Woman Models

Women Models

When one thinks of models, what color, race, and gender are they? Hopefully in most people’s minds models can be any color, any race, or any gender. True a majority of models are women but there are many male models out there. When you look in a magazine what color and race are the females and/or males in the ads? Usually these women and men are white, especially if one is looking in a popular magazine like Vogue or Cosmopolitan. Another thing to note, in these magazines the models are mostly women. If there are male models in these types of magazines there are either something like an accessory or are selling something to men and are very few in number. In popular culture today, unfortunately not all races are represented. In magazines most of the models are white, a few are black, and the Asian population is barely even represented. Also in popular culture, namely magazine models, it seems that no other race exists.

On the cover or the January 2008 issue of Vogue there is a caption that says “you can’t keep a good woman down.” The editors at Vogue were not referring to women of color when they wrote that, they were referring to Kate Hudson. She graces the cover this month and has an article written about her and her single-motherness. How easy it is for her to raise a child without a father there. No wonder it is easy for her. She is a famous movie star and has a boat load of money to do what she pleases. Not to mention that she is white and most likely lives in a good neighborhood. But what about the women that lives without all that money and in not-so-good neighborhoods? What about the women of color that this caption should be addressing? In this Vogue magazine there is a grossly small amount of women of color represented. Out of the 55 ads in the 190 page magazine, only 10 have women of color models in them. And out of those 10 colored models, only one of them is Asian.

In class the depiction of Asian women in the media was talked about. Usually the Asian women in movies are the small, shy, beauty or the fierce, fighting, karate type. It is hard to find an Asian in movies today that does not fall into these categories. The same representation can be seen in this month’s issue of Vogue. Like stated earlier, only one Asian is represented in these pages. The essay “Lotus Blossoms Don’t Bleed: Images of Asian Women” by Renee E. Tajima says that while the media has advance in the 20th century the depiction of Asian women in it have not gotten any further. The media, movies and television, have a great impact on what is portrayed in magazines. The magazines follow what is popular and right now what is popular is to be skinny, tall, and white. The few daring designers that hire colored models do so with caution. Their colored models have to be just as thin, just as tall, and look just as good as their white counterparts.

Everyone knows that sex sells in advertisements. Many of the ads in Vogue are very sexy. The sexiest of them all, though, is the ad with the Asian woman in it. She is wearing a little shirt dress, not much else, and is lying on the ground with her legs up. You can see that she has long thin legs and a pretty face and that is pretty much it. Her mouth is open and she has a seductive look in her eyes. Also the background is red and there is a red hint on the models skin suggesting seduction and hotness. None of the ads with white models are as sexy as this one. Most men and probably women think that Asian women are sexy and want to be dominated. That is usually how these Asian women are depicted in the movies and the general population accepts this as how every Asian woman is going to be.

The portrayals of sexism do not stop with just the Asians in the magazine, it also moves to black women. There is one ad in particular that looks like no other. It is an ad for baby oil and takes up two pages. There is a black model that is on the left side of the ad and is almost totally dark. There is light shining on half of her face and highlights the smoothness of her skin. She is naked of course because they are trying to sell baby oil and promote that it will give you smoother skin than if one used lotion. What is so striking is not that she is naked but that she is so dark. She looks like she could have come straight from Africa. And to play on her darkness even more the photographer only highlighted half of her face and parts of her legs and arms. None of the white models were