The image above is Jes Sachse and she is a 25-year-old Canadian model and artist with Freeman-Sheldon syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects her bone structure and anatomy. This image is part of a series by photographer Holly Norris entitled "American Able," adopting the format and style of American Apparel advertisements to explore and play with perceptions, or lack there of, of disabled women in advertisement and media. You can see the series here.
This particular image and the project at large relates to the idea of how women, and men, are instructed on how to appear through advertisements for allegedly countercultural retail markets. American Apparel is a big culprit, as well as its stylistic counterpart Urban Outfitters. Each recently have garnered press surrounding certain products or protocols that promote unhealthy body image through a particularly sizeist vein.
American Apparel is a store I have a conflicted relationship with. Though their brand in many ways appeals to me as a tall, thin, white male with pseudo-bohemian inclinations, I do recognize the problematic tendencies in their sizing and their selection of their clothing. Recently I read on Gawker of their "Full Body head-to toe Employment Policy," where the hiring and firing procedures are largely contingent upon submitted photographs of employees. I had also read on several occasions of their refusal to consider inclusion of a plus-size line, despite propositions by fashion icon and musician Beth Ditto among others, stating that that size of person is not of their demographic. More of that nonsense here .
On a more local, to me at least, level, Urban Outfitters of Durham recently had a protest staged outside of its doors with dissent about a tee-shirt being marketed on their website and sent to stores for sale that was a gray v-neck with the words "Eat Less" printed across it. The protesters felt, and I agree, that this promoted eating disorders and an unhealthy relationship with food and your body. The story was covered in the Indy and can be read here.
Urban Outfitters I have less of a conflicted relationship with. Not only is it owned and operated by big time Republican contributor and Rick Santorum supporter Richard Hayne, but little if any of their clothing or accessories are even made within the United States and a large portion of their merchandise is not made from sustainable materials or from any other green practices. American Apparel at least has that to fall back on when accused of being less progressive than they claim to be. Urban Outfitters is a manifestation of the counterconformist countercultural mentality and the progressive idea around their brand is one that is being counteracted by the people they are ultimately profiting off of it. Buying a cleverly worded and boldly designed Obama tee-shirt here is not helping anyone aside from you in your venture to escape ordinarity.
What I want to address is how these companies are taking advantage of their consumers' attitudes and philosophies, political and otherwise, in order to further an agenda and create an elitist market, one still reliant upon a static concept of beauty and value. Shopping at these places does not make you any better than someone who shops at the more ostensibly conformist Abercrombie and Fitch or Hollister. The brand they've created manipulates its consumers and fools them into thinking that that's the case, but accounts like these expose them to be the control mechanisms they have been all along.
I don't want in this statement to claim that I am above it in anyway, just to highlight how dependent we are on these systems of power and how subversive their affects can be on our attitudes about groups of people, ourselves and our world.
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