"No Anorexia"? "Body Fascism"? or Shock Style mocks Art again?

by Liberal Airbrush Tue Sep 25, 2007 21:54

The model has a different skin tone on her feet and bum which looks like rigor mortis, but its
impossible to see it correctly on the page. It is not art but visual propaganda. It's a studio shot
set against a screen of some sort and the backround has been manipulated to increase the
starkness of the image- it might as well say 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' or some such idiotic
propaganda. Its a constructed and detailed image that completely lacks any ability to communicate
anything to anyone, you look at her bum and her eyes. The association between the starkness
of the backround, the hunted animal look in the model's eyes and the overt use of red suggests
that its a twee little bit of propaganda that refuses to take on the issues of eating disorders-
put a pool of red between her thighs to remind people that it is propaganda and one of the
consequences of starvation habit is loss of menstrual cycle; but that would be approaching the
truth of it, thus its achieved sublimally by making the by-line scarlet. Of course , many guys
find her attractive . The coyness of the 'artist' is in his refusal to acknowledge that its neither art nor
eye-catching propaganda. Its commercial. Maybe some radical fem group will give her a bit of
body hair and some menses detail. Its as bad as air- brushed Paris Hilton fellating a wristwatch,
with no wrinkles or side-burns in sight. Publish an antidote!

by Elisa O'D Wed Sep 26, 2007 14:42

I can predict that this campiagn will have little to no effect on anorexic men and women.
Its a myth that people become anorexic because they want to look like the models on catwalks. Anorexia is not an issue of poor body image,its an issue about control.People become anorexic because they want to gain some control over their lives and not eating is for them a good way to do this.Most episodes of anorexia start when the patients feel they have lost control of their lives for exmaple exam stress.This being most evident in the college going age group who make up a vast majority of anorexic victims.
So seeing an image of a anorexic girl on a placard will have no affect on your typical anorexic patient as for the majority its not an issue of wanting to look pretty and thin,its an issue of being in complete contol of at least one part of their lives.
Taken from pubmed “Anorexic young women tend to be popular with the opposite sex. They epitomize our cultural definitions of feminine: thin, passive, weak and eager to please. Oftentimes young women report that they are complimented on their appearance right up until they are admitted to hospitals for emergency feeding” . “Anorexics tend to be compliant, approval seeking, conflict avoiding, perfectionist, socially anxious, and obsessive/compulsive, with average or above-average intelligence”
Anorexia like suicde/depression etc isanother way of showing us that in todays society young people just dont feel in control of their lives and future anymore.

by ribbid Wed Sep 26, 2007 17:22

here is a link to an Italian newspaper which has provided a slide show of all the images in differing contexts -
two page advert
http://www.repubblica.it/2006/05/gallerie/cronaca/anore....html
same two page advert but seen over a man's shoulder
http://www.repubblica.it/2006/05/gallerie/cronaca/anore....html
billboard photographed next to other billboard of model with more of suntan & more fat & more muscle.
http://www.repubblica.it/2006/05/gallerie/cronaca/anore....html
another billboard image this time seen over a woman's shoulder
http://www.repubblica.it/2006/05/gallerie/cronaca/anore....html

Again I suppose I ought leave the link to the girl's blog which I published above in the last "sting in the tail" part of the text. Unless you see the images in high resolution, you may confuse the break down of skin at the base of her spine for underwear. Anyway at her blog you can read her thoughts (if you read French) and of course look at her selection of photos. She's an actress who has subsisted on milky coffee for seven years.
http://isabellecomedienne.vox.com/
___________________________________

Every now & again one has to really draw peoples' attention to links. If it appears with a green line under it, it is a hyperlink which brings you to another place on the internet. This is a useful way of directing the reader to more information, without actually having to copy all the information from the other places - for reasons of copyright, publishing guidelines or whatever. But & this is not sarcasm it is true, I have found over the years that just as people don't like looking up footnotes in books they feel they're made read (& often examined on) they likewise have a habit of not using links or only following links to other websites with names they recognise. I could explore that another day..,

The story is now in English language media. "The Sun" doesn't really have categories, but "The Guardian" and "The Times" put in their "Fashion" bit.

