There I was, staring at a video clip on an Instagram post of a well known model at a Vogue Party in Paris.As I kept staring , I was a bit mesmerised, then a bit sick.The woman started to look ridiculous, pointless. Shaking the body in her tiny dress for all to us to admire, like and engage. The comments were the usual Instagram comments, pretty false and not genuine : Gorgeous! , inspiring ! love you hun! What a cutie, sweetie and the sort.
Was I having an existential crisis? It could well be a parody and some harmless fun but the post she wrote to accompany her video was very self entitled and quite arrogant. The Queen of England? No way. Her Majesty is way more modest.
The video had thousands of views and I contributed to more views . But it didn’t improve my day, it didn’t make it better, it didn’t inspire me. It made me feel stupid for wasting valuable minutes of my day I could be staring somewhere else. Even if it was just the cat and his playful ways or the foxes entering my garden.
Models : Beautiful women by the grace of good genes. Some of them make a lot of money and are pretty successful in their careers as catwalk queens. They usually have millions of followers on Instagram and we get a sneak peek of their beautiful and sunny lives . But that’s about it really . Models are pretty irrelevant in the bigger picture of society and just being beautiful is not enough to have such a relevant presence everywhere in the world wide media. They are ubiquitous. Nowadays, women have advanced and progressed to make business out of their brains not their bodies.The 90’s are long gone. It’s 2018 but the media for all its advances in the last year, hasn’t taken any notice.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The fashion industry and the model industry is one sided, one dimensional and not inclusive or diverse. Yes , they do have the occasional non-Caucasian model , but it is painfully obvious they are just there to tick the ethnicity box which is disturbing.
Take the Cannes Film Festival this year. It used to be the playground of the A list actresses or just less known actresses and directors and people who give it all to the art of filmmaking, Cannes 2018 and the parade of models walking down the red carpet this year felt a bit tacky. Models who were paid to travel to Cannes on an all expenses paid trip to wear a dress and jewels by so and so. What’s next ? Influencers taking over the most classy red carpet in the world? No please. Thankfully this year, we also had Penelope Cruz and Cate Blanchet and Jane Fonda and many more women who do make films and who do deserve their place in Cannes . Cannes is not the Met Ball.
These models are not role models because they belong to an industry well known for nepotism. Many of the current tops are daughters of, girlfriends of, sons of. They didn’t have to study hard to get to the top. They simply had to be born extremely tall and skinny. They didn’t have to dedicate years to a craft that requieres skills and study and talent. Again, all the had to do was born pretty, or have a famous mum and dad, and be lucky enough to find an agent.Good for them if they earn a lot of money for doing not much but the media needs to stop selling them to us as role models because they are not. Time is up to give media space to the hard working women who are changing this world for the better, who are making it more beautiful thanks to their dedication , their craft, their intelligence, their knowledge. As for models, yes they can do their Instagram posts, and their photoshoots, and get millions for it in the bank but we just don’t need to know about it. Models are no role models, they are irrelevant and they belong to the most ageist industry of them all: The Fashion Industry. Ageism is the enemy of us all women and here we have an industry where unless you are in your early 20’s , you are pretty much done.
The Lady of the World 
The nepotism is rife . The most famous ones at the moment are all daughters of very famous ex models or actresses or people who are already connected. Good points. I guess we need more inspiring role models than people who just walk down a catwalk
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After being exposed quite extensively to the fashion industry I can concur with much of this article. I have also given it deep thought and often strived to find meaning in people I was surrounded by at the fashion shows, magazine parties, on social media, but it was all pretty much the same thing – influencers selling me a product or brand I had no interest in, and models taking selfie after selfie after selfie ad infinitum. I did find some rare exceptions however in models who had other careers, and were highly educated.
How about Cara Delevigne and her recent switch from modelling to acting, and authoring her own novel? And Adwoa Aboah with her Gurls Talk movement? There are also fashion campaigns that sought to highlight diversity and social issues around the world.
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