Just a few weeks ago, a shocking photograph hit the blogosphere and tabloids: Pamela Anderson was spotted reading former Punk Planet editor Anne Elizabeth Moore’s latest book, Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (New Press, 2007). In a bikini, no less:
And really, who doesn’t enjoy a good read in the sun? While gossip blogs made a few painfully old dumb-blondes-can’t-read jokes, Jennifer Pozner chose instead to point out the cognitive dissonance of “one-woman brand-maker for Playboy, Stuff, G.Q., Baywatch, V.I.P., and numerous other my-boobs-move-media devices” reading AEM’s excellent tract against corporate creep.
A brand is a symbol, perhaps also a phrase, that connotes very particular meanings and qualities, and most essentially, that is standing in for a product. The most successful of brands don’t just suggest a specific idea, but actually come to mean them. In other words, if you looked up Busty Blonde in the dictionary, you might just find Pamela Anderson. The product could be any number of things, from Baywatch paraphernalia to men’s magazines. It’s a powerful thing to attach Anderson’s name and image to a product; people might purchase it because they’re attracted to her and want to find out more, but many will also pick up a product for the simple reason that it’s Pamela Anderson. You know that you have branding power when someone will buy something simply because your name is on it, even if that thing is totally unrelated to your work and identity. Celebrity perfumes, for example.
The tricky thing about a person actually becoming a brand is that you run the risk of your body actually becoming the product. Women, already commodities, are particularly vulnerable to this trading in flesh. Like Victoria Beckham in this provocative/misogynist Marc Jacobs ad, women can be t
umbled into an enormous shopping bag and carried home, dangling a pair of twiggy legs that aren’t even recognizably human.
Except, in this case, where the varnished doll-like legs are recognizably Posh. Victoria Beckham, of course, is a perfect example of successful branding. From the beginning, the Spice Girls were built on the idea of five distinct women with easily defined and internally consistent personalities. This premise allowed femininity to include such meanings as sporty and…scary? (read: not white), thus propelling the concept of girl power to the global scene. By way of this, the Spice Girl industry also established the notion of girl power as an explicitly commercial tool, one that initiated pre-teen girls into the role of consumer.
No, Really, You Have to Eat: Body Image on America’s Next Top Model
November 12, 2007
Last Wednesday, it happened. The “plus-size” contestant got kicked off America’s Next Top Model. We’d all been waiting for it–the only real question was what excuse they would use this time. Actually, it was pretty harsh: Sarah was deemed too skinny for plus-size but too big for regular modeling, and unceremoniously booted from the show. She wept. It was sad.
As Sarah herself had pointed out, she’s a regular-sized girl. Who’s hot, and really awesome, but whatever. I guess we’re not supposed to expect a girl like Sarah to win Top Model–call me crazy, but I actually had thought the show might evolve.
It’s not just the judges’ decision that proved me wrong, but the rest of the episode as well. We’ve got a major front-runner this season, Heather (at right), and her almost unbeatable appeal comes from a pale, bony body and striking, sometimes disturbing, features. Besides making Asperger’s the hottest new neurological disorder, Heather takes great pictures and charms the audience and the judges with her awkward eagerness. She also plays up a kind of false modesty—her favorite story to tell goes something like, “Until I was eleven, I sincerely believed I was ugly.” (Sounds tragic, Heather. We’re glad to hear you’ve since recovered.)
So I Posed Naked Once. Fuck Off.
September 13, 2007
Don’t you wish that was 
the standard response? C’mon, Vanessa Hudgens, stand up for yourself!
Apologies for the hiatus. Moving to a new city, floundering from apartment to apartment, and not having a television for three months can do that to you. The good news is: I’m settled for a while and my roommate has DVR. I think we have a very chatty fall ahead of us, what with Grey’s starting up again, my new addiction to Ugly Betty, and the upcoming films on my radar, like Lust, Caution; Across the Universe; The Brave One and Ira & Abby. Marykate Olsen’s been doing the talk-show and magazine circuit, Britney’s been looking very despondent on live television, and then there’s the Vanessa Hudgens issue.
She’s been made to apologize for having once posed nude—before she was noticed, in fact when she was probably struggling to get noticed, and, most unfortunately, before she was the Disney princess she’s since become (I mean, she’s even dating her dreamy High School Musical co-star; what more could the pre-teen fans desire?). We monitor the sexuality of our young female stars, and then we punish them too. Of course we can go on and on about Lindsay and Paris, etc., and girls who deliberately expose themselves to the public, but dredging up dirt from the past? I don’t like it.
The beauty queen scandals bother me too (although who needs a stupid crown? just look at the kick-ass Vanessa Williams now!). The bigger questions is: to whom are these girls apologizing? Disney issued their own lovely statement: “Vanessa has apologized for what was obviously a lapse in judgment…We hope she’s learned a valuable lesson.” Naughty child, go to your room.
A couple days ago I was at work when I got an email from a friend titled “Help!” She had realized she’d forgotten to take her birth control for the last few days and needed to get Emergency Contraception, but the closest Planned Parenthood (where EC is some $15 cheaper than at CVS) was in the West Village—a thirty minute train ride for her, but simply a decent walk from my office in Soho. Would I go pick it up for her?
Well, of course. You don’t refuse a favor of such magnitude–who wants to feel responsible for someone’s unwanted pregnancy? Yikes! But it was with my share of annoyance that I took the 25 minute excursion on my lunch brea
k, to the Planned Parenthood on Bleecker. I attempted to charm the surly security guards, but they weren’t having it. “What do you want?” one of them yelled, while a couple people checked in ahead of me. “Um, I need some emergency contraception!!!” What else would I want? An abortion? Could you be the tiniest bit more discreet please?
I may be the only perso
n in the country who cried in sadness during Knocked Up. I did: I shed a tear for Katherine Heigl’s Alison, when she’s weeping at the doctor’s office having just being told officially that she’s pregnant. That moment is so difficult, and not just for Seth Rogen’s awkward Ben who’s standing next to her unsure what to do. It felt painfully accessible–what young woman couldn’t imagine the terror and confusion Alison is experiencing?
Knocked Up is #3 at the box office right now. It’s a great movie, but there’s no doubt Judd Apatow’s strength is in capturing the male voice, as Dana Stevens notes on Slate. The film succeeded not just in the extended stoner scenes and bathroom jokes–which got a little tiresome if only by their length–but in the poignant conversations between the men, between Ben and his friends, his father and, especially Paul Rudd’s character, Pete. Stevens cites the moment between Pete and Ben, when, high on shrooms in a Las Vegas hotel room, they share their fears and disappointments in a scene that is “as revealing as it is hilarious.” Suddenly honest with one another, they express their feelings and, indeed, their love and respect for the women in their lives, the women who, earlier, had seemed like nothing so much as intrusions on good old masculine fun. A.O. Scott identifies a larger critique here, one that is cheerily embedded in jokes about bongs and getting laid: Read the rest of this entry »