Lastly to say last night Spanish (but not Catalan) telly took this story up with a vigour. Since the Cibelles fashion polemic when one of the 7 main global fashion designer gigs banned half the models for being too thin, they pretend to take this stuff very seriously. Of all the sufferers of eating disorders current or recovered who were interviewed along with the girl in the photo herself, I'm only going to bring attention to one psychologists comment : No matter what one the photographer Toscani a limit has been set in the minds of the young which undermines the idea of the Cibelles "height / weight ratio" (which in any case has been rejected by the London & Milan fashion industry) - so as I told you above in the "sting & tail" she is 1.65 metres tall and weighs 37 kilos -

I've no more to contribute to this. Except it's not always how you see yourself that determines your health. We must rely on others to tell us we are haggard, too thin, too fat - & that is the objective space where body fascism can find the soil to grow in a wider society which is incapable of looking at itself in the mirror & saying "We're fucked up".

by Shocked Thu Sep 27, 2007 19:43

When we dryly surmise that the diseases are about control- when everything feels outside of
that particular ability to control the body and then look at the image. It is truly shocking, it is
possibly ultimately pornographic:- This is an image of someone who is dying and selling it!

Focus groups pay theorists and counsellors millions to produce images and lecturers for
health professionals who are dealing with eating disorders and are trained to 'look' at what
happens to a body when a psychosis takes over. This clinician exploitation and abuse
of a young woman's poor body image is unbelievable, it allows a voyeurism that actually
removes the words from the mouth as I try to formulate a reaction. It lacks respect. It lacks
dignity. it lacks privacy.

For any emergent anorectic- ana cultist:- you do not lose your breasts or the shape your
uterus creates in you belly, she retains the remmant of that but the girl is ill. as to the
visual art and propagandist aspect of the poster:- its child abuse- young woman abuse
and her collaboration astounds me.

I do not think or feel that someone's tragedy is a marketable item.

by Dr Nick Sun Sep 30, 2007 22:56

"When we dryly surmise that the diseases are about control"

I agree with everything you said but with all due respect I am not 'dryly surmising' anything. These are facts.Anorexia IS an issue about countrol not about about wanting to look pretty/skinny or whatever vain advertising the Italian goverment are uselessly persuing.

Its a scary fact that there over 200,000 people in Ireland with eating disorders and only one bed (in Loughlinstown) set aside in the whole of Ireland for Bullimia/Anorexia patients.

by Ana Mon Oct 01, 2007 19:59

I always understood diseases or body dysmorphia to be a 'fear of', rather than an 'urge to' control.
Its not about control (the image), but about fear, which is why it's animal -like and why the
'shock artist' is abusing the woman's image. no doubt to make a lot of money. complete amorality
basically.

by you'll get that Thu Mar 06, 2008 23:37

Following on from his billboard photos of an anorexic, the Italian shock-artist Oiliviero Toscani (the subject of this thread) has launched a new series of images depicting two naked children - one male titled "abuser" the other female titled "victim".

Italy together with Spain leads richer Europe (remember we have a two tier Europe & Bertie to thank for that) in Gender related violence & murder. In Spain alone 14 women have been murdered by their partners or ex-partners since January 1st. Italy comes in a bit higher - 24 women have "got that which never ought have come to them"..,

italian coverage including the image
http://qn.quotidiano.net/2008/02/27/67930-scatto_toscan...shtml
http://www.imgpress.it/notizia.asp?idnotizia=32110&idSe...one=2

So far the only people getting upset are those termed the "radical feminists" who quite rightly decry that Gender violence is not about Gender, it is about conditioning. The same conditioning which puts a naked girl with anorexia on billboards next to women in push-up bras come to think of it..,

by iosaf Sun Jun 14, 2009 22:59

The editor of the British & Irish "Vogue" magazine, Alexandra Shulman OBE, one of the most influential "journalists" in the fashion industry, launched yesterday a fresh campaign against so-called "zero size" models. http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women...3.ece

Only the Spanish state has passed legislation to prevent models whose weight index and height ratio fall below what is generally considered by Health services to be healthy. Italian society and Berlusconi controlled media quite infamously railed against decisions to ban malnutritioned or anorexic Italian models from the annual "Cibeles" fashion gig in Madrid. Earlier this year both French and Italian fashion houses decided to withdraw their support for the annual Barcelona fashion show and thus pressured its organisers to relocate the event, quite sickeningly & without any irony called "Bread and Butter", to Germany's Berlin.

This summer the successful comedian, Sasha Baron Cohen's new movie "Bruno" the follow up to his Ali G and Borat series, will hit our cinemas and pirate downloads. The release will conincide with Audrey Tatou's cinematic portrayal of Coco Chanel.

I hope the comedic genius, Sasha Baron Cohen will in addition to lampooning the fashion and entertainment industries as well as the hyper-commercialised and superficial gay consumerist identity also move to take part in the campaign to stop eating disorders in European societies. Whilst I also hope the French actres Audrey Tatou will use some of her media promotional space to also tackle these social and moral issues.

