backstage.com: "For a long time, there's been this very tired conversation about what images of skinny models are doing to the public, to the consumer," supermodel Sara Ziff says over coffee in New York's Gramercy Park neighborhood. "If you really want to do something about it," she argues, "you have to look at it from a labor standpoint and from a public health standpoint, and start with the worker - the model herself. How can we make sure that she is protected and is not working ridiculous hours, not having to drop out of school? It's been reported over and over that models on the runway are too thin, but what people fail to realize is that a lot of the time they have that body type because they're adolescents."
Thursday, April 05, 2012
Supermodel Sara Ziff Forms Model Alliance to Save Models and Fashion
backstage.com: "For a long time, there's been this very tired conversation about what images of skinny models are doing to the public, to the consumer," supermodel Sara Ziff says over coffee in New York's Gramercy Park neighborhood. "If you really want to do something about it," she argues, "you have to look at it from a labor standpoint and from a public health standpoint, and start with the worker - the model herself. How can we make sure that she is protected and is not working ridiculous hours, not having to drop out of school? It's been reported over and over that models on the runway are too thin, but what people fail to realize is that a lot of the time they have that body type because they're adolescents."
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3 comments:
I really liked this article for many reasons, one of them being that I recognized the name Sara Ziff from her documentary "Picture Me". The issues that she brings up in that movie and the issues that are being brought up in this article are really important to discuss and the treatment of models really does range.
Sara is definitely luckier than most models in that she can make money and support herself (although at this point she is probably doing better than merely supporting herself). Nowadays, models have difficulty coming by the right jobs or being exposed to the right opportunities. Being a model means doing other sorts of labor on the side and scrambling to find a job and to make the right connections. Models are also frequent on the runways but I feel that they are becoming less frequent in magazines like Vogue or Elle, which have decided to use actors or comedians for their models. This is done so that the public can connect with these people and the actors are more recognizable because of films or TV. It was stated before that girls that aspire to be models are caught in this place where they don't know the model and make assumptions for how they should look on a daily basis. I think that with the actors or musicians etc... the public understands that it is ok to be other shapes, sizes, and colors.
Sara Ziff, as well as the other models didn't even know about the protection that they have access to through their union. I feel that sometimes, the disunity in this line of business is the reason. In theater, we rely on the connections that we get and the relationships that we have. Through this type of work, models have the relationships with the designers, with agents, etc... just not with each other.
I never really thought about the fact that models have no union protection! I wonder why they are seen by the government as a group of people who can't unionize. I guess I don't understand how models are entirely different from actors- they both go from job to job, both need health benefits and protections, and both need to be protected by certain laws regarding privacy, work hours, working conditions, and child labor laws. What Sara is doing is very admirable. She is past her big modeling days but wants to help those who will follow after her. This is a great example of a grateful person who is paying it forward. It seems like Sara and her business partners have covered a lot of ground in starting to create regulation, networks, and programming that will provide support and protection for models. I wonder how they are going to get the word out there about these programs! I would hope that a lot of these things could be monitored by agencies or managers, but it seems like agencies and managers are sometimes the ones that models need to be protected from. Some greater organization needs to be able to monitor these changes that are being implemented for these models. Sara seems to being working in the right direction and I'm glad she is bringing these issues to light.
I didn’t realize that most of the problems mentioned in this article existed in the modeling industry. The way Sara Ziff describes it the modeling industry sounds more like an underground sex mafia than a legitimate multimillion-dollar industry. I’m surprised that nothing has been done to prevent models from getting exploited before now. Hopefully Ziff can implement some sort of regulation and support for girls to get a basic education and advocate for themselves.
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