The argument for letting your hair grow long and white as you age and not getting any facial surgery or Botox.

From 83-year-old "supermodel" Daphne Selfe. (Great name, by the way.)

Selfe, who went gray in her 40s, gave up coloring her hair and decided to let it grow.

“My hair is long now because it’s cheaper. I don’t have to do anything but put it in a topknot or a French pleat,” she said. “It avoids that old lady permed look, lengthens the neck and lifts the face.”

"A revolution has begun against the perception of beauty in Israel..."

"...  this law shatters the anorexic ideal serving as an example for the country’s youth."

The new law, known as the “photoshop law,” requires models to present their employers with a current doctor’s note confirming that they meet a minimum body mass index (BMI) – a calculation of weight to height proportion – of 18.5, which is considered the lowest threshold for a healthy weight. Advertisements featuring models who are “photoshopped” or otherwise digitally altered to make them appear thinner must be clearly marked as manipulated images.

Here's a BMI calculator if you want to check whether you're too skinny to be a model in Israel. I've been 5'5" for more than 40 years, and I've weighed lots of different weights, including the weight of 107, which I regarded as my ideal weight (based on a chart in the Stillman diet book) when I was a college student. But based on that BMI calculator, I see I'd need to weigh at least 111 to be permitted to be a model in Israel! I know you need to be taller to be a model, but my point is that 107 wasn't anorexic for a 20-year-old.

Certainly, for modeling clothes you want a body that doesn't really call attention to itself, that works more like a clothes hanger. It's an aesthetic choice, a way to feature the clothing, the product. The Israeli law is ridiculously repressive. People need to take responsibility for their own bodies, not blame the fashion/magazine industry and certainly not use the government to cut off messages that supposedly feed their irresponsibility.

"On my wedding day, I’m like freaking out, obviously. ‘You’ve got to give me a character.'"

And fashion designer John Galliano said to Kate Moss: "You have a secret — you are the last of the English roses. Hide under that veil. When he lifts it, he’s going to see your wanton past!'"

"Let's all create a backstory for this excruciatingly sad American Apparel model."

"You may know Guillaume as American Apparel's centerpiece briefs model, but I know him as the mournful French-Canadian asexual who is allergic to most foods and metals. He realized he wasn't like other people when he saw his father cry at his grandmother's funeral and felt nothing...."

Great beauties of Renaissance art, slimmed down, via Photoshopping.

By Italian artist Anna Utopia Giordano, supposedly demonstrating how tastes have changed.

Quite aside from the passage of time, taste in beauty has something to do with whether the model will be dressed or nude. As a former art-school student, I've done numerous "life drawing" classes, and good as thin models look in clothes, they make terrible nudes. As I blogged back in '05, if I wanted to draw landscapes, I'd go to the mountains, not the plains.

"We wanted to make sure that this amount of make-up wouldn't kill a person."

Dutch artists Lernert Engelberts and Sander Plug apply — in one sitting — 365 layers of makeup to a model's face (after testing 100 layers "on our intern, who is a man").

What was the main effect of this project?
	It illustrates the way the beauty industry oppresses women.
	It fascinates by taking something familiar and making it weird.
	It expresses contempt for women who use cosmetics.
	It titillates viewers who get off on seeing women restrained and humiliated.
pollcode.com free polls

Model Caroline Louise Forsling sues Estée Lauder for branding her as old.

She wants $2 million after a test picture of her was used in an ad campaign that she didn't know about (for a product she didn't use). It's one of those before and after pictures, where the before and after sides were shot at the same time.

Obviously, she signed a contract. What did it say? Is there some understanding that the test shot photo will not be used, that she retained some control over which products her image could be used to promote, or that her image could only represent youth and beauty? What went on before the lawsuit was filed? She's damaging both herself and the product by going public with the dispute, because we're all invited to stare at her aged face, in the unflattering photograph we might otherwise never have seen or noticed. Meanwhile, the company suffers from having their ad revealed as a fraud. I'm thinking Forsling tried to get more money when she saw how the photo was used, and threatened to file the lawsuit, which we're seeing now, because the company called her bluff. So, great, everybody loses. Except us, the consumers who might have believed a little too much in Plantscription serum by Origins.

(Personally, I never buy a product called "serum." It sounds spookily medical.)

"Before he started making movies, Stanley Kubrick was a star photojournalist."

"In the summer of 1949, Look magazine sent him to Chicago to shoot pictures for a story called 'Chicago City of Contrasts.'"

