A lot of people are saying these parody ads by Jes Sachse have "shock value." I think that says something about how aggressively hidden "abnormal" bodies are in many cultures especially in the US and UK. The more "abnormal" you are the more pressure there is for you to cover up ... lest you subject people to something "different" ... and then when no one sees anything different it just makes anyone outside of the norm even more "shocking." It's a vicious cycle.
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But come on think about it, the bodies used in advertising for women are ALWAYS "out of the norm" just in a different way than Jess. Aren't we used to seeing women in ads who don’t look like the majority of people I see on a daily basis. She’s no more far from the norm than your average supermodel. It’s refreshing, though, to see someone who is beautiful in a different way from that old barbie mold we normally see. And if we just didn't ignore and hide the bodies of people who look different we could make them not be shocking. That fact that supermodels don't shock us is evidence of this.
My first though on look at this was "I’m totally jealous of her skinny legs!" I struggled with anorexia for years and it is hard for me not to start wishing and crying since I will never have legs shaped like that. When I look at ads I take them as a prescription for what I should be and a reminder of what I'm not. My reactions aren’t normal, but I think they are a magnified version of what many women feel. I have tried to make my body in to something it’s just not– it would be like Jess trying to diet herself into a longer torso. It just doesn’t make any sense. But every image is like a blueprint for me. "Your body should look like this!"
The only women who I see in ads who are shaped like me are "ghetto whores" featured in rap videos. There is a "role" for women with my body type. The role is whore as far as I can tell. I'm certian most of you may have some role that you feel is assigned to your body. What is it? Do you like it? Or are you like Jess? Those of us who sometimes see any refection ourselves in media... no matter how crude or distorted are lucky. (Lucky feels like the wrong word... maybe privileged?)
For Jess, there are no roles in media… It's more like total invisibility. So, in this photo-shoot she made her own! And it works. She owns that hipster look. She’s hot. I'm left thinking. "Why can't this be real?"
It makes me want to do my own photo-shoots putting the "wrong" kinds of bodies in the "wrong" places. I would put skinny white waifs in rap videos. I would put fat women in Victoria’s secret. I would put old women with gray hair… everywhere. I would put curvaceous black girls and Latina’s in elegant black and white diamond ads. I’ve make Jess my super model. Why not? Why can't we have this? I really like looking at fashion on all kind of bodies. I like looking at people who look like me and people who don't.
I would be so much more in to fashion, if the world reflected more women and didn’t box us in and type cast us or worse yet forget that we exist.
Jess is a hipster in this ad and so am I to day in my hipster outfit– real hipsters can look like all kinds of people. They aren’t boxed in by race, body, height, shape or size.
And we are so much cooler than all those AA models. They say they give us what they do because "it sells" But, I’m so turned off. I can't be alone. I’d buy some AA if they really had Jess as their model.
I have been looking in to alternative sources for fashion and have found that the world of high fashion in West Africa is nothing short of amazing.
Right now I'm loving mimi magazine, what other more diverse fashion resources are there? Which ones do you like?