Description
Book SynopsisOver the last four decades, the fashion modeling industry has become a lightning rod for debates about Western beauty ideals, the sexual objectification of women, and consumer desire. Yet, fashion models still captivate, embodying all that is cool, glam, hip, and desirable. They are a fixture in tabloids, magazines, fashion blogs, and television. Why exactly are models so appealing? And how do these women succeed in so soundly holding our attention?In This Year's Model, Elizabeth Wissinger weaves together in-depth interviews and research at model castings, photo shoots, and runway shows to offer a glimpse into the life of the model throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Once an ad hoc occupation, the model life now involves a great deal of physical and virtual management of the body, or what Wissinger terms glamour labor. Wissinger argues that glamour laborthe specialized modeling work of self-styling, crafting a look,' and building an imagehas been amplified by the rise of digital me
Trade ReviewIn a thoroughly fresh analysis, Wissinger uses the fashion model as a lens to theorize changing intersections of technology and the body. With an eye for rich ethnographic detail, she takes us inside the world of modeling and skillfully back out again into the macro historical changes in embodiment and technology that modeling exemplifies.This Years Model delivers a rich and troubling history of how we have all come to manage ourselves as brands.Its the kind of book that will change how you think about your own bodys place in our high-tech world. -- Ashley Mears,author of Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model
In a sympathetic yet critical view of the labor of glamour, Wissinger presents rich ethnographic work augmented with interviews and the close integration of media and press materials on the historical trajectory of the modeling and fashion industry from the mid-1980s through the present. * Choice *
Table of Contentsvii Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Glamour Labor 1 1. Supermodels of the World: Living the Life 35 2. The Runway: Step into the Room Like It's a Catwalk 59 3. The Photo Shoot: Strike a Pose - There's Nothing to It 80 4. Cover Girl: Managing the Model Body 108 5. The Fashionable Ideal: Looking Like a Model 141 6. The Job: Nice Work If You Can Get It 162 7. Scouting: The Hunger for New Faces 185 8. Black-Black-Black: How Race Is Read 216 9. Touch-Ups: Making the Model Better 243 Conclusion: The Affective Turn 267 Appendix: A Chronology of Modeling in the Media, 1980 - 2010 279 Notes 283 Index 339 About the Author 353
