Friday, May 11, 2012

ff

fashioney week. fashioney thoughts. last friday, as i mentioned, roommate-sarah and i drove down to collingwood (in eug's kickass smart car, thanks eug!!!) to watch 'miss representation' with stylist-sarah, and a theatre filled with women and girls. (and, i think, somewhere around 5 men and boys.) a few things about that trip.

one! the screening was hosted by a group called girlfriends, an after-school program for girls in grades 7 and 8. this program looks just amazeballs, and i hope that there is something equivalent wherever i am raising my one-day-daughter(s). teaching girls to be inclusive and attentive to eachother, to be brave and have their convictions, to learn to voice those convictions... so so so necessary. especially at that tricky age where it is so easy to get lost. yay! so yay! and the young ladies of girlfriends were lining the entrance to the theatre, SOOOO excited to be hosting. they were handing out programs and flyers, telling us to stick around after for prizes. (i did win a shirt. woooot!) they were adorable and awesome. i'm so glad i went.

two! see 'miss representation' if you get the chance. oh man. it was great. there were some not-perfect points, but on the whole the message is concise and pointed. even though i feel pretty up on this stuff (women and girls in media, power positions, and so on) some of the facts and figures were staggering. i wish i had the money to arrange a screening, because there are so many people who i feel don't hear what i'm saying, and that film has some hard to ignore moments. but since i don't have those monies, at least watch the trailer, and maybe look out for a screening near you. we drove around 4 hours to and fro to see this movie. and it was completely and totally worth it.



 and then! for some reading this week.

* a breakdown of the points.

above, you'll find the 6-point pledge that all vogue magazines have signed on for. and here below are two thoughtful pieces reacting to the pledge (or 'health initiative', as they're calling it). this is a yay! for sure. but a wary, cautious yay. read on and think and all that. celebrate the steps that are being taken, but continue to demand ever-more. don't stop questioning! okay go:

* longing built into its very function.

* on the grounds of creative freedom.

(am i allowed to say i kinda sorta totally hate marc jacobs? ugh. whatever. i'm saying it. really? really, marc jacobs?)


alrighty! good friday, everyone. love and puppies!


3 comments:

Emma said...

Yay Vogue! (Cautiously.) Did you see Anna W on Colbert? She was great.

And it's pretty friggin' gross horrible to think we'd ever even want girls under 16 as models. What is the point of a model? To be a 'model' woman. What is a 15 year old? NOT A WOMAN. They can be model girls, teens, like, in a catalogue for the Bay, wearing polka dot scarves and stuff. But. Not. High Fashion For Women. Why do we even need to be talking about this? GEEEEEEEEZ!

erin k h said...

she was really awesome on colbert.

i think what happened is this: runway models slowly went from being representative of the women who would wear the clothes to being hangers. skinny tall pretty hangers. that weren't so much wearing the clothes as presenting them. right? and that teeny tiny hanger-body became the norm. which then spread into editorial, and the overall preferred aesthetic of fashion. but who has that kind of body? other than the freakish few and the unhealthy? girls. young girls who are undeveloped. so yes. gross. non-representative.

what needs to happen, and hopefully will start now, is that designers need to be challenged to present their clothes on all kinds of bodies. which will be harder. i know from styling some plus-sized shoots, things change when you put them on real bodies. it is a good challenge, i think, that makes you think more creatively about space and direction and and and... as apposed to saying: here this thing will look just like it would floating in the middle of the room. tada!!!

Genevieve Savard said...

i hate marc jacobs too.