Miller). Its very difficult to zero in on one concrete theory of fashion, Fine & Leopold consider it a double ended relationship
HYPERBOLE EXCITEMENT
between consumption and production (1993). Part of what is so interesting about fashion, is the tension between creativity and conformity (Simmel, 1997). Despite often being discussed in terms of ‘creativity’ and ‘uniqueness’, fashion is just as much about understanding the parameters to conform into. As Simmel, demonstrates, fashion is a form of a social relationship that allows those who wish to conform to the norm to do so, while also enabling some to be ‘individualistic’ by deviating from this norm. He argues that people who claim to be outside fashion, or ‘unfashionable’ people, rather than genuinely being outside the game, are simply engaging in an inverse form of imitation (Ritzer, 2007). In trying to be outside fashion they form a new group very much in dialectic with the fashionable, they are being distinct in response to the ‘norm’ (Clarke and Miller). This ties in to Bourdieu’s theory of culture as a ‘game that can not be quit’, we could quite easily substitute culture here for clothes/fashion. Furthermore Simmel declared that fashion was a means of control (Simmel, 1997) (and he highlighted this by the fact that ‘second-class citizens’ (women and the middle classes) subscribed the most to it.) This directly parallels to Bourdieu’s theory of culture. As well as this, arguably fashion acts as a kind of taste guide, many individuals don’t know what their taste is outside ‘various social and institutional supports’ (Clarke and Miller), and fashion serves as a way to navigate the choice we have available to us.
PRESENT AND FUTURE TENSE
A SENSE CREATED THAT THINGS ARE BEING CONSTANTLY RENEWED OR PRODUCED
The language used in fashion magazines can tell us a lot about why fashion magazines work. Once you begin to wade into fashion and dressing, you can quickly find yourself beset by contradictions. Fashion works in dialectic with the ‘unfashionable’, for something to be fashionable its implicit that it will become unfashionable. Intrinsic to the success of fashion is the fact that its always seeking the next big thing. Part of what drives it, and keeps it profitable, is the fact that it moves fast and has a fixation on newness, meaning a constant need for things to be produced. This means that fashion is constantly changing and evolving, and this sense of progression is something enforced by the language
used. There is an emphasis on newness, and the current. Present and future tenses are used in abundance, ‘new’, ‘now’ and ‘current’, all feature extremely frequently, and past is used only to relegate something to being undesirable, eg ‘last’ season. There is also a sense of renewing built, and renewal is portrayed as the ideal state of being, news is conveyed as an ‘update’, and in installments ‘part one revealed’ and the notion of ‘trading in’ is used frequently. The adjectives used throughout tend to be hyperbolic, creating a sense that what is being presented is the apex of what is currently available. Words tend to end in ‘est’ ‘er’, or be prefixed with ‘most’, and certain words, such as ‘iconic’ and ‘unbelievable’ feature very prominently. As well as
GIRL GANG MENTALITY, REINFORCED BY RHETORICALLY ASKING OPINIONS
this, the notion of fashion as a social practice is tapped into, a clubbish, gangish language is used, words like ‘us’, feature frequently, and the magazine writers themselves tend to be referred to as a ‘team’. There is an increasing sense that you are part of a club, which emulates how fashion functions. Those who are ‘in the know’ dressing for each other. Ultimately what is so interesting about the language used in fashion magazines is the fact that it constructs a language version of why fashion is so effective. The drive for newness, the focus on creating a group or community, and the hyperbole, which builds a sense that ‘the best’ object is within reach, are all just as much a part of fashion as of the language of fashion magazines.
??? ??? ??? ???
??? ???
???
SENSE OF BEING ORDERED AROUND A GANG, BUT AN EXCLUSIVE ONE
???
THE HOTLIST Holly Connolly
Fashion magazines are heavy with branded images and advertisements. Branding is one of the cornerstones of fashion. It is a truism that effective branding can sell anything, usually at a vastly inflated price, and that when paying for a branded item you’re mostly paying for the brand. Which Baudrillard demonstrates with his ‘sign value’, in that it is wildly independent of actual value of the commodity. Merda d’Artista, by Piero Manzoni is interesting here: something can be imbued with value way beyond its material properties. Brands function by signs and meanings taking precedence over things, the label becomes more important than any clothing it is affixed to, and Chris Brewaed argues this ultimately represents the triumph of label over design (Edwards, 2010). But despite this being widely acknowledged, and countless ‘exposes’ being done on the real price of branded goods and the exploitation involved in fashion production (Edwards, 2010), and the fact that most people are aware that both the workers and consumers are exploited, they don’t show any sign of waning. Branding embodies the tension between aesthetic (quality of design) and commerce (value a brand can add regardless of merits of aesthetics). Branding is a really interesting play upon the notion of value.
