THE BODY SHOP: ISSUES

After thinking about a maverick branding campagne for the body shop, I've got thinking and reading about beauty and related issues

Picture Me (this links to the trailer and a Guardian report) is a documentary to be released by a model called Sara Ziff about the modeling industry

"How can you put a fourteen year old girl in a sexy dress, and tell her to look sexy, when shed probable never had sex."

my space page

From the Guardian Report by Louise France:

The scene: a casting with a photographer, one of the top names in his profession. Halfway through the meeting Cech is asked to strip. She does as instructed and takes off her clothes. Then the photographer starts undressing as well. "Baby - can you do something a little sexy," he tells her. The photographer's assistant, who is watching, eggs her on. What's supposed to be the casting for a high-end fashion shoot turns into something more like an audition for a top-shelf magazine. The famous photographer demands to be touched sexually. "Sena - can you grab his cock and twist it real hard," his assistant tells her. "He likes it when you squeeze it real hard and twist it." "I did it," she shrugs, looking into the video camera. "But later I didn't feel good about it." The following day she hears that the job is hers if she wants it. She turns it down.

A 16-year-old model is on a photo shoot in Paris. She has very little experience of modelling and is unaccompanied by her agency or parents. She leaves the studio to go to the bathroom and meets the photographer - "a very, very famous photographer, probably one of the world's top names", according to Ziff - in the hallway. He starts fiddling with her clothes. "But you're used to this," says Ziff. "People touch you all the time. Your collar, or your breasts. It's not strange to be handled like that." Then suddenly he puts his hands between her legs and sexually assaults her. "She has no experience of boys, she hasn't even been kissed," says Ziff. "She was so shocked she just stood there and didn't say anything. He just looked at her and walked away and they did the rest of the shoot. And she never told anyone."