Modeling Competition For Women With Disabilities
Posted by: Amelia McDonell-Parry
Filed in:
news
10:00AM, Friday June 27th 2008
Um, wow. I am kind of speechless. The New York Daily News reports that a new modeling show has come to town, this one called Britain’s Missing Top Model. The U.K. show features models with various disabilities, like missing limbs, partial paralysis, and hearing loss. The show wants to challenge society’s traditional notions of beauty, which sounds great to me, but I also know that none of these women are going to be bigger than a size four, so that’s a standard of beauty no one is really willing to face yet either. Anyway, Marie Claire U.K. editor Marie O’Riordan serves as a judge for Missing Top Model, and says, “I do believe the program could help challenge our attitudes to disability. I want to see the winner shake up the fashion industry. These young women shouldn’t be invisible to the fashion world just because they are disabled.” Can we just ask one question? What is the deal with the title? “Missing” Model? What does that mean? [The NY Daily News]
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Deirdre
wrote on June 27 2008 @ 10:13 am: [report]
I love it- it sounds so David Lynch.. But seriously it is about time. Now I wonder when normal women (size 10 and above) will be considered beautiful too?
Kiki T
wrote on June 27 2008 @ 10:33 am: [report]
People are missing the point of what the job of a model is—that is to show off clothes and to help sell it…it’s blown up to be this whole other thing in which it’s about judging the standard of beauty and now everybody thinks they should be running down the runways trying to sell their standard of beauty, but it’s actually not suppose to be about that, it’s suppose to be about the clothes.
...and now this show in england—that is ridiculous. where is there a market for models missing limbs? yes, that girl in the picture is beautiful—but the pic is about her now, and not the clothes….sure, everybody wants a voice in this world, but trying to do it through the lens of fashion or modeling is not the only way. if they want to have a beauty contest, that is a different thing…but c’mon these girls aren’t going to on the cover of vogue or walk the runways of paris—that is what a model does…
I wish these shows would stop insisting the only way to prove you’re beautiful to the world is through modeling and winning the approval of the fashion world or any form of superficial celebrity.
Deirdre
wrote on June 27 2008 @ 11:29 am: [report]
Beauty ain’t going to cure cancer. How about celebrating smart people instead?
Amelia
wrote on June 27 2008 @ 11:34 am: [report]
@Kiki T Preach it sister!
Gaby
wrote on June 27 2008 @ 03:31 pm: [report]
I totally agree with Kiki T, fashion is supposed to be about clothes!
hollissp
wrote on June 28 2008 @ 01:18 am: [report]
what a celebration of human beauty. This goes to show how lovley and unique everyone is.
ZZZ3
wrote on June 28 2008 @ 08:18 am: [report]
The role of modeling to me, must portray an/the image. Models are paid to translate some kind of beauty(and not be difficult).
Recall fashion faux paux for a minute.
Horrid clothes just make an attractive model look foolish or playful. However it develops isn’t important.
Usually fashion reflects the designer, not the model.
The cocaine residue junkie sheik is long gone, alone and burn out over a mirror somewhere… finally.
Now the Brits are scrambling to churn the handicapped too? Just to make a buck? Pathetic.
Do you have any links to that. Keywords? Kiki?
Models seldom share the engineering of how to exploit the shot. Mostly because they are not through the looking glass. Some people just don’t care how, just as long as they ‘make it big’. I have heard all this is very rare on the catwalk for big kids…
ZZZ3
wrote on June 28 2008 @ 08:30 am: [report]
Someone out there will always be pushing the envelope.
To believe that alone will convey substance, is kind of asinine. The “Lynchie” shot does work very well.
Ashley
wrote on June 29 2008 @ 05:09 pm: [report]
@Kiki T
If modeling was about the clothes, they’d show them on a variety of body sizes and in poses and lighting that actually shows the shape of the clothing. You wouldn’t believe the number of ads I’ve seen that barely show the item in question, or in bad enough lighting that you can’t see the details.
Or, in the case of Abercrombie and Fitch, show the clothing at all.
Modeling has become about making a statement and selling a lifestyle, not a garment.
LovesIt
wrote on June 30 2008 @ 08:43 am: [report]
@Kiki. I totally agree. To add to that, @Ashley, it’s about the clothes in the sense of selling them AND the image associated with the brand (which is oftentimes far more influential than the actual cut and style). Hence, ads that barely show the items being sold still sell items via brand image. Runways sell clothes as much by showing the items as showing you a lifestyle and image you crave (so if you’re a “normal” woman, your envy of the size 0 image sends you on a shopping spree).
I hope that makes sense. And yes, it’s unfair and exploitative to some degree… but is a practice pretty much as old as existence.
BitchMidwife
wrote on July 5 2008 @ 09:03 pm: [report]
I would love to be such a model. I have severe scoliosis and lots of nice scars and can’t find anyone who wants to date me/have sex with me—nobody can get past the squick factor of my body. I’d love to be able to flaunt my Quasimodo like body, with my long legs and nice tits—to the world.
lavenderrosedaisy
wrote on August 27 2008 @ 09:52 pm: [report]
Hey Bitchmidwife, it is possible for someone to love someone who is not ‘kate-moss’ material. Us women, fall into the trap of identifying with all of our external qualities when if we fell in love with our internal beauty, love would walk right up and bite us on the neck!
It did for me and it hasn’t for my friend. I was involved in an accident that took my boyfriend and left me paraplegic. As for my friend she is also paraplegic and a Clinical Psychologist over here in the UK. We are both attractive women, so the only difference I can figure between the two of us is the real ‘us’.
Keep your chin up, walk tall and fall in love with yourself instead of being disgusted. Peace n love,