We inherently think of things which are only produced once as more valuable. Yet branding holds its value precisely by conveying the awareness that it is one of many exact copies, and is replicable. Branding works on two levels, the obvious ‘name’ displayed on goods, such as a nike tick, a versace logo, and then the more subtle version used by designers. The difficulty of designers differentiating their goods from imitators is a good example of this (high street shops often encounter difficulties for allegedly copying catwalk designers). Here theres a parallel with the art world (Perry, 2013), in that the star artists functions in a similar way to the star designer, the pieces must be recognisable as the artists to be desirable. To try and build a sense of why branding is effective at an individual level, I removed the branding from several popular items (some considered a bit ‘past their sell by date’) and conducted a series of informal conversations focusing on the images. The consensus was that the unbranded versions were decidedly less desirable, ‘cheaper’, ‘a bit wrong’. Two different participants raised the point that if a fake version of the item had been presented, but with the correct branding, they would
be more inclined to want it, which speaks to the power of brand over product. Branding often taps into the irrational, if ‘rational shopping’ foregrounds value for money and ‘sensible styling’, branding can be totally at odds with this. This is a study that doesn’t lend itself to cut and dry conclusions, a large part of why the unbranded goods appear as problematic could be because we are simply more used to seeing their branded counterparts, the version that isn’t this then is a disruption to the norm, and so we think worse of it.There is no one concrete reason why branding is so effective, and the ongoing success of branding raises lots of interesting questions, a lot of them closely linked to Bourdieau’s notions on art. What does it mean to have an original versus a copy (refer to notes), what certain brands say about their owner (and thus what impression are you trying to create through ownership of something), and the value we place on people through their ownership of things. The most successful branded products (the ipod is probably the best example) embody ‘an image, an identity and a lifestyle’ (Edwards, 2010). Magazines work by tapping into this, propogating the most desirable brands.
What is Beauty?.. Laura Valín Peñalba
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or so we are told. The concepts of beauty and perfection are exploited and promoted through mass media, and are sold to us in different ways depending on our gender, culture, and even time period. However, it seems difficult to determine how magazines establish the current standards of beauty. To answer this question, first we must analyze how beauty itself came to be. According to Bordieu’s theory, we make judgments on beauty based on the concept of “distinction”, which includes a series of cultural factors such as education, class, and socio-economical status. Though there seems to be certain patterns in beauty that appear in every culture or historical period (such as the symmetry of the face or a pleasant body shape), many differences can be found among cultures and ethnicities. Access to education, globalization, and the particularities of each society make people more prone to
like a certain type of face or body. Genetics also play a major role in aesthetics and beauty. Drawing from Darwin’s theory (“the survival of the fittest”), several investigations have found that our perceptions of beauty have a “primal” component, a gene that is awakened when we find a compatible match. A research conducted by the University of Colorado concluded that “we tend to be attracted to people who are similar to us in one way or another. It’s a phenomenon known as assortative mating. Assortative mating can be seen across traits like race, age, facial characteristics and body type, all of which have a genetic basis.” Clive Bell’s investigations suggest that beauty is a reaction of the senses that triggers a chemical ‘reward’ in the brain, which activates a specific region that evaluates aesthetics. This “chemical
choice” of the brain dates back to our earliest ancestors, who chose their partners and shaped their perceptions of beauty based on those individuals who appeared to be more suitable mates for reproduction. For women, these standards included having wide hips in order to give birth to as many children as possible, and a broad, muscular figure for men in order to be able to provide food for their families, and therefore survive. Though these perceptions have changed a lot over the centuries, we still seem to be genetically attracted to those individuals who stand a better chance at survival. Clive Bell explains how there are mechanisms in our brain that are triggered by visual stimuli and determine whether or not we consider a person (or an object) as beautiful. The “beauty” gene, the gene that assesses beauty, can take within 8 to 32 seconds to awaken and evaluate a person’s
appearance after seeing them for the first time. Some scholars argue that assortative mating is common because of population stratification. Individuals tend to find similar partners, according to ethnic, racial or socioeconomic factors. The European Society of Human Genetics examined different genes that play a key role in immune response and reproductive success and found out individuals were more likely to choose a mate with a similar pack of genes, or diverse/complimentary pack of genes in case this meant an evolutionary advantage, which was linked to successful reproduction. For instance, when asked which traits made a man beautiful, Northern people tended to choose “blond hair”, “small bright eyes”, “square jaw” and “muscular body type”, as opposed to African men, who would go for “dark skin”, “brown eyes”, and “lean physical appearance”. In the same vein, Northern cultures considered a woman more beautiful if she had “blonde hair”, “pale skin” and “narrow hips”, while the ideal African woman had “darker skin and full lips”, “bigger hips and breasts”, and was more “petite in size”. Again, genetics and geographical location played a relevant role in beauty standards. Traditionally, people who lived in the Northern regions of Europe had to endure colder temperatures, and food was often scarce, so the number of children per
dict future trends. Though we no longer need to consider beauty in terms of survival, it is a subjective decision in which our genes, our brain, and our cultural heritage participate. In the end, beauty is indeed in the eyes of the beholder, but also in their genes, brain and culture.
