Why are classic boring advertisements always aimed at women?

Have you ever noticed how these days the quality of advertising has improved?

The commercial break often is more entertaining than the TV-shows that are interrupted by them. It’s because marketers feel like people have become so overexposed to advertising that people have become extremely hard to influence.

To respond to this marketers have adopted a new vision on their customers. They no longer see their customers as people that need to buy their products. They see their customers as people that need to enjoy their brand and products. They try to make as intelligent, original and entertaining advertising as they can in order to influence their potential customers.

Have you ever noticed how about 95% of this new original, creative and entertaining advertising is directed to men (or both men and women)?

Have you ever noticed how about 95% of the old classic boring advertising is directed at women?

Marketing actions directed to women are usually clearly made by marketers that seem to assume that their customers are a brainless herd that needs to be directed in the right direction, their direction.

It often excels in a lack of originality. If you’ve seen one advertisement for washing products you’ve seen them all. If it’s something you haven’t seen a zillion times before, it usually is because it wants to give you something new to be insecure about. ‘You may not smell how much your house stinks, but other people do.’ ‘Have you ever thought about how ugly your armpits are?’

On top of that advertisements that are aimed at women, usually have a woman that you are supposed to want to be. In Italy where everybody has brown hair, this woman you should aspire, usually is a blonde. In Asia, Africa and Latin-America she usually is fair-skinned. So the message of these advertisements is: ‘you may not ever be able to be blonde like me, but you do can have a house that smells like mine’ or ‘you won’t ever be white like me, but you do can get lovely armpits like mine.’ One of the few examples of a diverse advertising campaign is the Ikea-catalog, Ikea, coming from the country with all the natural blondes.

Advertising directed at women often assumes women are stupid. It encourages old insecurities and creates new ones. The marketing industry is not dominated by men. There are nearly just as many men as women in it. In companies aimed at women there usually are more women than men working in the marketing department.

So the problem isn’t that men use marketing to make women feel down so they can more easily suppress them. The problem is that there are too many women and men in the marketing industry that see (other) women as idiots. The problem is that there aren’t enough women and men that are brave enough to create a marketing strategy aimed at making women enjoy their brand.

Victoria's Secret

I have written this post because I am participating in the FFB round-up of this month. I had written a post earlier that I find better suited for the round-up, but you’re supposed to submit only recent blogposts (I think), so I have decided to join the club of people that nag about Victoria’s Secret.

I feel like Victoria’s Secret often is depicted as the enemy of women. It has turned into the symbol of how women are objectified, but I find this extremely exaggerated.

First of all, they have advertisements and catwalk shows with women in lingerie, because it’s a lingerie brand. I don’t know how else you’re going to show lingerie.

Secondly, they indeed use only beautiful women, but so do all other fashion/beauty brands and 90% of all non-fashion/beauty brands.

They could also indeed use more different body types, but they don’t make bras for different body types. Their bras only go up to DD. I don’t think they don’t make these, because they hate women with big breasts. I think it’s more likely because bigger breast have different needs. A larger version of a good bra for an A-cup is not a good bra for an F-cup, because it wouldn’t offer enough support. Bras for big breasts are another product and it requires another expertise, an expertise that Victoria’s Secret doesn’t have.

It also is true that only a few women can still feel comfortable with their own body after watching a Victoria’s Secret advertisement, but removing beautiful women from the streetview is not the right way to make women feel satisfied with their own bodies. You can’t blame beautiful women for making you feel ugly. There will always be people that are more beautiful than you and you should just get over that.

Victoria’s Secret sometimes is accused of exploiting their angels. These angels are usually already high-earning models. They don’t need to do a Victoria’s Secret runway show. They can easily say no. Compared to runway shows of other brands, Victoria’s Secret probably is one of the best employees. Other fashion brands use underaged models. Other fashion brands prefer models with a certain ‘aesthetic’ that you can only achieve by not eating. If a model doesn’t speak English it’s not a problem, because than she won’t be able to say she doesn’t want to do something or to complain she hasn’t been paid. That is what I call exploiting.

