A couple of weeks ago (September 10), my class watched a TED Talk from Cameron Russell, who is a model. She talks about how the photos of her are created, and that she actually doesn’t do a whole lot compared to the photographers, makeup artists, and hair stylists. She actually has said that some photos were a bit uncomfortable for her. She believes she became a model because she won a genetic lottery, meaning she was born and raised looking physically fit (tall and slender), and she is the recipient of a legacy, meaning she looks very feminine. In addition, she believes part of the reason why she is a model is because of her whiteness. Russell mentioned a study done in 2007 by an NYU Ph.D. student who counted every model that was hired, and out of those who were hired, less than four percent of them were non-white (27 out of 677).
Russell talks about questions she gets asked a lot as a model, like can I be a model when I grow up? Her response was more of an “I don’t know,” and she instead encouraged other jobs women can have a larger impact in, like being the President of the United States. She said that being a model is basically like winning the lottery, and models are not in charge of anything; they are just a canvas for the makeup artists and hair stylists and like modeling clay for the photographers. She describes her photos as constructions by professionals, and that they are not really her.
Russell goes on to mention that good things happen to her because of how she looks and not who she is. She says that the opposite is happening to people who are the opposite of her—good people who don’t look “good.” She also says that she is insecure about how she looks every day. This can make sense since when we think of female beauty, we first think of a tall, white, slender woman. I believe this notion of beauty has been socially constructed since the twentieth century, with people like flapper girls, to Marilyn Monroe (who I think really normalized it), to Russell. If we want a more diverse set of models to hit the runway, I think the best way to challenge this social construct is to attack it head on—hire more women who aren’t “tall,” “white,” and “slender.”
