Have a look at these images from a Bulgarian magazine photoshoot about beauty. They show a series of women with horrific injuries – black eyes, broken noses, and wounds to their necks and faces.
These shots have been labelled as ‘perverse’ and ‘troubling’ by domestic violence workers. But others have dismissed them as an attempt to shock that’s “hardly the first of its kind”.
The Daily Mail reports:
The magazine’s website, which is not restricted, displays the following warning under the first image, which appears on its homepage: ‘Recommended Parental Controls: pictures are not recommended for persons under 16 years. And for the faint hearted.’
One user wrote underneath: ‘To me this is amazing!! While some may think that this glamorizes violence, I think it makes you think outside of the square to what the photographer was trying to depict.”
But others claim the spread merely builds on a disturbingly vast history of mutilated women in fashion shoots.
Jezebel wrote:
It’s a given that fashion magazines — like other forms of mass media — often aim to shock. Because they like the attention. Because they like the ad dollars. Because they like the rebellious reputation that shocking us squares confers. But it’s still worthwhile to examine the means by which they achieve that shock value. It likes to think that it, in fact, leads those tastes. But much of the imagery the fashion industry uses to communicate its messages at best echoes and at worst reinforces some of the wider culture’s most negative ideas about women and girls.
Your thoughts?
Top Comments
Just plain old tacky to use something like this to gain attention for a campaign. It's not clever, it's not cutting edge, it's gimmicky and cheap.
Having worked in the community sector with women who were victims of violence in the past, let me tell you there is nothing glamourous about violence to anyone - full stop.
I now work as a photographer and yes understand the need for images to grab people's attention... but in this way? It just lacks imagination and creativity to bring it down to such a base level.
Come up with something which has a more positive spin people!
hmm..... i call 'glamourising violence'....and further, 'glamourising violence against women'...why? simple. Where are the corresponding photos that do this in the name of 'high fashion' or cosmetic manipulation ....on men. And I call bullshit on the argument that it's because it's for a women's fashion mag. They have them for guys too.
I just did a google search, and found ONE similar photo of a guy. Not one photoshoot....ONE PHOTO.
These sort of arguments remind me of a lecture I had on language back in my uni days. The basic point was that language, and the specifics of language chosen, inform and drive how you view, and interact with the world....words become views or beliefs. Simplistically, if you constantly talk yourself down, you start to believe it. You refer to women as 'bitches' and 'hoes'...you start to believe it....if the language you choose, or hear, or see, is the language used to denigrate or subjugate another, then that starts to become your world view, and it's not necessarily a conscious decision to make.
Visual imagery is another form of language, so I maintain that the same thing happens with these kind of photos, TV shows, music videos, movies etc etc....we start to get used to it. It stops being shocking. And then you start saying things like 'I don't see what the problem is, it's high fashion, it's meant to be shocking' etc etc...
Show those pictures to someone who hasn't been exposed to these kinds of 'popular' imagery, like someone from an older age group, and just see how shocking it is to them. I for one, am sick. to. death. of it being seen as ok to 'push the boundaries', but only do it with women. Misogynism.