Ending anorexia and bulemia, stopping body fascism and ending obesity shall be nothing less than an extraordinarily challenging process which will require not only a fundamental shift in how young people of both genders are taught to see themselves and each other but taking on pillars of the globalised capitalist system.

I have no doubt that such a fundamental shift is intrinsicably linked to the struggle against late capitalism and part and parcel of the liberation and emancipation of workers in the third world, workers in the first world and what I can only describe as the utter perversion and subversion of liberal progress which ought allow all individuals to enjoy their clothing and dress how they want without restriction but also enjoy the diversity of the human body form. However, the diversity of the human form, under any aesthetic consideration (that most difficult philosophical area of what is unquantifiable and stands up to no logical empericism) ought not enjoy sanctioning or passively encouraging the decision by young people to systematically starve themselves to death.

It is with a poignant sadness, I ping this article I wrote under the name "ribbid" almost two years ago and report that the young anorexic who featured in the billboard images seen in Italy by the Benetton photographer has died.

Isabelle Comedienne's body finally gave up. Tragically she never did get to stay or even merited an invitation to Mr Berlusconi's Sardinian villa.

Even though she hasn't been in fashion for 2 years - her body fascism death merits a note.

by ribbid - (iosaf) Wed Dec 29, 2010 18:59

The fashion pages of 20 minutes Swiss (french) edition have reported & are being bounced as reporting that isabelle Caro (whose anorexia was photographed in both an attempt to "highlight" such things as much as promote her career) died in November of complications arising from her anorexia. (20 minutes is one of those advert splashed rags which clammer for commuters attention every morning globally & has only one good thing to say in its stead : it refuses adverts from brothels on continental Europe where normally one page of commercial newspapers is occupied by classidied adverts offering "relaxation & relief")
link http://www.20min.ch/ro/entertainment/people/story/-Isab...25363
its bouncing in the "serious press" http://next.liberation.fr/mode/01012310591-la-mannequin...cedee

So thus it would seem that I was premature in my last comment when I announced her death.

regardless she's probably not been newsworthy nor a celebrity since I reported her last "death"

by . Wed Dec 29, 2010 23:00

Link here > http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Muere/Isabelle/C...3/Tes

by Peadarr Fri Jan 07, 2011 18:14

It is a mental illness.
A form of depression.
It has existed as long as humanity.
(As have all other forms of suicide.)

Don't blame modern advertising for a suicidal mental illness which is as old as the hills.

by . Sat Jan 08, 2011 08:53

Whilst you may avoid the report above you here, the discussion was not always about the pathology of anorexia, but
about how Toscani used the image of a young dying woman to shock people, to advance his notoriety and in a manner
that is totally amoral.

Evidently the image of a dying woman posted onto huge billboards is something that some people can react to
with :

i) Complacence
ii) Lack of inquisitiveness
iii). Yawnlike boredom.

What worries me about your response is that you lack the ability to deconstruct the image and particluarly the
glossy sheen of an advertising mentality. here we have little in the way of resources for women and girls who are
dying of anorexia and for those who fought the battle and are suceeding against the disease. I'd draw a parallel
here with the progressive disease of alcoholism , lots of resources there. Plenty of cash to support people through
the problems but in cases of diseases that effect young mostly adolescent girls we achiev a complacency, an ignorance
and a lack of funding.

Maybe girls don't really matter and the issue is wholly ignored by a community which takes the diseases of
young males much more seriously, who knows ? In fact I'd mostly say that we are in the habit of celebrating
and encouraging drink and alcoholism to the detriment of all else. One look at the behaviour of the Dáil
incumbents and their all night benders would point to our political and social love affair with pissedness.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Sat Jan 08, 2011 12:26

' Dont blame modern advertising for a suicidal mental illness which is as old as the hills.'

Modern advertising may not be the underlying root of the problem, but it certainly feeds the self-obsession and anxiety that fan the flames of social insecurity and hankering after falsified 'norms' held up as bait by this pernicious pyramid of professional polishers of shite into gold nuggets.

Nor do I think that young men are being positively prioritised. Check the comparative suicide figures, and recognise that a lot of the alcoholic frenzy is symtomatic of these same underlying, socially driven insecurities and aspirations (yes, mostly male-dictated, but also mammy-driven) to fit into these preconstructed, corporate-dictated 'norms'. Nor is that alcohol self-medication restricted to the lads.

Advertising and PR are the cutting edge, state -of-the-art, front line of our all-pervasive propaganda of the hard corporate/consumerist Right.