For Ancient Egyptians, the concept of beauty included tanned skin and a slim figure. Women or men with lighter skin (golden) were associated with a higher class and a more beautiful appearance. There were two adjectives that were used to describe beautiful things, or beautiful people, consisting of “n” and “nfr”. These terms meant ‘youth’, in some way or another. For example, a young woman referred to as nfrwt is sometimes described as “never having been opened in childbirth”. Nfrw, the masculine version of the same word, is found in several instances when it clearly refers to young men or young people. Egyptians tended to be short and petite in size, and while women often sported long dark hair with golden beads, men, especially those who belonged to the upper echelons, shaved their heads, especially to appear younger. Both women and men darkened their eyes with kohl and used a light-green colored product for their lips. In Ancient Greece, the concept of beauty was radically opposite to the one in Ancient Egypt. Taller in size, Greeks praised symmetry as the highest form of beauty. Goddess were depicted as curvy women with small breasts and wide hips to bear children, while gods often sported long curly beards (symbol of their manhood), and had quite a broad, athletic figure.
The Middle Ages kept some of the aesthetics that were common in Ancient Greek. The symmetry of the face remained a capital aspect in beauty, as well as wide hips and a curvy silhouette for women. The ideal beauty of this time had a curvaceous body and a pale skin. Women usually cut themselves to get a paler look, and plucked their eyebrows to make their foreheads seem higher. In Italy, blonde hair was a sign of beauty and high class, so women used onions to dye it. With Queen Elisabeth (16th century), women started using lavish, pompous dresses, a tradition that lasted for centuries, until the Victorian period. As for men, unlike the usual standards in Ancient Greek, a handsome man had to inspire youth (long hair, no beard, pale skin). Long noses in Europe also seemed to be a sign of high class.
In 1920, women started to cut their hair into a bob, which became very fashionable at the time. For the first time, short hair was associated with a desirable look for women. Moustaches became common among men, who were also required to have a more athletic figure in order to fit the standards of beauty. The use of heavy make-up went back into fashion for women, and red lipstick and eyepencils became massproduced items. Though the ideal beauty was still a curvaceous beauty, women had a slimmer figure and bigger breasts than in other periods.
While the standards of beauty remained the same in this era, women advocated a modest and natural look with less look of cosmetic and plain dresses. Men abandoned long hair and aimed for more refined styles with sideburns and outlandish wigs.
TodayIn 1940, a tanned skin became a symbol of high class, and women aimed for a more feminine look (long hair, bright eyes, blonde hair, full lips, big breasts), while men advocated for masculinity (stubble beard, very athletic figure, tanned skin).From 1960 on, skinnier women (smaller breasts, waist, and hips) became the standard of beauty. Heavy make-up went back into fashion, especially from 1980.