The Victoria’s Secret angels also are criticized for objectifying themselves, but I think if women want to walk around in their underwear it’s not wrong as long as it is their own decision. Some women want to wear a veil and some women want to wear mini-skirts and if you would ever have talked to either of them, you would know that both these women usually are blessed with an incredibly big mouth. What women wear says nothing about how much they submit themselves to men. It says something about where they draw the line on how much of their body they want to show to the world.

If you want to read the blogpost I had written earlier on fashion and sexuality, you can read it here.

Madonna and aging

As a woman gets older she is expected to keep her beauty and physical youth, but the pressure to do anything with her life experience is much lower if not non-existent. When Madonna turned 50 she received a big applause for having preserved her beauty, but I didn’t feel like applauding. I didn’t understand why a music artist that has never written a song on her own and that hardly ever sings live should deserve any applause. 

A lot of people found it sexist how the media was focused on her age and her looks. I was more disturbed that nobody seemed to notice that after all these years she didn’t ever try to be more than just the packaging of her songs. I can’t imagine a man would be taken serious as a music artist for over 25 years if he would be more focused on his looks than on his music.

Madonna is the prototype of the female music artist and when they look for a new female music artist, they look for a new Madonna. They will first search for someone with the right looks, good dancing skills and maybe good vocals too. Whether or not she writes her own songs is not even considered. Women are just packaging for songs men wrote and Madonna has perfected the art of being packaging.

But do people that listen to music from a female artist really care more about the packaging than the content? I think you find the answer in MySpace. If you discovered a song you would like on MySpace, it was easy to send it to your friends and they could easily send it to theirs. Nobody would consider how many other people might like it. The people would only consider how much they liked it themselves. It was a democracy far away from business decisions. And who did MySpace discover? Lilly Allen, the type of pretty girl you pass by, but a pretty girl that would just make good music. A pretty girl that gave up, because as soon as she left her space on MySpace it would turn out that the world cared more about her pregnancies and her weight than about the music she put her hart and soul in. And that’s what I thought was truly sexist. 

War and fashion

“…the charming full skirts falling to just below the knee did suggest a decorous army wife in olden times…” I think the person at style.com that commented on the Burberry Spring Summer 2012 doesn’t have a clue idea of what it’s like to be an army wife. If someone you love is at the battlefield, you couldn’t possibly care less about being ‘decorous’.

I don’t understand why the fashion world keeps on referring to the military and occasionally even glorifying it. War is something awful and if you would actually understand what it is, you couldn’t possibly feel ‘inspired’ by it. War only leads to the suffering of innocent people, while those that started the war hardly ever go to the battlefield. They rather enjoy their newly acquired status by surrounding themselves with bodyguards and women that are drawn to their power or women that know they don’t have a choice other than pretending they care about that.

Another example: the Michael Kors spring/summer 2012 fashion show seemed to be inspired by Africa and the military. Knowing how much the people in Africa suffer from armed conflicts, I find it two things you can’t put together. A few of the outfits of Michael Kors even looked very much like the uniform of Congolese soldiers: not really the greatest defendants of human rights. On top of that, the handles of his handbags reminded me of bullet belts for automatic guns. Even though I suspect he’s oblivious enough not to know whose look he’s copying. I still don’t understand how you can be inspired by the look of Congolese soldiers, even if it’s not consciously. The people from Congo that you should be inspired by are the ones that don’t carry guns.

Dutch on style.com

Hihi, style.com used a Dutch word on its website: 'echt' it means 'truly, real, geninuine'. Does this mean Dutch is the nouveau French?

London fashion week Spring 2012

London fashion week always if full of shows you either love or hate. And below are the 3 shows I loved the most.


