That Sexy Self-Loathing Hunchback
What is this pose I’m seeing everywhere?
Yes, I’m looking at you, Gap.
Can anyone explain why a girl with her shoulders hunched to the point of breaking her collarbone is considered pretty? sexy? sweater-selling?
It’s like a way to reduce the burden of breastages whilst amplifying cleavage, yet being demure but giggly. This pose looks like those girls you hated in high school now who changed their entire demeanor when a boy came around. Brilliant science whiz at 11:30, Hunchback McGiggles at 11:45.
It feels like such a diminishing pose. Hunching her over and pulling her arms in to her body seems to serve only to make her frame smaller, as if even super thin model women just aren’t small enough. It seems as though it only reduces her, in so many ways.
Also, their faces are cut off. Super.
Okay honey, now bed forward a bit, squish your shoulders to your head. More.
Roll that shoulder forward. Suck that side in. Hands awkwardly on hips. Perfect.
Now, both shoulders in. Think thin! Think collarbones and tendons are hot.*
Ick.
—
*When my sister reads the word, “tendon”, she is going to pass out.
December 27th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
I’m glad you posted this because I’ve been wondering about the red carpet pose where all the starlets cross their legs at the ankle while standing. I just want to run over and give them a shove.
Take a picture of this, bitch!
December 27th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Buy this Gap shirt and be next in line for the back pills! Joy!
December 27th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
UGH.
I agree; and the worst part of it all is the fact that these images are part of the Great American Woman Instruction Manual of How to Behave (Correctly/Acceptably).
I cringe, as the mother of daughters, when I look at various marketing crap that shows women in these submissive positions. Ick.
December 28th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Thank you! Thank you for verbalizing this!!! BTW, while looking through my Victoria’s Secret Semi-Annual Sale catalog last night, I couldn’t help but notice one shot of a lady in a teddy with one hand cupped right around her hoo-ha, as if to say, “The only way I can get through this rediculous photoshoot is with a little stimulation, and if you’re not going to do it, I will!!”
December 28th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
I had never really noticed…but now that you’ve drawn my attention to it….
LMAO
Hope you had a good Christmas and Happy New Year.
December 28th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Cupped? Hoo-ha? Oh my lord.
I’m definitely tired of the not-so-subtle instruction manual for women being broadcast EVERYWHERE! It’s insane to me that at this stage, we are still so freaking backwards.
December 28th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
At least her shirts are rumpled. I recently went on a little tear about the difference between how clothes look on people and how they look on models in catalogs, etc. My ranting was mostly at myself, at how disappointed I am in myself that I forget that I don’t look like the catalog models until I see myself in a reflection somewhere while out and about and wearing whatever I bought from them. But I also wondered and still wonder if anyone markets clothing to look like it really looks on people when they really wear it, and whether I myself would buy it if I saw it marketed that way. The more I think about it, the more I think I might, as long as I could still see all the features (pockets, hoods, etc.).
On people, clothes get worn, which means they get rumpled. Also the people are diversely sized and shaped. In catalogs, the clothes are posed, ironed smooth and shiny bright, on uniformly sized people who apparently cannot squat or bend at the waist, let along get on their hands and knees and look for keys which have fallen under a seat in a darkened movie theater.
I couldn’t care less that this chick is so thin that her collarbone poinks out at the same time that she is so shapely that all she has to do is cultivate a little kyphosis to create ample cleavage on demand, though obviously the photographer and editor were turned on by it. I am happy, though, to see her clothing look like it might really look on someone her size who might also have enough talent and physical strength to be able to raise her arms over her head and then bring them back down again effortlessly, or to get in and out of a chair unassisted. ‘Cause that rumply thing? That’s what clothes look like when you wear them while you’re alive and doing stuff like that.
Now if only we can get them to photograph her while she actually does something besides negate herself. That would be cool.
December 28th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
Oh, and I hate the GAP anyway because of the whole third-world sweatshop child labor thing. Victoria’s Secret, too, aka “Victoria’s Dirty Little Secret.” Yes, almost everybody who sells clothes you want to wear and can afford is exploiting somebody in a third world country, but these two (or so I’ve read) are among the worst. It’s particularly inexcusable when you compare their prices with Wal-Mart’s (not that I shop at Wal-Mart; I’m just saying, when you compare exploiters, you get more product for your buck at a place like Wal-Mart because Gap and VS have to charge more per item to accommodate more fashionable marketing, which does not serve the customer except to give him/her a feeling of being more “in” than a Wal-Mart shopper, though sourcing and quality may be essentially equivalent).
In light of its history of third world worker exploitation, the Gap’s Christmas TV ad this year was particularly snortworthy: “We gonna give it to the world: peace, love, the Gap.”
I took that to mean, “Screw you, world. Peace and love, the Gap.”
December 28th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Nicely said, and congrats on the new house and paint and all that. I am assuming that when you were busy painting, you of course took the time to pose yourself as the models did, as that is what all of us do. Ha ha.
It all makes me think of my Dec. 5 anti-Victoria’s Secret fashion show and how nothing ever looks like it is pictured once it is on us fleshy types. And when I say fleshy, I mean that we tend to eat on a daily basis.
December 28th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
I don’t buy from Victoria’s Secret, despite urging from my best friend to do so because “they have the BEST bras!” In my case, it’s backfiring advertising. All their models look pissed off. Who wants to wear underwear that pisses you off????
December 31st, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Okay, just for the record, my seething hatred of The GAP has been ever so slightly ameliorated by this:
This American Life, Episode 303: “David and Goliath,” specifically Act II, “Dreams of Distant Factories.”
I still hate them for things they’ve done and choices they still make, but I’m glad to know they at least think about it sometimes now.
January 1st, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Ooh, thank you Sara!
I have the problem of hating the choices of the Targets/Gaps/etc. but having those things being what I can afford. It sucks.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:35 pm
exactly!