CMDP's New Addiction: lookbook.nu
I love the clothing. Since moving to L.A., I've found myself more and more frequently considering styles, textures, colors, and movements of various fabrics. Not that my Midwest days were spent in a vomitous haze of mismatched color, but there's just so much more here to choose from.
Loving the clothing aside, then, I've got some huge problems with the site. Pralines, a fellow lookbook user, posted a look recently entitled I'm Tired of lookbook. Whether or not she's serious (after all, she is still a user), I can see several reasons to share a disgruntled attitude.
(1) Some of the most-hyped looks are not cute: they look like a wardrobe ate too much neon and jewelry that didn't sit well and it puked something out on the wearer (or alternately, it looks like Edith Head puked, and that puke designed these).
(2) Some of the most-hyped looks are not cute: they are on suggestively posed models. Sex sells, I guess.
(3) But keeping that last thing in mind, you get a whole lot of this:
The outfit is unquestionably stylish, but the stats say it was posted by a fifteen-year-old girl*. Fashion Industry, I've long had a problem with your demand for underage workers, whether in your factories or on your runways. I've heard the argument that "clothing hangs better on thin bodies." No, Fashion Industry; clothing hangs on hangers. More likely than the practicality of displaying the clothing on human-hangers, I'm convinced that models are thin and young because of a fashion, and overall social taboo regarding pædophilia. No, I don't want to believe it either, but think about this: isn't that also why women in certain cultures are encouraged to shave their legs, armpits, and pubis? You start growing leg/arm/pubic hair at puberty; shaving suggests that you have not yet reached puberty. If depilatory practices are said to be "proper" because they "make you more attractive," this must mean that "more attractive" is equated with "prepubescent." Not okay.
For this, Fashion Industry, I challenge you. For this, lookbook.nu, I refuse to hype outfits of underage
*I understand that people lie about their ages on the internet, but to lie that you're fifteen instead of, oh, twenty-eight, suggests that you know something about the pædophilic tendencies pervading fashion, and you're trying to capitalize on it.
I just discovered ModCloth in the past month or so through their ads on Go Fug Yourself. I do believe I'm in love.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I realize this was not at all the point of your post, but I'm actually just excited that someone else knows about them (as here in Indiana I may be the only one).