In The September Issue, one editor both laments and praises Anna Wintour’s visionary decision to start putting stars on the cover of Vogue. Though the editor herself preferred models to grace the cover, she admits that the switch was forward thinking, and that stars are now on the cover of every magazine. Additionally, this weekend I saw a documentary about gender representations in advertising, and how roles of dominance and submission are assigned to men and women respectively based on how their body language is represented in print. It focused on women’s subordination is expressed through physical positions of weakness and infantilization, like recumbent poses, off-balance poses, and particularly women with their fingers in their mouths or holding themselves. All these poses are also sexualized and though they are often strange upon closer inspection, they have become so prominent in images, that they have become ingrained into our consciousness. Additionally, with celebrities being forced to take on additional roles as models, spokespeople, and fashionistas, these poses have become even more integrated into popular culture, no longer in the realm merely of models.
The real question is how these images are taking effect in the real world as they confront us on billboards, in magazines, online, and on TV. And as they have become more accessible given the relatable personalities of stars, how will they further affect society? One point of the documentary is that in a study of rapists and other sexually violent criminals, they admitted to targeting their victims based on their body language. They then identified some of the most common commercial poses described earlier as signals of a victim that most likely would not fight back. Thus, even if the poses themselves are not directly representative of weakness or submission, these images have come to symbolize this through their connection to a specific brand of femininity.
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