City of Contrasts... what a horrible travel-book cliché. I'm assuming it already was a horrible cliché in 1949. But check out the thrilling photographs! I love the smoking (literally) lingerie model:

"Model plunges to her death after falling through hotel window while 'play wrestling' with female friend."

"Lashawna Threatt... crashed into a window and fell five storeys onto a slanted glass ceiling above a sun room at the W Midtown Hotel" in Atlanta, Georgia.

The other woman fell through the window too, so it's not a case of the survivor telling her version of the facts.

Passionate Chonvill, who is friends with both women, said both women had just got to the hotel and were 'having a good time'.

'They are two small girls and I am trying to figure out how the hell two small girls could break a window like that.'

RELOCATED FROM ALTHOUSE2: Jean Shrimpton today.

"I’m not sure contentment is obtainable and I find the banality of modern life terrifying. I sometimes feel I’m damaged goods."

COMMENTS (Relocated):



rhhardin said...
Life isn't banal if you have a dog.

MAY 13, 2011 3:06:00 PM CDT
k*thy said...
More times, lately, I find comfort ordinary and, somewhat, anonymous.

MAY 13, 2011 3:17:00 PM CDT
AJ Lynch said...
Her frowning face physically resembles what she said in the quote.

MAY 13, 2011 4:54:00 PM CDT
AJ Lynch said...
I wonder why your blog got singled out?

MAY 13, 2011 4:54:00 PM CDT
traditionalguy said...
If Althouse was singled out, it was not for banality of modern life. My guess is that this downtime is only a test of Obama's new Political Emergency Preparedness System.

MAY 13, 2011 5:58:00 PM CDT
David said...
Being old is not too bad if being young was never your principal identity.

MAY 13, 2011 6:04:00 PM CDT
tim maguire said...
The banality of modern life is often boring, but terrifying?

Drama queen.

MAY 13, 2011 6:23:00 PM CDT

Anorexia awareness...

... taken to a new level.

"This is the shroud of Vogue..."

Heavy!

Festivus/healthism vs. salami.

Malcolm Alarmo King — a fitness buff/model — didn't like the salami on the menu at Theo Lacy jail in Orange, so he brought a lawsuit, seeking double portions of kosher meals. The Sheriff’s Department didn't want to serve these more expensive meals except as a religious accommodation. King had asserted that his religion was "Healthism." "He’s healthy so he said health and added an ‘ism,’" his lawyer said.

Judge [Derek G.] Johnson pulled King’s lawyer and the prosecutor aside and said he needed a religion to put down on the order to make it stick...

The lawyer came up with "Festivus," and the judge accepted that.

Via ABA Journal, which notes that there won't be an appeal, because the sentence is served.

Which of these is least appropriately called a religion?
	Festivus -- even as "Seinfeld" fiction, it's a holiday, not a religion.
	Healthism -- he just thought of "health" and put "ism."
	Salami -- come on, it's just meat.
	Law -- it's completely made up.
pollcode.com free polls

Which of these is most appropriately called a religion?
	Festivus -- it has rituals and can be practiced.
	Healthism -- people really believe in it and they proselytize.
	Salami -- it's the most believable thing on the list.
	Law -- it has structure, ritual, requires belief, and purports to explain a lot.
pollcode.com free polls

AND: Oddly enough, "law" is winning both polls!

I'm shocked, shocked to learn that semi-clad models are writhing in the law library!

"... Brooklyn Law School officials rented Diesel its library expecting a tasteful photo shoot for a jeans ad -- but what they got was a steamy display of writhing young models in skimpy lingerie grinding against books and computers."

Wait. Why did they expect a tasteful photo shoot?

"It's gross. I work on those computers every day!" fumed a female student, referring to a shot showing two bra- and panty-clad women climbing over the machines toward an open-mouthed man....

The frisky photos, shot last spring, show off the hot bodies of male and female models as they prowl around the library's floors, tables and bookshelves -- while wearing tight-fitting panties bearing various seductive messages.

If the law school — I emphasize law school — did not impose restrictions when it took Diesel's money then it has nothing to complain about.

"We are as shocked and mortified as you must be by these photographs," interim dean Michael Gerber wrote in an e-mail yesterday to students, faculty and staff.

"When the school gave its permission to do the shoot, the school was assured that the photos would be in good taste. They are not."

"Assured" "good taste" — that's not specific enough to make me believe Diesel violated a contractual term. The school took Diesel's money and had to know that any advertising for clothing for young adults is likely to involve some display of sexuality. Especially if the scene is a library. That's what I'd expect.