We underestimate it to our cost, for the very reason of its all-pervasive apparent innocuousness. It (along with the dumbed-down accompanying media infotainment industry) has become to our secular age what the bells and smells of the churches were to earlier generations, the pap that blocks collective communication and thinking and assures us that ' alls right with world...'.

The fact that the chatteratti and media commentariat are so totally in sync with the competitive imperative of this mindset makes it particulary difficult to challenge without being dismissed as a begrudging whinging wimp who cant stand the heat in their designer kitchen. They have climbed the ladder far enough to have a vested interest in not having it disturbed.

by Peadarr. Sat Jan 08, 2011 13:10

Anybody using the photo of a clearly mentally ill young woman for political purposes is a bit below the belt.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Sat Jan 08, 2011 13:35

is precisely where these lads aim. Its where their own brains are located so they are inclined to presume we are all working of the same set of instinctive drives. being clever they then manipulate the brains of the dumbed-down and exhausted populace with their imagistic wizardry. They even give each other awards for manipulative effectiveness. So long below the bely they vanished up their own sphincters in their early years. Few recover. Best read I've come across of the mentalities involved has to be the movie 'How to get ahead in advertising'.

by Peadarr Sat Jan 08, 2011 13:49

Capitalists do not use disturbed Anorexic girls on the brink of death in their advertisments, like Indymedia has just done Mr Opus.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Sat Jan 08, 2011 14:21

Dear old capitalism will use war, slavery, prostitution(including cuddly kids), drugs, weapons of mass detruction, poison, blackmail, subversion, lies, and anything else it can get its mitts on to accumulate further capital to invest in making further capital and so ad infinitum til the planet has been ground to a polluted slagheap where even the cockroaches wish they'd taken that ticket on their flight home to Mars. If given half a chance.

If you dont believe me read its history. It incorporates everything from water to wavelenghts, and from the Vatican cult to the Zionist dream.

You underestimate its totalitarian ends.

by Peadarr Sat Jan 08, 2011 14:28

I know it already Opus.
.

by opus diablos - the regressive hypocrite party Sat Jan 08, 2011 14:59

but there is a yawning gap back there in your contention that indymedia(and I hold no brief) ' use anorexic girls in their advertising', while capitalism does not.

What do you think the fashion industry has been doing for decades?And advertising and Hollywood and manufacturing industries have parallel histories of using humans as disposable labour units for no other purpose than profit generation.And once their local legislatures file laws to curtail the worst excesses they simply outsource and offshore their operations, just like the financial gurus who sub-primed their bondage from their insulated havens.
And I dont think the illustration above can be classified as an indymedia 'advertisement'.

Do elaborate, though. I believe these are central issues insufficiently aired.

by Peadarr Sat Jan 08, 2011 15:37

I just repair broken computers Opus.

by V for vendetta Sat Jan 08, 2011 16:35

advertisers deliberately set out to create insecurities in people that their products will "fix". Thats the whole point.
They are in no small part responsible for the preoccupation of generations of young girls with their weight and the perception they have that freaks of nature constitute the body norm to which they must aspire to be thought of as attractive.

this is a very striking graphic example of how images are massaged by the advertisers to set impossible standards of beauty fore young girls. very illuminating
http://demo.fb.se/e/girlpower/retouch/retouch/index.html

well worth a look. send to all the women you know.

also, check out "the ad and the ego" documentary

part1 (low quality sorry)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj_rwB5iHJQ
part2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlIFs6Z1VWE

Here's a good follow up video illustrating some of the points they made with real adverts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7sxiaExVGg

and this good site. Adbusters, famous for their "buy nothing day".
http://www.adbusters.org/

enjoy some nice sunday decontextualisation on one of the most insidious devious and harmful industries on the planet.(since they drive sales of all the useless capitalist guff we fill our lives with and the associated industrial machines churning the shit out in third world countries with associated rape of earths resources and pollution and exploitation of workers and profitable child labour sweatshop enclaves, none of which would exist without "demand"

more good related stuff....

story of stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8
story of bottled water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se12y9hSOM0
story of cosmetics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfq000AF1i8
story of electronics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_7i6T_H78
story of cap n trade
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA6FSy6EKrM

she has her own youtube channel here
http://www.youtube.com/user/storyofstuffproject

and just for fun, here's bill's take
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo

by further controversy Sat Jan 08, 2011 21:15

I think that this pertains here but am willing to be proven wrong : the socipathy of malignant control by a Twitter
user:

http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/2011/01/vile-tweet-from-....html