A Swedish tabloid called “Aftonbladet” recently uncovered that warehouse fashion giant H&M has been using fake, computer-generated bodies on the models in their advertisements.
The company has admitted that they have been photoshopping these fake bodies with the heads of the models. A press officer for H&M told “Aftonbladet”, “It’s not a real body, it is completely virtual and made by the computer. We take pictures of the clothes on a doll that stands in the shop, and then create the human appearance with a program on your computer.”
Needless to say, this practice does not bode well for the future of the ideal of beauty in the fashion world. If even models’ bodies are no longer perfect or skinny enough to be desirable, then what hope do average, healthily proportioned girls have at physical attractiveness? Many models are already anorexic and starving, and young girls who read fashion magazines and flip through catalogues have a misguided perception of what it takes to be pretty. And now, because of H&M, these girls literally have no chance at matching the standard of perfection set before them.
Using computer-generated bodies to model clothes does nothing but set an absolutely impossible bar for women who aspire to be beautiful. It adds to the already egregiously heavy burden of societal pressure on women to maintain these perfect figures in order to be taken seriously, and H&M’s behavior should not be tolerated.
What seems even more unsettling is that H&M has not even expressed a modicum of remorse for its actions. As one of the largest fashion companies in the nation, they must act with some sense of social responsibility. We cannot disregard the young teenage girls who walk past these billboards and flip through these catalogues every day in search of acceptance and something to aspire to. The necks of the computer-generated bodies look unnatural and emaciated next to the models’ heads. Is this the message we’re sending to the youth who consume this culture?
Before the nature of these particular photographs was revealed, we were concerned about the constant airbrushing and photoshopping of models in magazines and stores and what kind of message that sends to America’s women. This new development, pardon the irony, takes the cake. Society’s standards of beauty are already incredibly skewed and unrealistic, but now the standard H&M has put forth is, quite literally, impossible.
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