ARE YOU A 1 OR A 10? Xin Zhan
Dove set up a survey in which women were given the choice of walking through a door marked ‘Beautiful’ or one marked ‘Average’, giving women an opportunity to declare their feelings about their own looks. The company put up signs above doors to public buildings around the world, in Shanghai, San Francisco, London, Sao Paulo and Delhi. The women’s choices were filmed. Of women surveyed about beauty, 80% believed there was something beautiful about themselves but 96% declared that they would not consider themselves to be beautiful. Additionally, 78% of women declared that they are not completely confident in their own beauty (Women’s Health, 2015). Of the women surveyed by Dove (2004), 47% of them considered themselves to be too heavy. Since women are widely dissatisfied with their physical appearances, the demand for cosmetic surgeries has increased sharply in the recent years. If beauty is in the eye of beholder, why there are huge similarities in terms of what features are considered beautiful? It seems that the definition of beauty has narrowed to relate only to physical appearance and, specifically, physical attractiveness. Women appear to compare themselves to this ideal and aspire to it. When they fail to achieve their ideal, they do not consider themselves to be beautiful.
DYING TO BE BEAUTIFUL...
Xin Zhan The NYC Girls Project has undertaken studies which demonstrate that 60% of girls in USA consider their own bodies in comparison to those of models and 48% of them would very much like to be as thin as those fashion models. When this self-criticism is taken to extremes it may contribute to the large number of cases of anorexia and bulimia. Ten million women suffer from an eating disorder in their lifetimes. This self-perception may also contribute to the incidence of deaths from eating disorders; of all sufferers, 7.9% die according to CNN and the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (Lin, 2014).This raises questions about why the fashion industry persists in promoting models who are so thin. Fox News interviewed David Zyla, who stated that models remain thin because of artistic vision which dictates that “Models... are typically slim and androgynous so that audiences are not distracted [from the clothing] by a curvy hip or full bosom.” Huffington Post interviewed a model who has worked in the standard and plus-sized fashion industries, Kate Dillon, and she stated, “You want it to be about the clothes, so it’s customary that you want the model to disappear. A lot of times they try to asexualize [her] to a hanger.” Body image in the fashion industry is often debated and
the body shape and size of the models shown above are typical. These models are often over 5’9” in height and their body mass index (BMI) is often extremely and sometimes dangerously low. In 2006, the model, Luisel Ramos, died during Montevideo Fashion Week as a result of anorexia which led to heart failure. Less than six months later her sister, Eliana Ramos, who was also a model, died and it is alleged that her death was caused by the same problem. This propelled the controversy over weight into the spotlight. The concept of beauty is now recognised and promoted through the mass media which speaks to women globally on a daily basis, through visual imagery. The mass media has been creating ideals of beauty, this impacts on self-esteem and feelings of self-worth, leading women, especially young women who are more influenced by images from popular culture, to feel unhappy.
Korean Plastic Surgery Trends... Xin Zhan Korea (Koreaboo, 2015)Double eyelid surgeryIn Korea, one of the most popular surgeries is double eyelid surgery in order to remove “monolid” and achieve a “double eyelid” (as illustrated below). “Monolid” refers to when someone has a single eyelid without a crease. This is common amongst Asian people and can be removed with surgery. The surgery relies on the removal or repositioning of excess tissue. It is now estimated that 20% of women in Seoul have had this procedure, increasing pressure on those who haven’t.
V-line jaw reduction In Korea, a ‘V’-shaped jaw is the most desirable face shape which includes a slender jawline and pointed chin. Surgery to alter appearance in line with this desirable look involves shaving excess mandible off the jaw after making an incision in the mouth.
Epicanthoplasty (eye-widening surgery) Eye-widening surgery is often done at the same time as “monolid” removal and makes the eyes look larger by removal of “epicanthal folds” to soften the corners of the eye and slicing the corners of the eyelids. Apparently, 8090% of patients who have surgery to remove “monolid” also have this eyewidening procedure carried out.
Forehead AugmentationForehead augmentation involves the insertion of an implant beneath the skin on the forehead to smooth and round off a patient’s forehead. The procedure takes only an hour.
Rhinoplasty (nose jobs)In the West, rhinoplasty is usually carried out to reduce the size of the nose, whereas in Korea, individuals generally wish to increase the prominence of the bridge of their nose. This feature is considered attractive in Korea. The procedure relies on removal of cartilage from the ribs or ears and replacement in the nose to build it up.