Emilio de la Morena


Even though everybody is pressured to be pretty, wearing clothes that make you look prettier is often seen as unacceptable and superficial. In some subgroups eating disorders and plastic surgery are more tolerated than wearing clothes that make you look prettier. I think people that had plastic surgery or that have an eating disorder are ten times more vain and superficial than people that wear pretty clothes, because an eating disorder or plastic surgery is a much bigger sacrifice than wearing pretty clothes. For this reason I like it when a designer makes pretty wearable clothes, especially if their clothes say ‘I am a pretty girl’ instead of ‘I want to be a pretty girl’. Something I believe Emilio de la Morena has succeeded in.

Peter Jensen


When I looked at Peter Jensen's retro-inspired clothes, I felt like he had a real woman in his mind instead of just a girl that loves buying expensive quirky clothes. And he did have a real woman in his mind: Nina Simone, a black musician from the fifties with quite a reputation and a lot of soul. Fifties nostalgia always has more appeal, when the muse is a girl waiting to break free, than when the muse is the fifties housewife from the commercials waiting for her cupcakes to rise.

Roksanda Ilincic


Roksanda Ilinic warped women’s fashion of all decades since the forties in one collection: eighties pink, sixties blue, nineties grunge and silhouettes of the forties and fifties. A tribute to the women that learnt to take care of themselves, the women that were glad their men were back and the war was over, the women that wanted love, peace and understanding, the women that wanted more and the women that had enough.

New York fashion week Spring 2012

The centre point of NY fashion week was men. Either the clothes aimed to repel men, either the clothes were aimed at appealing to men, desperately. A total waste of time, if you ask me, straight men don’t really care about what clothes you put on. They picture you without clothes on anyway.

A few shows were aimed at appealing to little girls, which I did like. Because when I look at a fashion show I always wonder if I would have liked it just as much when I was a kid, if no, than I put it in the category ‘temporary fashion, eternally ugly’. Oscar de la Renta made a collection that would have made me swoon as a kid: big skirts, lace, feathers, everything. As an adult I still like those things and I still can’t afford them. Jenny Packham also made a collection I would have loved as a kid: flowy fabrics, fairy colors, flowers and sequins. As a grown-up I don’t love it as much as I would have as a kid, but I still like it. It makes me nostalgic about the times I would build camps with my friends, while we were dressed up like a princess.

The collections I liked the most were the ones from Vena Cava, Milly and Jason Wu, because I like them today just as much as I would have as a kid. Vena Cava was very much Classic Hollywood goes to Africa. The earthy colours made it grounded, the bright orange would light it up, the seventies glamour would add the chic and the big chunky jewelry would take the seriousness off. I find this one of the few collections that uses elements of traditional African wear without making it look like some kind of fetish.

Vena Cava Spring 2012

These pictures are property of Vena Cava. Do not republish without their permission.

I honestly never heard of Milly before, but I did like it. Because when I would try to find an outfit for a job interview, I would find it extremely hard to find one that would make me look like the interesting person I described in my resume, while I would still show that I would take the job seriously. Business like clothes would make me look like a little girl drowning in a suit that wasn’t meant for her and the more casual clothes would make me look as if my only 5 year plan was getting married and making babies. Catwalk outfits often are extremely inappropriate to wear in daily life, but the outfits of Milly were very wearable and a lot of them were even perfect for business.

When designers choose to revive the past, it often looks like nothing more than a ‘copy paste’ from the past. It often ends up looking even more old-fashioned than the original. Jason Wu is one of the few that knows how to translate it in a whole ‘new look’. Michelle Obama is a very smart woman with good taste in clothes and in men. I think Jason Wu deserves a position at Dior.

Fashion, drugs and fair trade

This month’s theme on the Feminist Fashion Bloggers’s website is ethics. And I’m a good girl so I always do as I’m told, unless I do the exact opposite. So below is my opinion on fair trade.

I think there are two things that don’t go together and that is: telling people they should buy fair trade and taking drugs. There is absolutely not a single industry in this world that causes more harm than the drugs industry. And I’m not talking about drug addicts. I’m talking about the people that make it and that bring it to you.

Below are some reasons why some people seem to think that the drugs industry isn’t that bad:

It’s not my fault. It’s because it’s illegal. If drugs would be legal, we could also make fair trade drugs.

