Violent Fashion

Posted by: sj7g09 on: November 30, 2009

• In: Artists | inside/outside & self-directed
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I started getting more of an interest in fashion again, thinking about whether industries like fashion can be seen as being detrimental to women through objectifying them. In my opinion, more mainstream media like fashion, television, etc. gives more concentrated stereotyping of women than the more demonified medias such as pornography, particularly as it reaches more people, more frequently – in fact, there’s a pretty much constant exposure to media images of women, on television, in magazines, on the internet, in everyday advertising. These images are just as much generalisations and unreal presentations of women as pornography is, so why aren’t they seen as dangerous to women, but instead are accepted, normal – mainstream views form around this sort of media, so it becomes entrenched in the public consciousness.

Is it that media images are backed by powers that can’t be discredited, while pornography is a media that has many powerful institutions against it – most notably governments and religious groups – ? I’m never quite sure what exactly my problem is with fashion, advertising, television, etc… I tend to expose myself to this sort of media because the stereotyping and vaccuousness makes me so angry, but, when I think about it, I’m not sure whether I’d seek to change it, because it’s a relevant part of culture, but then, if going by the principle that pornography is dangerous to women because it presents objectification of and violence towards women, this sort of media would surely be as detrimental to women.

image by Melanie Pullen

So, given a different context, these images would almost certainly be seen as extreme pornography, but are instead exhibited as art because they have been classified as fashion photography. While the photographs are fantasy, they are based on vintage crime scene photographs, recreating those scenes dressing the models in haute couture clothing. I think I probably misunderstand fashion photography in the sense that I see it as a form of advertising, a way to document and present clothing, while most of the fashion photography I’ve seen doesn’t accurately show the clothing at all, so all I can assume is that the images focus on the model to present the clothing as desirable. I’d say that a lot of advertising works in the way of making the viewer believe that they want a product because of the people used in the advertising, and a lot of that is done through the use of attractive women – you either want to be the woman, or you want to fuck the woman, or both. Going with this idea, I find it somewhat confusing that injured or dead women are used in advertising or for aesthetics, but then maybe that proves that there’s some part of the human psyche that desires to see women in this state, but not necessarily in reality. More that people have a desire to see this aesthetically – for example, why dead or dying women have been used in art and literature throughout history, romanticising female death – but in fantasy, far removed from reality.

image by Melanie Pullen

In my opinion, these images of fashion photography, through looking so glossy, aesthetically pleasing, removed from reality, become glamorised, even beautiful, despite what they are showing. If we’re going to be scared of pornography showing fake dead or dying women, then surely widespread media that isn’t controlled by censorship laws and is ‘above’ low culture is much more worrying. For example, Melanie Pullen’s photographs are not only exhibited as art, used in advertising very prominent designers, but also have been turned into advertising and fashion in themselves – they’re printed onto t-shirts that apparently sell for $125 each. I find it hard to try to go along with the ideas used by pro-censorship campaigns, but if I try to, then it seems like images like this would be far more damaging than the images in splatter films or violent pornography, because, seeing as they appear under the heading of fashion, or are potentially worn on t-shirts by the general public, you can be exposed to these images unsolicited.

image by Melanie Pullen

Photos like this, putting dead women into everyday environments or situations, would maybe be interpreted as misogynistic, encouraging real-world violence against women because the scene and situation can be seen as attractive….? But then, I’d say that arguments like that ignore fantasy/reality. Also, the people who try to push censorship on images like this ignore that they weren’t intended as an incitement of violence to women, while also ignoring that there are other things that impact women much more negatively, particularly in that through scapegoating violent media like pornography as causing violence towards women, we don’t try to look any further to find other causes of gender inequality, and disregard the subtle mistreatments of women in every day life – for example, casual gender roles, women earning less, the treatment of women in rape trials, or just generally how women are portrayed by mainstream media.

image by Melanie Pullen (I’ve just noticed a striking difference in these images, with Pullen’s image being much darker, more voyeuristic, as though finding a discarded body in the wilderness, and the clothes on the model sexualises her… I like this image a lot more now that I’ve noticed these things, as I think striking clothing like this sexualises and objectifies the female body more than if the model was naked, because appearance and attractiveness is so based on clothing. The image very much reminds me of the sort of works of the past that idealise female death, leaving the body as a static, perfect object – for example, Snow White.)

image from AVgirls.info

I just wanted to draw a, hopefully quick, comparison between these images. Aesthetically very similar, but which is more ‘pornographic’? The top one is art, but surely should be considered more pornographic as pornography has become synonymous with violence towards women, whereas the latter is not fine art photography, so perhaps would be seen as more pornographic in that it objectifies a woman, and the website it comes from is probably more linked to pornography than the work of an artist. But then, maybe now that extreme pornography showing dead or dying women is outlawed, the work of artists such as Melanie Pullen will become more frequently used as pornography as there are fewer options – seeing as it’s being used in the same way as illegal pornography, does that mean that it should be legislated against because, in people using it for sexual arousal, they may then choose to act out the fantasies depicted in the art? Getting rid of certain material gets rid of the symptom but not the cause, but what is the cause of fetishes like this, and why would it need to be destroyed anyway?

(Edit: I’ve just realised that with Pullen’s images, I hadn’t actually considered why the women are dead, in the literal sense of cause of death. Because they’re attractive women in nice clothes, there’s the assumption that there’s something sexual about their death, which shows the entrenchment of the sexualisation of women in society, and that their death was caused by a man, their death was somehow because of their attractive feminity – much like how the critics of splatter films assume that the films sexualise violence to women because it is feminine death, although I’d argue that this isn’t misogynistic, just a view onto current media. There’s no actual link here, there’s nothing that suggests the deaths were caused by men, or were sexual – it’s only the mind that creates this, suggesting that there is both a fear of this, and a desire for it. These are the sort of images that people can project these fears and/or desires onto without even realising it, by constructing a story, even if that story will be heavily influenced by stereotyping, media images and schemas.)