WUNRN
07.01.2010
Germany - Top Women's Magazine Trades Models for "Real" Women
Brigitte's first model-free issue hit newsstands - but can you see the change?
Brigitte is the fashion and lifestyle bible
for the German everywoman. Women flicking through the January issue will see
just what they were expecting: diet tips, man-advice and models advertising
clothing brands and accessories.
But a closer look reveals a subtle change.
The women wearing the clothes are not professional models, but everyday women.
There is Franca Cuneo, a restaurant owner from
Stylists and photographers lend the 'real' models a touch of glamour.
"There's been a change over the last
couple of years where fashion is concerned and what women want from their role
models," Brigitte's joint editor-in-chief, Brigitte Huber, told Deutsche
Welle.
Following in Dove's footsteps
"On the one hand there has been a
change in the way trends work. It isn't the big designers defining the scene
any more, it's people off the street, actresses, politicians. And women have
changed. They don't need unnamed models defining how they are supposed to be
living," Huber said.
Brigitte is not the first to come up with
the concept. In 2004, Dove beauty products launched their own hugely successful
"Campaign for Real Beauty," and they've been using laypeople as
models ever since.
But magazines have been slow to follow
suit. Despite the ongoing debate over media images of superthin models and
their effects on society, glamour - and svelte beauty - sells. Modern society
is still in the thrall of the very thin.
Even this first edition of the much-touted new
Brigitte has a great new diet as its cover story.
Ties between eating disorders, media
Thomas Huber - no relation to the
magazine's editor - is a specialist in eating disorders and a nutritional
therapist.
"Media is often blamed for eating
disorders," Huber told DW, "What we often forget is that they are not
creating an ideal, they are transporting it. Selling it so to speak."
But there should not be a total eclipse of
responsibility he says.
While there is little factual evidence
linking media imagery to eating disorders, he says, one study carried out in
Researchers asked women about their
concepts of beauty and self-perceptions in a period before there was widespread
access to television and advertising, and in a period after.
"Afterwards there was a dramatic
increase in the number of eating disorders. Where previously women had said
thin women looked ill, they now identified with thin as being beautiful."
Huber said.
A step too near?
There are also certain professions that put
people at a higher risk of developing eating disorders, Huber said. Among
them are ballet dancers and models.
Still, there have been criticisms,
including from within Brigitte's readership, that the magazine has not gone far
enough. Far from being revolutionary, some say, the women used in the
first issue are too close to the models used in the past.
Brigitte Huber defended the choice of
models, however: "There was never any plan to make Brigitte a magazine for
larger women," she said.
Nor does the strategy of changing size
zero-models for normal folk aim to declare war on the fashion industry.
"It is about women who are tired of
looking at images that have nothing to do with them. They want to see a beauty
that is transported because of a person's charisma," said Huber.
The magazine, which sells some 700,000
copies month and enjoys a readership of 3 million an issue, has also stressed
that its choice of real women will not mean an amateur approach to the photo
shoots.
And Huber scoffs at the suggestion this
might have been a marketing ploy to boost falling sales.
"Such a major change is not taken on
the spur of the moment for very short term results. It came after a lot of
research into what our readers wanted and our own questions about the modeling
industry."
Women from all countries, all ages and a
lot of sizes are eligible to apply. And, Huber says, the change to using real
women instead of models is a permanent one.
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