• Using drugs is not going to make them legal.

The money from drugs trade is used to support rebel armies that try to overthrow the violent, cruel regime of their countries.

• They use violence to (try to) overthrow this regime. History will tell you that rebel armies that overthrow a regime with violence hardly ever become a democracy, if never.

It creates opportunities for a lot of people that really have no other solutions.

• So do sweatshops.

I also think it’s very suspicious that there is more demand for fair trade clothes and food than for fair trade oil. The oil industry is in my opinion the number two industry responsible for human suffering. And it do is legal, so there is no reason why oil can’t be made fair trade. I think it’s because clothes and food are seen as an expression of your personality and that oil isn’t: ‘You are what you eat’ and ‘Fine feathers make fine friends.’ There is no saying about how the kind of gas you tank says something about who you are. I think the reason people buy fair trade often isn’t because they are someone that wants to change the world, but because they want to be someone that tries to save the world.

I still think it’s a good thing to buy fair trade food or clothes, but if you want to change the world, you’re going to have to do more than just buy stuff. Buying fair trade food or clothes do are steps in the right direction, but it are small steps and you can take bigger ones.

What you want and what you can get

I want clothes

That flatter my body

That’ll always stay with me

That express how I’m feeling

That respect the world I live in

What you can get is clothes

That only fit some people

That only last a season

That are what everybody’s wearing

That above all, respect profit-making

Be a man. Are women's sports not real sports?

When feminists talk about the limited coverage of women’s sports, they usually focus on sports like soccer, football, basketball and so on, probably because these sports get the most coverage throughout the world. These are all sports that are considered as typically male sports. Apparently the world hasn’t noticed yet, that sports that are seen as typically female aren’t even anywhere to be found on the sports page.

Are traditional women’s sports less interesting to watch? No, I think people do enjoy watching cheerleading or dancing for example. Do we do want to watch typical women’s sports like cheerleading and dancing, but do we don’t like to see cheerleaders or dancers compete? Well no, judging by the incredible amount of movies about evil cheerleaders and dancers fighting each other to get a spot in the spotlight, I think most people love seeing cheerleaders and dancers compete.

So apparently we do enjoy watching cheerleaders or dancers compete with their friends/frennemies, but we don’t enjoy seeing them compete together with their friends/team-mates against other teams.

I think it’s because there is a tendency for people to enjoy things that confirm their vision on the world. Racist white people often enjoy black gangster hip hop a whole lot more than non-racist white people. Sexist men get turned off when their precious girlfriend enjoys football more than they do. And apparently people seem to like it when cheerleaders or dancers fight each other instead of being nice to each other, because they seem to assume that the only thing cheerleaders and dancers excel at are catfights.

Do people believe that cheerleaders and dancers love to catfight? Or is it based on truth, is cheerleading and dancing a sport appealing to those who love to catfight?

Even though there usually do is one cheerleader that leads the team, it still is mainly a team sport. A good cheerleading performance usually is one where everybody is perfectly in tune with each other. If it were all a bunch off divas doing their big solo-act at the same time, it would just look like a big mess and anything but spectacular and absolutely not like cheerleading. If you are a big solo diva that wants to kill everyone that is a better dancer than you, you’ll never reach a top level in dancing. Without the support of your mentors, you’ll never rise above their level. It’s something cheerleaders and dancers seem to consider as evident, but the rest of the world seems to assume that cheerleading and dancing is all about catfights and vomiting instead about team spirit, commitment and strength.

It’s the new shape of sexism. ‘Girly girls’ (or women that voluntarily do things that are seen as typical for women) are assumed to also correspond to the negative stereotype of women. 'Girly girls' are assumed to be superficial and to be evil manipulators that will never have any real ‘buddies’. It’s such a common believe that people don’t even notice it. It’s such a common believe, people don’t even see it as sexist.

My opinion on the first haute couture show of Dior without Galliano

You would expect that the first collection of a major fashion house like Dior without its lead designer would go back to its roots and present a collection that would look very much like the original Dior and that wouldn’t remind anyone of who used to design for Dior.

