Vogue giving schoolgirls lessons in self-esteem? Don’t make me laugh!
SWiTCHiNG on breakfast television last week, i was startled to see vogue editor Alexandra Shulman discussing a ‘school’s initiative’ of which she’s part. At first, i thought that instead of jetting around the world attending fashion shows in new season heavily discounted or free designer gear, Ms Shulman herself would be making appearances at comprehensive schools the length and breadth of the land.
But no, it turns out that all vogue is doing is sending out a video and lesson plan to schools for teachers of Year Nine pupils (aged 13 to 14) to use in order to unravel, explain and put into context the smoke and mirrors that go into the making of its glossy pages.
Or rather to peddle its wares in a scheme perfectly timed to coincide with the latest round of international fashion shows.
Let me unveil just what vogue’s curriculum consists of. Shulman’s lesson plan asks that t eachers tell students that ‘ only a very small percentage of the population have the natural build and appearance of a model’.
it details each stage of a fashion magazine shoot. it lists, too, for teachers to read out unquestioningly, the diverse, ‘normal’ people who have been shot by vogue, i ncluding Adele — without mentioning that the magazine failed to show any other part of her body than her carefully airbrushed head! it is, frankly, laughable. What all this amounts to is not vogue admitting that it needs to evolve, and respect its readers a little more.
instead, they are asking young women t o change t heir response to what they see in vogue — to change a response t hat is often visceral, emotional and unwitting.
Shulman says the pictures in her magazine ‘ aspire and entertain’, but she’s being disingenuous. They are designed to sell things.
if readers were to disbelieve the dream they were sold — that if they wear a certain dress, they, too, will look like a model, and get a boyfriend, and find happiness — then vogue would go out of business. it’s as simple as that.
i don’t buy Shulman’s premise t hat what vogue, and other magazi nes, designers, photographers and post-production studio wizards are doing is fantasy, and somehow to be separated from real life.
Fashion is seductive and convincing. it chip, chip, chips away at our selfesteem. Not every young woman’s self- esteem, of course. if you have a protective bubble of a loving family, and good friends, and eagleeyed teachers, then you have a chance to repel these images, like a very good Burberry mac. But for Shulman to say ‘the problem, if there is a problem, comes when people judge themselves against the models they see on the pages of a magazine and then feel that in some way they fall short’ is staggering.
i know from experience that even being fully aware of the reality behind these images — seeing first hand that models have thread veins and acne, that images can be airbrushed, with heads being placed on entirely different bodies (it’s
Mag men In 121 years just four men have been on Vogue’s cover — Richard Gere, George Clooney, LeBron James and
Ryan Lochte
revealed i n the short film that it takes 20 professionals to produce one photo) — does not help.
it cannot reverse what has been affected in the deepest part of your brain, the reptilian cortex buried inside your head, that ‘does not respond to talking therapies’ (thank you, Janet Treasure, professor in psychiatry at Guy’s Hospital).
And the rational part of your brain, the bit that understands Kate Moss doesn’t really look as she does on the June cover of vogue, cannot override the subconscious that says you simply do not measure up.
i was taught to hate my body by an industry that i loved, but that never loved me back.
it’s crushing to see my story being repeated, over and over again, by girls coming after me, who believe the same lies that Shulman repeats in this new film: oh, it’s fantasy, you are not supposed to want to look like these cover girls, they are just an escape, not an aspiration.
Yes, we do need education about this sort of thing in schools. But not from the gamekeepers, the very people who have so much to lose from opening our eyes to their sophistry.