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.
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