Kids perfectly explain why these high fashion ads are problematic
Kids, in general, don’t necessarily appreciate high fashion, nor do they understand editorial photography, social commentary or visual subtext. But they know when something doesn’t look right, and they are definitely onto something here.
Yolanda Dominguez is a visual artist who focuses on social issues, specifically issues dealing with women’s rights and inequality. Recently inspired by the impact of fashion houses releasing their fall campaigns, Dominguez taped a group of 8-year-olds reacting to some of the top fashion ad campaigns. The video captures all the disturbing double standards and inequality facing women in the fashion industry.
Dominguez says on her website, “This revealing document poses many questions about hidden messages that are launched from the fashion business: why do we link this kind of images with glamour and luxury? why doesn’t anybody denounce this situation?, how do these images influence our visual education?, why do brand support such messages? and what can we do to change this?”
The children’s reaction to ads, for such huge brands as Prada and Louis Vuitton, answer these important questions in the most insightful way. The kids came to the conclusions that women in the ads were “sick” and “hungry,” because of the shady circumstances in which they were posed. Some of the kids were even worried about the women, with one saying, “I’d ask my mum how we could help her so she could be in a shelter for a while and not out in the streets.”
Their reactions reveal a disturbing trend in women’s fashion that reduce women to images of sickly victims in crisis, despite the high fashion clothes they’re sporting. While we’re mostly desensitized to this type of advertising, the kids are still clear-headed enough to be shocked at how different the pictures of the women are from the men (who they notice appear to be posed as “heroes”).
Characterizing the women as “hungry,” or “about to die” should be a stark reminder about how women are portrayed in the media, specifically in the higher end of fashion. To quote a cliché, “kids say the darndest things”—though this time they are providing really smart and relevant social commentary that we should all sit up and listen to.
Watch the entire video— it’s totally illuminating:
(Images via YouTube/Yolanda Dominguez)
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