For Successful Living?

I know, I know, it's beyond trite and unnecessary to tread the well worn 'models are too skinny, blah blah blah' path. And it's oxymoronic to set out to criticise the execution of a poster advertisement and its exploitative denotation with a personal critique of the very subject it exploits. But let's examine the context in which this image is being presented to us.

As a study in photography it is powerful and arresting. Set in some kind of anonymous space against a bare backdrop, the model is presented to us in a semi-naked state and there is a sense of action, or is it reaction?, that the model's pose leaves deliberately ambiguous. The looming shadow is larger than life size and has taken on a more masculine silhouette. The effect is predatory and the register is that of a cult horror film. There is an implicit tension between the model and her oversized shadow; she appears vulnerable and under threat. Her shadow becomes a canvas on which the viewer can project their own interpretation - does it represent the malevolence inherent in an industry obsessed with appearance? Or does it represent the irrepressible spectre of old age, weight gain and therefore, ugliness?

Whatever the inference it is not that I should buy some new jeans from Diesel.

When the image is viewed in the context of the artifice of an advertising campaign it is somehow undermined. By badging it with a denim brand the model is stripped of her narrative and instead she becomes a paragon of a described lifestyle, an accessory to the message, not the message itself.

And what is that message? Diesel, by using this image, is looking to leverage its own equity through the halo of association. But those associations are discomfiting; they invoke ideas of vulnerability, prey, distress and exploitation. Whatever the brand may think that says about itself, I would question whether it's what most women would want to hear.

Root Ginger

So, redheads could be extinct within one hundred years. With no survival advantage to gingerism, it has been suggested that the gene may die out. Is that really the kind of evolutionary progress we want to see? Photographer Jenny Wicks has documented the increasingly elusive breed in a series called Root Ginger, and Emily Hobbs visited the Idea Generation Gallery to check it out.

Redheads are a pretty big deal. From naughty Eve in the Garden of Eden, without whom some might argue none of us would be here at all, to Britain's most renowned monarchs - Henry-the-serial-wife-killer and his daughter Elizabeth-the-virgin (perhaps some connection there), not to mention the recent Prince Harry-the-rascist. People have been singing ballads to readheads since time immemorial (especially the Irish). More recently there was Valerie, so lamented by The Zutons and Amy Winehouse in the song of the same name. Would the song worked if Valerie had been a brunette? It’s impossible to say. Yet despite their abundant tenacity, gingers receive a very bad press and have often found themselves the objects of ridicule and the victims of what remains in our society, apparently, the last acceptable discrimination.

It was a reaction to this type of discrimination that prompted the photographer, Jenny Wicks, to explore what it means to be ginger through her study Root Ginger, a film project complemented by a book of photographic portraits focusing exclusively on red-headed subjects.

When both her nephews were born with ginger hair and one of them was later diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis, Wicks undertook an investigation into her family’s genetic history and discovered that there existed recessive traits for both the disease and red hair. It was this seemingly random allocation of DNA that inspired her to delve deeper into the subject.

“The book is a tribute to people with this hair colour," says Wicks, “but it is also an investigation into the genetic lottery that we all play… I was interested to explore the phenomenon of recessive genes as well as the human tendency to judge and make snap decisions about people who simply look different to them."

Wicks' photographs are beautiful and touching studies in gingerness, spanning the very young, the adolescent, and those who are approaching old age (ginger people don’t go grey, they go sandy then white). Beside some of the portraits are testimonials from the subjects; anecdotes about their experiences as people with ginger hair in a monochromatic follicular landscape.

“My mother’s reaction to being told her first-born was a ginger was to weep uncontrollably," says one man. In another, a young woman explains how no one in her family has her hair colour, except for her father, who had a head of black hair but a ginger moustache.

Wicks’ photographs invite the viewer to consider the social aspects of having red hair and how society views and treats a minority group. For many, discrimination against those with ginger hair, either by teasing or more aggressive measures, remains the last bastion against political correctness and the subjects’ anecdotes often prove this.