What exactly was the school assured of? The models aren't naked. They've got on underwear. And what is even so gross and shocking about this? Man, Diesel is getting way more great publicity than its stupid underpants deserve. Where did this controversy really start? I'm inclined to suspect that the administration is only shocked* after the fact and only because some students have managed to create the impression that the school might be accused of contributing to a "hostile environment" form of sexual harassment.

As for the young woman who is grossed out that a model in panties writhed in the vicinity of a computer she uses... do you realize how many people type on those things with hands they didn't wash after they went to the bathroom?

----------------------------------------------

*Shocked!

How LSD made Jerry Hall a model.

An excerpt from her autobiography that I'm highlighting instead of all the junk about Mick Jagger:

The idea of being a model started when I was invited to a party. A boy gave me LSD without telling me what it was. I locked myself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out, not knowing what was happening to me.

All I remember is looking in the mirror and thinking: ‘You’re really beautiful. You should be a model.’

She was 16 and 6 feet tall. I can't believe it took LSD to give her the idea of becoming a model. She was 6 feet tall! But anyway... I do believe that, given LSD and a mirror, she had a fine time staring at herself and reveling in her beauty. I don't quite believe that the idea of monetizing the beauty arrived psychedelically.

Oh, I can't resist dragging Mick into this blog post. I just love this sentence: "One evening in New York, I found myself sitting between Mick and Warren Beatty at a dinner party." I just found myself... Yeah, how does stuff like that happen?La la la... there you are, minding your own business, and suddenly — hey, here I am sitting between Mick Jagger and Warren Beatty!

Mick had told me he took LSD every day for a year in the Sixties. He also admitted he was smoking heroin. I was disgusted.

LSD every day, eh? Is that even possible? Did he stare in the mirror and decide he was gorgeous? Imagine yourself as Mick Jagger on LSD and staring into the mirror: What is that experience like? Feel free to answer that question via Photoshop.

This is good too: "He wasn’t nearly as rich as people thought... We bought homes in New York, London, Paris and Mustique...."

"You have the smallest waist in the world. Look at that waist!"

"There's something about her I quite like."

A "slightly gender-ambiguous athlete who reads either as a pretty hot boy or a trans-girl, and not particularly a person who falls into the realm of how people see beautiful."

There's a 6'8" female basketball player — Brittney Griner — and the NYT article about her is on the subject of how she "redefine[s] feminine beauty ideals."

The quote in my title is from a model casting agent. I guess women, more than men, if they happen to grow really tall, think of becoming models, rather than basketball players. But Griner is a basketball player. Why discuss her as if she is a model? We don't much care what the male basketball players look like or think about stretching our concepts of male beauty when they don't conform to conventional standards.

The suicide's...

... shoes.

Models were terrified in Alexander McQueen's shoes. Prescient?

Witness the brutality:



(If you have trouble playing the embedded video, watch it here.)

"Say hi to forever" — the last blog post of Daul Kim.

The highly successful fashion model killed herself by hanging.

"I already accepted that I relate to nothing. The more I gain the more lonely it is ... I know I'm like a ghost."

Ah, but wait! I know she is already dead, but here is the blog: I Like to Fork Myself. It's not all depression and death. And many of the blog posts begin with the words "say hi," and it's not always in a dark or sarcastic way. Here's "say hi to insomnia put to good use." There's a charming picture of pancakes, and the text is:

making breakfast.

im going to be a good wife !!!!!!!!!!!!

She writes about her reactions to art and film and music. ("Say hi to forever" is a post with a music video.) She doesn't come across as morbidly self-absorbed. She seems intellectually alive. There's "say hi to sadist masochist" — "shel silverstein... you kinda fucked me up in a beautiful way" — about Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree." She seems to have some distance and humor about fashion: "say hi to where strange things meet" ("diiiiiioooooooooor dioooooooooooooooooooor kouttttttuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure"),  "say hi to a saturday afternoon at bianca's" ("yeah this is how i/dress when im at my friends place/i wear louis barthelemy/as you can see/i dont really care about comfort ..."). If I were a regular reader of this blog, I would have seen an interesting, complex person. I wouldn't have know I was watching a person in the final steps of a dance with death.

Who around us is taking their final steps? Would we notice?

"The Heidi Klum of foot models" marries the footman, I mean, doorman...

... and all hell breaks loose. I mean, the other service workers in the building stop getting her packages and hailing taxis for her.

"I fell in love with Angel because he is a sweet, caring man - how dare they look down on us!"

And the the super's wife supposedly punched Angel in the balls.

It's a new lawsuit. Christina Ambers wants $10 million.