Fashion models

Following the international furor over Satoshi Kanazawa’s article on the physical attractiveness of blacks, Lee Ellis and Ping He published a study on whether “some  racial or ethnic groups are considered on average more physically attractive than others even by members of other groups.”  Here is their study.

Lee Ellis & Ping He. Race and Advertising: Ethnocentrism or “Real” Differences in Physical Attractiveness? Indirect Evidence from China, Malaysia, and the United States. Mankind Quarterly 2011;51(4):471-489.

Implicit in the concept of ethnocentrism is the idea that people will consider members of their own race or ethnic group to be more attractive than members of other groups. If so, one would expect advertisers to take advantage of such preferences by choosing “local” models when promoting clothing fashions and other products. A contrary view is that judgments of physical attractiveness are to a substantial degree neurologically “hard-wired” and evolved similarly throughout the world. With the assumption that fashion models and manikins are considered highly attractive, the present study recorded the race of models and manikins publically displayed in city malls in China, Malaysia, and the United States. Caucasian (white, European) models were found to be mainly utilized in all three countries, especially in regard to clothing fashion displays. Even advertisements for cosmetics and fashion accessories were “Caucasian-biased” in China and Malaysia although less so than in the U.S. and less so than advertisements for clothing fashions. Findings call into question the relevance of ethnocentrism in determining the choice of fashion models used in advertising, and are instead consistent with other evidence of universal standards of physical beauty that advertisers rely on to help promote their products.

Video time.

When I heard that a fashion model fell to her death in New York City, apparently committing suicide, the first thing that came to my mind was murder even though I didn’t know who this model was and the exact circumstances of her death.  This is a reasonable a priori assumption.  After all, New York City, one of the headquarters for organized international crime, has a very large number of criminal lowlife.  After reading about how Ruslana Korshunova died, I’d bet she was murdered.

A video featuring ‘fat-legged’ Ali Michael on MSNBC and a discussion of her disordered eating behavior in the current edition of Teen Vogue is featured below.

Forbes.com posted an article, by Kiri Blakeley, on how to be a supermodel a few months ago.  It has some shortcomings that need to be addressed.

Some fashion world news of interest.

Since the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue has been heavily promoted recently, it is time to add to the previous discussion of what goes into the selection of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models.  This time some video clips are used.  Videos sometimes speak better than a handful of pictures or mere words.

The following pictures are taken from a Dutch site.  Note the masculinization of the women; make-up serves to make them look a little more feminine.  The Dutch site has 300-plus comments.  Many commentators, most if not all women, point out the masculinization of these women and some wonder how these women got to be models.  When I was a kid, I was stumped myself.  Regular readers of this site should know the answer very well.