But the first Dior collection looked nothing like the style of the house of Dior. It more looked like a bad parody on the style of Galliano. It’s like it was a collection made to convince the last admirers of Galliano’s style that what Galliano added to Dior wasn’t so brilliant. It was a collection that is supposed to make people eager to embrace a Dior with a new face that isn’t Galliano.

If it would have happened in other circumstances, I would have been very excited about seeing what a new designer would do for Dior, but I just can’t stand how people either make a big deal out of it or either claim that it was just a silly joke and that Galliano is really just a nice guy with a weird sense of humor. What he did was racist and wrong, but it wasn’t the worst racist act of the year.

And I really don’t like how this all feels staged. The start of his trial was just in time to draw attention to the new Haute Couture collection of Dior and if the verdict falls just in time to promote the first new prêt-a-porter collection of Dior with its new face, they will likely have lost me. 

Is Galliano judged on his actions or on who he was?

I was very surprised when the whole world seemed to be in shock after Galliano’s racist slurs, because everyday I see so many racist acts that don’t seem to upset anyone. Most of these racist acts are more harmful to people than what Galliano said.

I guess most people will defend themselves by saying that Galliano had a celebrity status and that with it comes responsibility. But people don’t become celebrities because they are so responsible. They become celebrities because they made themselves celebrities or because they are made one.

And Galliano was made one. He would hardly ever give interviews. The parties he would attend were obligatory ones. And he certainly wouldn’t walk in front of the paparazzo. Yes, the outfits he would wear during his runway shows did certainly make him one of the most known faces of the fashion world. But the person behind his face would remain a complete mystery to most of us and he never really tried to change that.

You can be mad at Galliano for not being the role-model people assumed he was, but he didn’t call himself a role-model. He was called a role-model. So even though his actions were definitely wrong, he shouldn't be judged in any other way than a constructions worker very good at his job, because he never claimed to be anything else than a fashion designer very good at his job.

But if a construction worker would shout filthy Jew at a passenger-by, you wouldn't find a lot of witnesses that would spontaneously come testify in court. If you would call the police for something like that, I seriously doubt if they would take you serious. So why would the constructions worker’s deed go unpunished, while Galliano’s acts are severely punished.

If there were any justice in this world it wouldn’t be the notoriety that would determine whether someone will get punished for his/her racist actions, it would be how much the racist action affects the life of the victim. Calling someone Jewish during a fight is less harmful to someone than not hiring someone for being Jewish.

And when I ask my Moroccan friend I met while studying in France, it is quite hard to be hired as a salesperson in France if you’re coloured, even when you have more than the right qualifications. And this racist act goes unpunished and unnoticed, even though it impacts more people and more severely.


I think this whole trial will do nothing against anti-semitism. It will only increase anti-semitism among Arabs even more, because they feel like when Arabs are treated unfairly nothing happens and when a Jew gets insulted the whole world responds. 

What disappoints me about 'feminists'

When you start a new blog, you start thinking about in what frame it fits in. In the beginning I felt like it fits in the feminist frame and than I realised that the reason I feel disappointed in ‘feminism’, is that blogs like mine call themselves feminist blogs.

Back in the days when I wore pink skirts because I was proud of being a girl, I thought that being a feminist would mean that you cared about women’s rights. As I grew older, I started to get the feeling that feminists were women that had an opinion on how women should act.

One ‘feminist’ would talk about how women should act more like men and then another ‘feminist’ would talk on how women should act less like men. Another one would talk about how women should be sexier, because it would be empowering and than another one would talk about how women should avoid being sex objects.

I feel like they are all wrong. It are all just women telling women how to behave and it’s just as wrong as men telling women what to do. Women that feel like they are so morally superior that they can judge other women’s actions should realise that what they are doing is not a form of feminism. It’s a form of gossip.

‘Feminists’ that go on and on about whether or not women should be pretty and sexy or not are in my opinion the worst. Do they realise they think of women the same way as sexist men? Sexist men also only care about how beautiful or sexy a woman is.

