What happened to the body image this year
The archetype of the body in modern culture can be described as follows: white, slim, young, without flaws. In 2014, it changed a bit: other bodies increasingly flashed other bodies, although equality of all forms, sizes and skin tones is still far away. Today we remember the most important events of the year that affected the standards of beauty, and we are trying to understand where social thought is taking place.
The first trend was not long in coming: at the beginning of the year, a scandal erupted on the grounds of racial segregation in fashion, thanks to the stupid “selection” of street style with Pitti Uomo, whose heroes were completely black dandies (who seemed to have been placed on a separate map of beauty standards). The public immediately remembered the Vogue Black blog that has existed since 2010, and the editor of the Italian Vogue (with his submission earned a blog), Frank Sozzani, made an official statement that she considered the attacks unreasonable, and invited critics to take up really important issues. Speaking about the problems of people of a non-European race, fashion leaders did not stop - for example, the model Jordan Dunn criticized designers choosing only white girls at the castings (by the way, in a few months Forbes included her in the list of the richest models - the first of the dark-skinned ones), and in advertising campaigns cosmetics began to appear more African-American. Suffice it to recall the same Lupita Nyonggo, who signed a contract with Lancôme. And we think this is just the beginning.
As before, thinness is tied to beauty, although bodies of unusual parameters are quite often in the field of view. First of all, I remember the shooting of Lara Stone soon after the birth - the retouchers did not touch her stretch marks, wrinkles, folds, and the result was photographs showing how beautiful the female body can be before processing.
A wider audience than System readers talked about the attractiveness of non-lean bodies after the Miss USA contest: one of the contestants, Miss Indiana, looked like a well-fed (and actually “normal”) woman among the rest. She was immediately labeled "curvy", and although her healthy curves were not drawn to such a characteristic, we can understand the confusion of the media: with the definition of plus-size, everything is difficult for us so far. A recent confirmation is the campaign of Calvin Klein with the non-plus-size model of Mila Dalbesio, which was not included in the list of “large” representatives of the brand, or did not say a word about its non-standard (in comparison with the other participants of the survey) volumes, but the ELLE magazine.
In an expected way, glossy magazines have not yet become the main champions of natural beauty (and we doubt that in the foreseeable future they will be); at best, they are guides when they report on individual significant projects and personalities. So, the “True Beauty” campaign celebrating the tenth anniversary of Dove appeared in the media more than once - and even though it caused a lot of criticism, but at this level and with such a frequency, Dove was one of the first to talk about the diversity of beauty. Our favorite social networks are also filled with images of what is usually called imperfections, and just photos of celebrities of non-model parameters. We are now, of course, about Nikki, Iggy, Kim and Rihanna. The latter, by the way, is also to thank for the fact that with her transparent dress she provoked discussions about how society relates to the demonstration of the female breast. Together with Scout Willis, who walked topless in New York, it can be called one of those who help to win the right to the female breast.
But what fashion is really ready for is the adoption of age. We could not help but note the progress in this area after the February show of Rick Owens and it's nice to see that this trend continues to gain momentum. In short, this is the case: old age, which had previously remained a taboo subject, ceases to seem something tragic and demanding disguise. Tilda, Jessica, Charlotte, Carmen, Iris, grandmothers in the new Dolce & Gabbana campaign, and many other beautifully maturing and aging women show that maturity is not just what follows youth, but a separate, full and even more saturated phase life in which, importantly, you can look attractive. Hopefully, the cover of the French magazine M will not be an exception and many publications will pick up its message, as it did in Russia and the Afisha magazine, in the new issue of which women appear as models.
Almost no more interesting things were in the field of transformations of the body - as well as public relations to them. We all remember (or rather, can not forget) the attack of general concern caused by the new face of Renee Zellweger. Then many who listen to the rare voices of sanity discovered that the person and body of a person are his property, which he can dispose of within the limits of the law. Another scandal of almost planetary scale provoked the speech of the participant of "Eurovision" Conchita Wurst - it is not surprising that her appearance provoked a storm of indignation among the conservative audience, but someday she learns that gender self-determination, firstly, is a personal matter of everyone, secondly , fine.
A separate paragraph deserves mentioning of unintentional deformations of the body, which nevertheless can happen to anyone. Of course, we would not wish anyone to transfer what Turia Pitt experienced, but the Australian magazine, which placed it on the cover, made many people think once again about how fragile the human body is, and that much more is paid to appearance. attention than you need. We dare to put in the same row a social campaign with Natalia Vodianova in support of Paralympians and the video of Victoria Modesta, the first bionic pop singer, that became popular in a second — rarely can people draw attention to people with disabilities so worthily, without degrading their dignity. However, these cases are still isolated, and it’s too early to say that society is fully ready to accept people who differ from the majority as equal members.
Despite the restraint of our optimism, it seems to us that the year 2014 turned out to be extremely saturated and diversified in terms of the attitude to the body. The visual baggage of society is gradually enriched by images that depart from the usual understanding of a beautiful body, and the concept of corporeality shifts towards naturalness (or rather, it returns to it). We think that the time is not far distant when retouching and make-up will be used not to unify, but to emphasize those features that make us unique and therefore valuable, and society will become more tolerant of all forms of searching for ourselves, be it plastic surgery or sex change.
