10 posts tagged “model”

Since I posted about the use of the word coon on radio in New Zealand, I did get a reply from the plumbing firm which it advertised.
   It was very short:

It is raccoons the ones in the woods. Of course there is no limit to the number of interpretations.

   Fair enough: we now know the intent. I would have written more in response (e.g. signed the thing with my name), but that is another issue. I still wonder if the alternative, racist interpretation was in the back of the copywriter’s mind. I guess we won’t know.
   However, every time I have talked about this radio commercial, most people are shocked. No one seems to come up with the raccoon explanation. It’s a 100 per cent response to the notion that the advertisement is racist.
   Sure, this is nowhere near scientific. I must have mentioned it to about 15 people. That’s hardly representative of the population. And on this blog, opinion was divided among an international audience.
   A check back then did reveal that the word was also a racist term used to describe Aboriginals in Australia by certain Australians, and it came up again when Lucire covered Naomi Campbell’s sentence last Friday.:

Capt Doug Maughan, a pilot of 28 years, had filed a complaint [against British Airways] after the use of the word coon during a training session. He also claimed Saudi Arabians were referred to as ‘rag-heads’ on one flight.

   This was in relation to Campbell allegedly being called a ‘gollywog supermodel’ by airline staff.
   In this context I don’t think I was being too sensitive, since I get the feeling the racist interpretation is more commonplace than the animal one, even in the British Commonwealth.
   It’s hard to believe the ‘gollywog’ comment, too. Campbell’s words could have been dismissed if it had not been for Capt Maughan’s own evidence that British Airways allegedly, and casually, used racist epithets. (The airline denies the allegations.)
   I won’t add more as I think the two points of view were well covered in the earlier post’s comments.

I see Volkswagen is bringing out a Chrysler-based minivan called the Routan.
   Daft name, but I guess if it already has a minivan called the Touran in Europe, it was a matter of swapping two letters around in the mould.

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Volkswagen Routan

Harry Mount’s column in The Daily Telegraph was a great laugh:

I once saw [Heather Mills] walking down Fifth Avenue in New York and was staggered by the height of her cheekbones and the depth of the groove beneath them.
   But when she opens her mouth—and keeps it open for 11 minutes, as she did outside the High Court—the spell is broken. You forget the cheekbones and drown in the ocean of self-pity pouring out of that pretty mouth.
   During the French state visit, clever Carla Bruni rarely broke the spell by talking. She realised, like the old pro supermodel she is, that all she has to do is look good and say nothing. …
   The real difference between them, though, is in what they say—or don’t say. The answer for Heather Mills in future is to do what John Galliano did with Carla Bruni's cinched Dior outfit—belt up.

   Thinking that was all that Mr Mount had to offer, I was pleasantly surprised by the final segment in his column:

A new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry claims that mobile phone addiction is a mental illness.
   I’m afraid the illness is incurable; it’s related to an addiction that's been around for ever—the addiction to self.
   People aren’t addicted to the phones themselves. They’re addicted to the attention they get from other people via their phones. Obsessive phoners send texts purely in the hope that they’ll get one back. They don’t ring people from the train to find anything out; only to get other people to listen to them saying nothing of any importance. Why is it that the person on the train is always doing the talking, and never the listening?

   I knew there was a reason I didn’t use cellphones.

[Cross-posted] Vogue’s April 2008 cover with the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James and Gisèle Bündchen has been branded by some as being racist. As noted by the Plain Dealer over in Cleveland, Ohio:

LeBron shares the April cover of Vogue magazine with supermodel Gisele Bundchen. It’s been noted by some that his open-mouthed screaming face and the way he is cradling a blond woman in his left hand has racial overtones in its resemblance to an old movie poster of King Kong and captive Fay Wray. Vogue says it chose the photo because it’s “expressive, fun and upbeat.”

   Once I got over the bad typography, I had to wonder if this cover furthers stereotypes. Being a minority, I personally didn’t make the connection that Margaret Bernstein and Sarah Crump reported on above. If I imagined the races switched, I also didn’t get much of a reaction—except to note that it would have been unusual for Vogue to feature a woman of colour on its cover, let alone a man of any colour.
   However, I wondered: would a black man who isn’t a basketball player have made it? Or one who isn’t dressed as such?
   I don’t think it’s necessarily the pose, but whether there is a stereotype at play here. While Mr James has his own line of clothes—which he is modelling in the cover photograph—would a cover showing him in more conservative attire have been chosen?
   One blogger gave other examples, and reacted to the photograph:

A tuxedoed LeBron James out on the town with a stylish Gisele photo shoot would do. A Lebron on a couch with a magazine full of him and Gisele on the same couch with a magazine full of her; signifiers that they are man and woman at the top of their professions photo shoot would do. Or, the two in full nightclub gear with him watching her trying to dribble in the low light of an empty Quicken Arena. The possibilities are endless.
   And yet LeBron James allowed himself to be captured interminably not as the King James of his profession and rising player in the business world, but as a human King Kong, The Great Nigger whose fame is inextricably tied to how proficiently he puts a leather ball through an iron hoop.

   Others rebutted:

Calling it a modern-day interpretation of King Kong and Fay Wray, Feministe website writer Ali Eteraz referred to the image by Annie Leibovitz as “King James Turned Into King Kong.” She also said the cover “fulfills every racist stereotype in the world: primal screaming, white-girl carrying, black beast.”
   Are they seeing something that has escaped the rest of us? It’s the “Shape Issue,” remember? The contrast of the 6-foot-9 James and 5-foot-11 Bundchen seems like nothing more than an innocent pop culture poke at celebrity. Do we really need to read more into it?
   As for the comparison to poor Fay Wray, does anyone see Bundchen looking remotely stressed in this shot?