Lastly I feel like these days, people that defend women’s rights are called human right activists instead of feminists. And I guess that means progress. It means women’s rights are seen as people’s rights.

Fashion designers I do love

It’s not that I hate all things fashion. So here’s a list of designers that make me wish I had money.

1. Bruno Pieters: He seems to have disappeared from the planet, but when I look at old runway shows of him I realise I still like the same outfits I liked 5 years ago. So even though I don’t like everything he made, I do feel like the things I liked 5 years ago and that I still like today may be a good investment. I do have to admit I was a little disappointed in his last collections, but then again my expectations may have been unrealistically high and his last collections were more ‘modern geometry’ style which is not my style and less of his ‘modern Victorian’ style. My roots are Catholic and his ‘modern Victorian’ style perfectly satisfies both my inner Virgin Mary and my inner Mary Magdalena.

2. Elie Saab: He makes these beautiful evening gowns that are both sensual and elegant. I hope one day I can afford one of his dresses and will have an occasion to wear them.

3. And others: Monique Lhuillier, Nina Ricci, Louise Assomo, Vionnet (especially Vionnet by Sophia Kokosolaki), Roberto Cavalli (because so far to me he made the H&M collection that is the best translation of his brands’ esthetics. To me making a good H&M collection means you also love your fans that can’t afford your clothes. I do don’t know how the clothes look like in real life, since I didn’t go to H&M that day. I was too scared I would never come out of there alive.)   

Racism and the limited coverage of international fashion

What I find more wrong than the lack of colored models in the fashion industry, is how the fashion industry completely ignores the existence of fashion talent in Asia, Latin-America and Africa. 


White people get inspired, coloured people imitate


When a Western designer copies a typical Asian, African or Latin-American way of dressing, it is called “(s)he was inspired by …”. When an Asian, African or Latin-American designer copies a typical Western way of dressing, they say (s)he's imitating the West.

Fashionweek is white

There are four fashionweeks that get a lot of coverage. Three of them all take place in European cities and only one of them in another continent, but still in a mainly white country. That Europeans are mostly focused on European fashion, I regret, but I understand. But that people from all over the world are only interested in white people’s fashion seems outdated to me. 


I think it’s time we realise that Europe is not the only real (other) civilisation in the world and that we can learn a lot from all corners of the world.

For example when I would read the tales of 1001 nights, it would strike me that the heroines of these tales were nearly always described as beautiful AND smart. A book from the Arab world written in the medieval ages tells women to be pretty and smart. American movies based on fairytales of Europe tell women that in order to be successful you need to be beautiful, sleep well and be able to talk with birds. I’m really good at the second part and I’m still working really hard on the last one.

They have adapted these movies to go better with the time spirit: for example in the movie of the little mermaid she marries the prince at the end, in the fairytale she dies. So in the movie aspiring to become part of another social class has a great result, in the fairytale not that great. If they don’t stay loyal to the original tale, why can’t they make the smartest woman in the movie the heroine instead of the evil witch?

I believe every culture has another way of respecting and disrespecting women (or people).  If only we could learn from each other on how to respect one and another, instead of comparing ourselves in a way that is the most flattering to us. Europeans and Americans about Arabs: “How sexist, women aren’t allowed to show their bodies.” Arabs about Europeans and Americans: “How sexist, women are only judged on their bodies."

Be a man. Are clothes that flatter a woman's body bad?

I really don’t understand why clothes that are not flattering for a woman’s body are often called ‘intelligent’ design, while clothes that emphasize a woman’s femininity are called vulgar or are called clothes for women that don’t understand that those clothes come from an era where they had no rights.

I find it a reflection of where feminism failed, when they said that women had the same rights as men and that women had the right to do the things men do, some feminists told women that in order to acquire these same rights that they should act more like men. There is a real fine line between telling women to act like men and between telling women that there is something wrong with being a woman.

