Magazines Tell Women They Should Be Slender, Tragic and Powerful

The fashion industry has taken plenty of heat for pushing forward models who are incredibly thin – so thin that they surely can’t be healthy, critics have repeatedly said. But the industry also does another thing, even if indirectly, by means of ads and photospreads in glossy magazines: it tells women they should strive to be slender, uncomfortable, tragic and, ironically enough, powerful, William Leith of the Daily Mail argues.

In the context of the ongoing debate of how much airbrushing is too much airbrushing in media images until it sends across the wrong message in impressionable teens, Leith laments the female models imposed by the same media. All women we see plastered everywhere are glamorous, there’s no doubt about that, but they’re also tragic, lost and, most importantly, passive. In a dog-eat-dog world, passiveness can be the greatest sin, and, clearly, we all know that this applies in the real world.

For the models we see everyday, though, things stand differently. They are beautiful and they are seldom portrayed as doing nothing, as if their sole purpose on the planet is to look pretty and have everything handed to them. For most women, Leith believes, this can be extremely intimidating, while also making the green monster, envy, come to light. Women should – or they deserve to – get more realistic portrayals in the media, models that they can relate to, even if still glamorized, he argues.

“The models look as if they are cut off from the rest of us, each young woman stranded in her own world of specialness. They lie on their shiny pillows, fiddling with the buckles on their £1,000 handbags. They idle on velvet sofas, kicking their high-heeled feet in the air. Arms akimbo, wrists heavy with bangles, they stare at the ceiling. They are not doing anything – perish the thought! They are simply being beautiful, waiting for something to happen. Of course, they know that something will happen, and they probably won’t have to wait for very long. Everybody, it seems, is a sucker for female beauty. If I was a woman looking at a fashion magazine, the whole thing would drive me nuts – mostly the fact that, as a woman, you’re supposed to aspire to being passive.” Leith writes in his column, View from Planet Bloke.

Media images of this type – mostly characterized by the broken doll pose – have been elevated to the state of art. However, what we’re talking about here is consumerist art, which means it doesn’t target a select few who can tell the difference between fantasy and the real world, but all women out there. In constantly showing them “tragic” images of female fantasies, the media is actually telling them they need to change or at least aspire to be like them.

“Not having to do anything is a mark of how attractive you are. If you’re beautiful enough, all you need to do is sit there, looking petulant, and someone will come and rescue you. Not good, as feminists have pointed out. And not fair either. These girls don’t deserve to win life’s lottery simply by being something, rather than doing something, do they? And anyway, they’re not really winners at all – not in real life. It’s all a fantasy. Female consumers look at them – and, against their better nature, feel a pang of aspiration and self-loathing, all at once, and answer that pang by craving the product on offer.” Leith further explains.