   James is the third man to appear on a cover of Vogue (after Richard Gere and George Clooney), and the publisher has defended its choice because it is an issue devoted to size and shape. From the Associated Press:

“Nobody says more about fashion size and shape than Gisele and LeBron,” Vogue spokesman Patrick O’Connell said. “LeBron is an amazing star and athlete that has crossed over into a cultural phenomena.”

   To me (being neither black nor white), the King Kong connection, isn’t obvious—but the idea of “the black American good only on the basketball court” seems to be cemented here. Sad, in a year where Americans could be voting in their first black president.
   Whatever the case, Vogue seems to have benefited hugely from the publicity, from the blogosphere and sports’ fans who might never have commented on the magazine.

Carla Bruni on the cover of Point de Vue

Carla Bruni has been romantically linked to French president Nicolas Sarkozy, according to Point de Vue magazine in France. The cover headline reads (translated), ‘Carla Bruni: the woman in the President’s heart.’ The magazine launches tomorrow (December 19) and contributes to the largely positive press M. Sarkozy has been receiving since his election. (More at the Lucire Insider blog today.)

[Cross-posted] Here’s one of two modelling contests that I want to let folks in on—the first is the Napoleon Perdis Model Search that my friends at StarNow are running. And Napoleon is one of the community of internationally minded Greek entrepreneurs that I seem to be in contact with regularly. So there are two groups of friends here that I want to help—and maybe those who want to be the face of Napoleon Perdis might be able to help themselves.
   According to the site, this is what the winner can get.

You could win a photo shoot for Napoleon Perdis—starts August 27!!
  And there’s more! The winner will also receive:
• Return travel and accommodation in Sydney for four days
• An AUS$500 Napoleon Perdis Product voucher
• Napoleon Perdis Paparazzi Ready Personal Makeup Skills One Day workshop (valued at AUS$195.00)
• Complimentary makeover and photo shoot for Napoleon Perdis
• Your photos on the Napoleon Perdis Advertising Database for one year
• One year complimentary subscription to StarNow.com
• A collection of branded StarNow.com clothing
• Featured interviews and information about you on StarNow.com

If you sign up now and say that you heard about this through Lucire, you will be able to get the StarNow membership for free.
   They want someone confident and creative, over 18, and a resident of Australia or New Zealand.
   Entries close Monday noon, Sydney time. Let Shona McGregor at StarNow.com know (email convention there is firstname.surname@starnow.com) if you want to join up.

[Cross-posted] Ironical that I can’t get C4 very clearly here and that I will probably be out, but yours truly will appear next on a TV documentary about the Cadbury Dream Model Search ’07 on Saturday 7 p.m. in New Zealand. And thank goodness it is in line with some of what I do, in this case publishing Lucire.
   I already have the first pic from the fashion shoot with Elle Gibson, the winner, here—Hannah Richards’ photography and Barry Betham’s styling are beautiful. But before all that happened, there was a lot of deliberation with the judges.
   I don’t know how the editing went, but I am betting that Duane Gazi from Trump Model Management, one of the more fluent and authoritative voices in modelling, will and should get a lot of coverage. And I hope to see Caroline Barley of Nova in the programme heaps—without her, there would be no competition.
   For those looking for controversy and bitchiness, you might not see much with us. We had very collegial judging sessions and from what the girls tell me, things went very well with the competition itself. But I am certain this will be watchable, especially among those who like reality TV, since it is, well, real. The backstage pressures, the need to deliver a verdict—that’s still there. What we didn’t have were phoney-baloney moments that could be cobbled together to make one person look bad.
   What the girls got up to, I don’t know: they were separate from us and chaperoned, and undoubtedly there will be moments there, since they are the real focus and were followed around by two TV crews for days. However, there has been no fallout from contestants moaning on blogs—unlike the many anonymous comments after Miss New Zealand that can be traced back to certain young “ladies”—as I think most of the final 12 I met realized that they were already winners, having been selected from 900 nationally.
   Elle has already had a great start and I am willing to bet that the others are already prospects for the agencies.

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Last quarter, it was Miss Universe New Zealand. This quarter, Cadbury Dream Model Search ’07. Lucire is helping out with this event, and it will be televised. More at www.cadburydreammodelsearch.co.nz.

[Cross-posted] The old magic’s back. People who are discovered or have their first big story in Lucire tend to wind up doing bigger things. I can name plenty of names: Amber Peebles, Kathryn Wilson, Zac Posen, Christina Perriam, Denise Vasi. Models are no exception. The latest is Alexandra at One Model Management, who has just landed a Marc Jacobs perfume campaign. She appears in ‘Raven’, a shoot in issue 22 of Lucire in New Zealand, photographed by Kevin Sinclair and with make-up and hair by Natalia Egorova. Above, Alexandra wears Balenciaga and Phi. Congratulations, Alexandra.

I have started a new Vox group called Fashion Magazines, at fashionmags.groups.vox.com. I thought I’d expand the dialogue, since there is a general fashion group and one on fashion photography—it seems the right time to do one specifically for magazines. Share news inside and outside the industry, talk about your favourite magazines, photo shoots, articles. All are welcome.
   My posts are a bit biased to inside the industry, but I would love to get readers’ views, especially on topics that might be a little controversial. The industry needs to answer a lot of these, including New York’s decision not to ban too-thin models.