As much as I feel like women have the right to act like men, if they feel that way, I feel like when a woman feels like acting like a woman, by dressing like one for example, it doesn’t mean that she’s doing that to please men. It doesn’t mean that she’s naïve or cheap. It means she likes dressing like a woman.

When you call clothes that make a woman look more like a man ‘intelligent’ and clothes that emphasize a woman’s body ‘vulgar’ or ‘naïve,’ you’re basically saying that men look more intelligent than women. 

Eating disorders and how they are encouraged by society.

There is something wrong with the attitude of society on weight and food.

1. When skinny or slim people brag about how many hamburgers they can eat, people call them fun and careless
2. People look down on overweight people because they supposedly can’t keep their eating impulse under control.
3. However when skinny or slim people brag about eating healthy, they will be called control freaks. 
4. When overweight people start eating healthier, people usually respond very positive. The problem is that some will also respond positive, if someone overweight (nearly) stops eating, and they will keep on responding positive until (s)he has reached the point where (s)he is underweight. And than it already is too late.

So it doesn’t bother if you live healthy or not, it bothers if you look ‘healthy’ or not.


The right attitude is to always eat healthy, not because you need to ‘look healthy’, but because it just is better for you and your body. 

A fashion fairytale

Once upon a time there was a woman skinny and curveless in a world where everybody loved only curves and their enormous egos.

But this woman believed in herself and a better world. 

So she would imagine, create, dream, live, until she had created the fashion universe. 

A universe where she wasn’t skinny, but where she was slender. 

But this new world she had created, evolved and after a while everybody loved only slender and their enormous egos.

Are there too little coloured women in magazines or too many white women?

This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival

The fashion industry often is criticized for not using enough coloured models. This lack of coloured models in the high-end fashion industry is merely a reflection of the racism in our society. And a reflection of how the fashion world is merely interested in capturing the time spirit and that it does not have any vision of their own on how the future will or should be.

However, I feel like black people are in a better way presented than white women in fashion magazines, because ...

Only smart and eloquent black models are featured

At first, one of the reasons the fashion industry does not like using black models is because black people are associated with poverty, violence and hip hop. Luxury brands and fashion magazines don’t want to become associated with these things in any kind of way.

So when a fashion magazine does feature a coloured model for a major fashion spread, usually the fashion spread is accompanied with an interview of the black model to explain that she do is rich, not violent and not into dancing like a **. 

Often the articles are written in such a manner that it looks like these black models are one of the few signs of intelligent life in the fashion industry. 

Only succesfull and responsible black women are used as a spokesperson

(Racist) people see black people as poor, lazy, aggressive and stupid. If a black person does something that only slightly does not confirm to the stereotype, (racist) people won’t notice it. Only when a black person does something completely the opposite of what (s)he would be expected to do according to their stereotype, (racist) people will see that black person as not poor, aggressive or stupid. 

So if a brand chooses for a black woman to represent their brand, they usually choose for a famous successful hardworking woman that would also be a perfect daughter-in-law, because otherwise she’ll be assumed to be poor, lazy and aggressive. White women that are chosen as spokespeople don’t have to be that much. Just being the daughter or girlfriend of someone famous or rich is already more than enough.

So for a black woman to be featured in a magazine they need to be intelligent, responsible, eloquent, successful, hardworking and beautiful too. A white woman just needs to be 15 and beautiful or the daughter/girlfriend of someone famous or rich.

This makes black women feel that you need to be intelligent, responsible, eloquent and beautiful to get what you want or you would need to be white, while it makes white woman feel that only beauty matters and that beauty can give you anything you want, unless you're the daughter/girlfriend of someone famous or rich. In that case you don't need to be or do anything at all.

Note: what does affect coloured people’s self image is how these coloured people that do are featured often have ‘a white face’ with another skin: black women with a more narrow nose and Asians with almond shaped eyes. What also affects them in a negative way is how these models often are more fair-skinned than other people from their race.