What is most arresting about the Root Ginger study is how viscerally lovely red hair actually is. The enduring feeling you’re left with as a non-ginger onlooker is that of being an outsider – the positions become reversed. Being ginger is not a signifier of ‘otherness’ but it is transformed into a membership pass to an exclusive and rare club. You want to be ginger too. You are envious.

But ultimately Root Ginger is a testimony to, and a celebration of, the wonderful diversity and innate gorgeousness of human beings.

A selection of images from the book Root Ginger: A Study of Red Hair by photographer Jenny Wicks will be exhibited at Idea Generation Gallery until 8 March 2009. Proceeds go to Cystic Fibrosis Trust. For more info, visit www.ideageneration.co.uk

URL to original article on Don't Panic's site here: http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/progress/root-ginger

Nip Tuck

I was reading one of the free commuter papers we have here in London today and noticed this piece about a protest group which has been set up on facebook in response to the latest poster campaign from the Harley Medical Group; a cosmetic surgery clinic who regularly advertise on the London underground and buses. Their posters are usually comprised of 'before' shots depicting what, to any human female, should register as perfectly normal breasts, stomachs and thighs (although they're always shot in terrible light and stripped of any colour saturation so that the flaws are magnified and made to appear grey and lumpy); and 'after' shots where we see the previously disembodied, undesirable body parts now tightened, lifted and in context on their delighted and, as is inferred by the poster, now socially elevated owner.

The latest poster from the Harley Medical Group features one of their satisfied customers, Clare Thornton, who had a breast augmentation to take her from a 34B to a 34DD. On the poster she evangelises that 'Cosmetic surgery was the best decision she's made', which may be true. But was it not also the most personal decision she's ever made? The most intimate? There is something in the poster's sloganeering discourse on the subject of the alteration to the parts of Thornton's body, so inextricably linked to her femininity and identity, which for me, as a viewer and a woman, invokes a feeling of discomfort.

The facebook group named 'Somewhat Strident But Who Cares' features photos taken of the defaced posters by group members as they travel around London. In some cases the photographers are themselves the defacers, often they are simply recording the efforts of others. "Everyone is beautiful already" is scrawled in red over the poster in one picture - an affirming philosophy but slightly less helpfully is a sticker placed over Thornton's breasts bearing the words 'Sexist Shit'. SSBWC have developed their own slogans which are available for download. One such slogan says, "By women who hate women, for women who hate themeselves, YOU ARE NORMAL. This is not". It's unclear in the reporting exactly what the 'this' is referring to. Presumably cosmetic surgery, hopefully not Thornton herself.

Thornton has said that she finds the attacks rude and upsetting and that she is happy with the procedure she undertook and proud of the results. She seems to have become the unintended victim of a group incensed by the wider issue of the manipulation and influence over women's relationships with their bodies that is exercised by companies such as the Harley Medical Group. But is Thornton really merely collateral damage in this debate? The slogan "By women who hate women, for women who hate themselves" is internecine, and as an argument, ad hominem.

Thornton, as the poster girl for the Harley Medical Group, has become the face of all that SSBWC finds abhorrent about cosmetic surgery, and by association, she is therefore abhorrent and a target. It is her image which is being defaced and attacked in response to incitement by SSBWC. To attack the posters is to attack Thornton's right to make an informed choice about her body and her right to speak about it. That she felt she even had to make a choice and take a decision of this type in regards to her body is a wider issue that requires examination of our media, cultural and social expectations and punishment/reward systems for certain types of behaviours; all of which cannot and will not even begin to be addressed by vandalism on public transport.

If you are opposed to cosmetic surgery, the most effective way to dissent is to not have cosmetic surgery. In an ideal world, women would be comfortable with their bodies no matter their shape or size. However, in the world we live in some women feel unhappy enough about their bodies that they willingly subject themselves to surgical procedures to correct their perceived flaws. The good news is that in the world we live in, women have autonomy over their bodies and what they do with them and they are uncensored when it comes to speaking about it.

What do you think?

http://somewhatstrident.com/