The Dominance of American culture in Plastic Surgery in South KoreaBlepharoplasty, or double eyelid surgery (past, 2016) is the most usual surgery performed in Korea. This is also the case worldwide. In 2014, 1.43 million people had the procedure performed according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Even one former Korean president had the procedure carried out whilst in office. The popularity of double eyelid surgery has come about as a result of a number of influences according to historians and critics.David Palumbo-Liu argues, in his book “Asian American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier”S, that Japanese and Korean women began to
choose double eyelid surgery after World War II in order for them to fit in with Western culture better. He argues that this demonstrated the dominance of white America and the West. Eugenia Kaw, an ethnographer, carried out a study in 1993 in which she studied 11 Asian American women who lived in the area of San Francisco Bay and who had undergone cosmetic surgery. She concluded that they had done so to “escape persisting racial prejudice that correlates their stereotyped genetic physical features (‘small, slanty’ eyes and a ‘flat’ nose) with negative behavioral characteristics, such as passivity, dullness, and a lack of sociability.” However, in the perspectives
of neuroscience, Prof Semir Zeki stated that there are universal standards of beauty. His experiment showed that when human experienced the beautiful, there was a correlate activity in the medial orbito-frontal cortex (Australasianscience.com. au, 2016). There might be subtle differences which make people prefer beauty of their own race. However, there is a minimal standard which has to be satisfied, for a face to be considered beautiful. This could suggest that the dominance of the American media is homogenising standards of beauty, and breaking down beauty as a structure.
References... American Society of Plastic Surgeons, (2014). 2014 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report. ASPA National Clearinghouse of Plastic Surgery Procedural Statistics. Australasianscience.com.au, (2016). Brain of the beholder: The neuroscience of beauty | Australasian Science Magazine. [online] Available at: http://www.australasianscience.com.au/ article/issue-june-2014/brain-beholder-neuroscience- beauty.html [Accessed 25 Feb. 2016]. BBC News, (2016). Cosmetic surgery ops on the rise - BBC News. [online] Available at: http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35501487 [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016]. BBC, (2013). Grayson Perry: Playing to the Gallery: 2013, The Reith Lectures - BBC Radio 4. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03969vt [Accessed 17 Feb. 2016]. Bell, C. (2012). Art. Charleston, SC: [CreateSpace]. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. DeJean, J. (2005). The essence of style. New York: Free Press. Dove, (2004). The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report. Finding of the Global Study on Women, Beauty and Well-Being. Edwards, T. (2011). Fashion in focus. London: Routledge. Entwistle, J. (2000). The fashioned body. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fine, B. and Leopold, E. (1993). The world of consumption. London: Routledge. Gaukroger, S. (2012). Objectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Internetlooks.com, (2016). Human Differentiation: Evolution of Racial Characteristics. [online] Available at: http://www.internetlooks.com/humandifferentiation.html [Accessed 9 Feb. 2016]. Koreaboo, (2015). 8 Most Popular Plastic Surgery Procedures In Korea. [online] Available at: http://www.koreaboo.com/spotlight/8-most-popular-plastic-surgery-procedures-in-korea/ [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016].Lin, V. (2014). Dying to Be Beautiful. University Wire.Mail Online, (2015). Women are getting plastic surgery to look like their edited selfies. [online] Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2943347/ The-rise-Instagram-filter- surgery-women-requesting-cosmetic-procedures-make-look-likeflawlessly-edited- selfies.html#ixzz3zfMriOc8 [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016].Mic, (2015). The Disturbing Effect Our Beauty Standards Have on Women Across the World. [online] Available at: http:// mic.com/articles/111228/how-western-beauty-ideals-are-hurting- women-across-the-globe#. ouKk9kUNp [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016]. Past, T. (2016). The most popular plastic surgery operation in South Korea has a controversial past. [online] Business Insider. Available at: http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-most-popularplastic-surgery-in-korea-2015-10 [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016].
Ritzer, G. and Goodman, D. (2008). Modern sociological theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Simmel, G. (1997). The Philosophy of Fashion in D. Frisby and M. Featherstone Eds. Simmel on Culture. London: Sage Slideshare.net, (2011). History of What Society Viewed as Women Beauty. [online] Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/emilypeng1/history-of-what-society-viewed-as-women-beauty- 8005550 [Accessed 28 Feb. 2016]. Theatlasofbeauty.com, (2015). -The Atlas of Beauty-. [online] Available at: http://theatlasofbeauty. com/ [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016]. Thejakartapost.com, (2016). China’s plastic surgery industry set to become world’s 3rd largest. [online] Available at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/11/24/chinas-plastic-surgeryindustry-set-become-worlds-3rd-largest.html [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016]. Touregypt.net, (2016). Tour Egypt :: The Ancient Egyptian Concept of Beauty. [online] Available at: http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/beauty.htm [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016].