Mannequin Agenda

An article was written this week in the New York Times talking about the recent viral picture of a new kind of mannequin displayed in Sweden. In my opinion, I think the mannequins are much more realistic than the ones we are used to seeing in our American department stores. This story I think goes hand in hand with the argument of why Barbie's body dimensions are absurd and unrealistic. Barbie's body proportions are completely out of whack and start the poor body image crisis at a young age. Mannequins, in my opinion, have the same implications. We are constantly bombarded with images that have been photoshopped and airbrushed, that we have started to believe that these images are attainable when they aren't. These sort of images influenced young girls so much that they have internalized these images and strive to appear like them. Chernik talks about in her article that when she was growing up she wanted nothing but to be thin and everything about her eventually wasted away. She battled an eating disorder until she decided that she was going to start loving her "fuller" body. I think that many women in our society, especially during their high school and college years, struggle with this concept. The new Swedish mannequins represent women more realistically. This Swedish revolution isn't the first to battle this topic, brands like Zara and Mango have started to replace their models with size 6 models. The problem I see here is that people are getting upset that they have started using bigger models. The sad fact that people "like" or want to continue to see these "famine fashion" mannequins in stores. I think the people who have complained are so jaded to think that since this is our societies image of beauty, that is correct. I hope to see more brands battling this issue moving forward and would hope that the next generations do not have such a jaded opinion of their own body image.

The link to the article http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/18/business/la-fi-mo-swedish-mannequins-20130318.