Note 2: Is the tide turning? Walter Van Beirendock used exclusively black models for his Autumn/Winter 2011 fashion show. He's not the most known fashion designer and might not be the first one to do is, but he do is  the head of the fashion department of the Royal Antwerp Academy of Arts, an academy that is educating the latest generation of fashion designers.  

Be pretty, happy

Why do luxury brands claim they want to appeal to successful, intelligent and self-confident women and at the same time seem to address their advertising to the dumbest and most insecure women? I don’t believe that successful, intelligent and self-confident women can be persuaded into buying something by an ad of a 15-year old model looking at them as if someone just farted.

If all other industries wouldn’t constantly promote that beauty is important to be happy, I don’t think the beauty or the fashion industry would sell much.

How do other industries promote this message?

Well, advertisers believe that when they put pretty and happy people in their ads that you will after a while associate their brand with pretty people and with happy people.

What they seem to forget, is that their ads are always accompanied by other ads. In one commercial break you see a lot of pretty and happy people, all of them with other brands and products. So it's more likely that you will associate beauty and happiness together, instead of associating beauty and happiness with all these different brands and products.

And even though I have never done a survey on this, I do believe that people indeed are more convinced that beautiful people are happier, than that for example drinking coca cola will make you happy and pretty.

But is it true? Do you really need to be pretty to be happy?

 You often see psychological studies claiming that beautiful people are more successful and happier than ugly people. However it often are studies that only compare (extremely) beautiful people to (extremely) ugly people. Studies that compare ugly to average looking to beautiful people, usually find that average looking and beautiful people are more successful and happy than ugly people and that there aren’t any significant differences between beautiful and average looking people. So it aren't only beautiful people that feel happy, but average looking people feel just as happy. Ugly people unfortunately do globally are less happy.82T3PCQCAM

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Clothes made for average looking women

And here is the second thing that goes wrong in the process: when designers want to try out how their clothes look in real life, they don’t only envision them on unrealistically tall creatures.

They try them out on a perfectly proportioned tailor’s dummy. The breast, the waist and the hips of these dummies are a skinnier version of the average breasts, waists and hips of all women.


The irony is that as good as no woman has these average proportions. They have more curves or less curves. They are apple shaped or pear shaped.


So clothes are made to fit the average woman. The average woman has 2.5 kids. The average woman does not exist. We’re all wearing clothes cut for this average women, while it doesn’t fit any of us.

The circle of fashion

When they draw a collection, they envision their clothes on a drawing of a woman with a head to body ratio of 1:8 instead of the normal or human  1:7. So first they think about how it would look like on an unrealistically tall and skinny 'woman', before they think about how it would look like on real women.


When the clothes are ready, they put them on extremely tall and skinny women that approach the looks of the elongated women on paper. When the models run down the runway, editors and potential buyers will tend to like the clothes that make these models look fatter.
Why? Because the models that were chosen are far too skinny to be healthy and unhealthy isn’t pretty. Clothes that make these women look fatter; make these extremely tall and too skinny women look healthier and thus prettier. 


While fashion magazines used to only be able to use those skinny models that don’t look unhealthy, thanks to photoshop these days their skinny-fever is no longer tempered by the limited availability of skinny models that don’t look sick. Fashion magazines nowadays can pick the very skinniest models and use photoshop to make them look healthy.
All fashion brands will send only the smallest sample sizes to fashion magazines, to make sure that their clothes can only be used to dress the skinniest women in the magazines. When the skinniest model wears their clothes, people tend to conclude these clothes make you more slim because thanks to photoshop you can't see anymore that she looks skinny in these clothes because she is far too skinny.


When the new season arrives, fashion designers will pat themselves on the back because the mainstreet store chains are totally copying their clothes.


But strangely though, their own clothes don't sell.


Why? Because they never thought on how it would look like on most women. Only early teens look good in these kinds of clothes, but they don’t have the budget to buy such expensive clothes, so they buy the cheaper imitations of these clothes in the mainstreet stores.


Now the fasion crowd will get annoyed on how people these days don’t appreciate good craftsmanship anymore and on how shamelessly mainstreet stores steal other people’s ideas and make profit out of it.