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Rate This Contest Entry: Contest: June 30th, 2005 Author: Tyesha N Johnson I walked cautiously up the step toward the cold building with my arms crossed for warmth. This is a strange place for a finishing school, I thought to myself. A feeling had come over me as I reached for the door, like a tiny voice beckoning me to turn back and go home. I checked the door twice before entering the building in order to calm my nerves and, once satisfied that the word John Robert Powers were indeed painted on the window, I stepped inside. If I walk slower, I told myself, I may not even reach the desk before my dad gets here. Near the top of the wall, a screen filled with bright, energetic images caught my eye. I stopped, wanting to wait for my dad to finish parking the car, to watch as either photos or video recordings of John Robert Powers students filled the screen. Some were singing, some were dancing, others were doing commercials or walking down runways. I found myself counting, while staring at this tribute to John Robert Powers’s success. One Asian kid, I thought to myself, there’s a black girl, but she looks white. One Hispanic boy and two Hispanic girls. There’s another little ethnic kid. Hmm, maybe this place isn’t so bad. “They had colored people there,” I told my friend later, giving her an estimated count of how many minority students I saw at the school, “But all of their people were so skinny, especially the modeling girls. When I reached the desk, my father and I were given a form to fill out and a slim, professionally dressed, smiling woman asked to see my picture. “Looks good,” she told me, “I like you in blonde.” Oh, I thought, smoothing down my long, plum, black and burgundy hair, guess I don’t look like that now. I should have chosen a different picture. The woman, perhaps interpreting my gesture, gave me a reassuring, “Oh, it still looks like you. Just a bit more innocent.” My father and I were led through hallways, past offices, classroom, and unopened doors until we reached a large room filled with folding chairs faced toward a small stage. Children and adults soon filled the seats and the room came to life. Mothers and fathers reminded their children to sit tall and be still. Some parents had to calm excited children while others struggled to encourage unenthusiastic young ones. “Why do I have to be here?” a small, blue-eyed child asked, her curly blonde pigtails framing her chubby face. “Because mommy wanted to do this when she was your age and we could never afford it.” “So why don’t you just do it now, then?” “I am, with you.” The room quieted as a woman stepped on the stage. She introduced herself and the company, explaining how both got started. She instigated icebreaker games and asked the audience to tell about themselves and why they wanted to be admitted to the school. My heart was racing as she asked to see my picture and then walked across the stage with it so that everyone could see. Next, she got serious. She set forth standards and expectations, leaving us with a feeling of ambiguity. She told audience members to forget a career in modeling if they were not a certain height or weight. She said anyone who says that a beautiful woman can make it regardless of size was disillusioned. “Let’s be realistic,” she said, telling us that no one is going to want a model whose whole body is not in line with standards. Any hope of being a foot or hand model, or of having headshots in a magazine was plain ignorance. She made clear her point that any hope of a contract was futile unless a person’s height and waist measurements matched requirements that must be met. “You don’t even have to be pretty,” the woman had told us, “You just can’t be really ugly and you need to be a certain size…Let’s be realistic here.” That explains a lot, I thought bitterly, my attitude toward the school changing. While plus-size models are given more attention and recognition today, the words I heard while in a John Robert Powers classroom, while cruel, hold true. Plus-sized or curvaceous women, as these models are often called, usually appear in outfits designed only for sizes 14 and above. While the logic in photographing small women makes sense (the camera “adds pounds” to a body), the display on runways and in small fashion shows are ridiculous. Why use such a collection of abnormal women when there are plethora of real, or average, women to be utilized? To use standard models rather than a variety of shapes and sizes affects the world of fashion as well as that outside of this industry. It sends a message to the world that says, “this is beauty: tall and slender and nothing outside of these two.” It is this message that fuels eating disorders among young children. It is this message that makes women with curves feel unappreciated. It is this message which makes minority women view their beautiful, exotic features as a road block on the journey to beauty. It is this message that has caused a strange, yet almost ordinary, trend of women, and even men, having body parts surgically enhanced or reduced at a great price both physically and economically. “It is like getting hit by a truck,” a teacher told my class one day, “…boys will get it in the biceps, the calves, and the buttock.” In fact, it was this very message that caused me to count the number of minorities featured in the video shown by the John Robert Powers company. While much of today’s fashion industry has stuck with the “ideal being” as a standard for marketing, other industries, and some designers, have stepped out of this box, and gained success. No longer imprisoned by the chains of restriction, advertisements have grown to better reflect the population. Such advertisements included women of all sizes, different heights and weights. This change has been considered profitable, and has not lowered the number of people purchasing the items advertised. On the contrary, items sell better when they are promoted by models who look more like ‘real’ people. Consumers want to see what clothes or beauty products look like on someone who is similar to them. By telling us that a model must be thin, no matter how beautiful, the representatives of John Robert Powers enforced the message sent by most of the fashion industry. This message tells women of the world that they are nothing unless they are thin. Yet I look around me and I see beauty in all colors, shapes, and sizes. This beauty makes me wonder how the modeling world can ignore it. How can so many artistic eyes be shut to such loveliness and inspiration? Why have so many of the world’s famous “beauty experts” chosen to be blind and must we continue to follow, blindly, behind them? I will not. It was with these thoughts that I left the building, not sure if I would ever return. people have rated it so far. is the current average. |
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