I know you’re looking at me

Remember the other day when I wrote about Barbie, at the casting call for the big score for Aveda in New York? She’s one of the very noticeable models from Vision. Sure they all are good looking, though there is a pleasant range, and it’s clear that there is not one style of beauty that is being what? offered? But Barbie can be picked out from the crowd because of the color of her hair (very light blond), traditional, fragile beauty, and shapely though still thin figure.

What also struck me about Barbie the other day, and what prompts me to write about her now, was that she had an overly self-aware stillness to her. She moved slowly, carefully, with her head held just so as though she knew she was being watched. Not cautious, more compliant. Like, the world is watching me and I have to let them look, and I have to be careful not to interrupt so I give them the opportunity to see what they want to.

A loss of self.

I realize that her behavior bothered me because it represents what I fear the most for women in general, and what I fear is at stake with modeling. The loss of self. That these young women will become so attuned to being all that is expected of them, all that they are told to be; that they will succumb to the criticisms and competitions of the surface of being female in our society that they will lose what is unique and special about themselves. In Barbie’s case, her natural action of ‘being’ herself seemed lost in favor of this stillness to let others look at her. It felt sad and a bit creepy. Of course I don’t know this young woman at all and she may be naturally very quiet and introverted, and I may be reading into it.

But observing her conjured up my fears for these young women, and for us all.

The counter to this, of course, is the use of beauty as power. But this young woman did not look powerful to me. She looked cautious, quiet and even a little scared.

~ by modelmom on July 20, 2008.