In Fall of 2007, an Italian government "watchdog" organization banned controversial billboard ads which had caused much uproar in Milan. The ads featured an unclothed anorexic model in various poses, along with the words, "No Anorexia". You may conclude that the ads were part of a campaign against the deadly disease, but their purpose was not purely altruistic. The ads also doubled as a plug for a new Italian fashion brand, Nolita. Nolita claimed that they commissioned the ads so that they would feature a message to the fashion world, while at the same time advertising their brand. The Italian government differed with Nolita, stating that the ads were offensive. 
The woman at the center of the ads is not acting or role-playing in any way, and the photos were not altered. She is a 28 year old french model named Isabelle Caro, and has been suffering from anorexia and bulimia since age 14. She agreed to do the ad in the hopes that she could help people realize the true effects of the disease from which she suffers. Sadly, those effects of her eating disorder were vividly and painfully on display in the ads.The questions about the Nolita ad campaign still remain debated. Is it proper for billboards (or proper at all)? Is it offensive?
Is it pornographic? Is it demeaning to the model or other victims of eating disorders? Is it solely a shrewd and cruel ploy to garner attention for the fashion startup company? Or, is it empowering to those who suffer from eating disorders? Is it a positive step towards shining more light on this affliction? Is it a positive/stern message to an industry which perhaps perpetuates eating disorders via the imagery it purveys? The ethical and moral questions related to this story seem endless.We here at Blogiorno have never shied away from "controversy" or tough questions, and this is certainly one of those. As always, we invite you to leave your comments. Before commenting, you may wish to watch short news video vignettes about Isabelle to gain the full perspective.
If you would view the news videos of Isabelle Caro, click here.
If you would like to read a BBC article about the banned ads, click here.
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4 comments:
I am not offended by this campaign, but i wonder if it is of any value.
Firstly i have to say that i doubt of the "humanitarian" things made for "business" purposes. And this is one of those cases.
But, considering this campaign from the social point of view, i doubt that it will ever reach the goal.
Anorexia, as a social problem, is due to the cult of appearance. Society accepts the individue as a part of it if he/she behaves, and looks in a particular way. Fashion (which is very popular in Italy for obvious reasons) is one aspect of this. The logical chain is that society accepts you if you are beautiful, and you are beautiful if you look to those models. Those models are always very skinny, so you have to be skinny to be accepted by society.
Then the mistake of anorexic girls is that they go too far and they obtain the opposite goal, as it is shown in that campaign. You are too skinny, so you are ugly, so you won't be accepted by society anyway.
But the problem in my opinion is exactly that. Why do you need somebody to tell you how to be accepted by society? Why do society need to self-impose fixed feature to decide if somebody can be accepted or not? That is completely innatural.
In the past (say 50 years ago), anorexia was not a problem. Not because girls didn't want to be beautiful, and not because the concept of beauty did really change. But because beauty was not so much important to be accepted.
If you were fat you were not beautiful either, but your problem was to be accepted as fat, not to find the way to get skinny.
That campaign can help to change the way beauty is defined by society. In that way girls that want to copycat models wouldn't want to be so much skinny anymore. But they will stil be wanting to copycat models. And that, in my opinion, is the real problem to solve.
Good article
Ciao
dario
Good comments Dario. You wrote: "That campaign can help to change the way beauty is defined by society." But what is "society"? I think it is a conglomeration of elements, of which fashion is surely one. So if Nolita is specifically targeting the world of fashion for defining beauty via skinny models, is that not a sign that the fashion world is a large societal contributor to the definition of beauty? The question is, where are these girls getting all these distorted notions? I differentiate "appearance" from "fashion"...it is natural for society to suggest that appearance should be aesthetically pleasing. Isn't "fashion" much different from "appearance"? One can be pleasing in appearance without being on the cutting edge of fashion; I would submit that fashion has little to do with "acceptable appearance" and more to do with commerce, but still that doesn't explain the reasons for skinny models in every single fashion ad.
Aaron, apologize me for my dummy English language. Reading your comment i come to the conclusion that i didn't explain my point. Let's make it as a list of points, which makes more easy for me.
1) Fashion an beauty. Yes, fashion pretends to be the expression of beauty, but usually it is not the result of an introspection and a social or philosophical analysis of what beauty is, instead it is an operation of business and marketing. So, if for example the fashion colors of next spring-summer collection would be apricot and graphite gray it's not because beauty is definded by those colors, but instead because it's convenience of fashion producers to push those colors so that people would buy those product and give them their money. So, i would say that it's not fashion conditioned by beauty, but the social perception of beauty is conditioned by fashion. Next spring-summer everybody wants to be glamour will buy apricot-graphitegray and everybody will say that... say... red and yellow are ugly. Said that, if you look any painting of the past (one example is Venus of Botticelli you will see that the concept itself of beauty is not absolute, but it depends on society, and society feeling is easily conditioned by propaganda.
2) Skinny is beautiful is not a distorted notion. Being that beauty is not an absolute concept, a skinny girl like that model cannot be defined beautiful or ugly. It could be beautiful for somebody and ugly for somebody else. Actually that campaign shows that she's not beautiful at all, but who is judging it? The problem is that we are no more able to define what is beautiful for us, and we need somebody else that tells us how we think. Frankly i believe that a bottom line of individual thought is still present in us (fortunately). That's why i could believe that your wife is ugly while you still believe that she's the most beautiful girl in the world.
3) i agree that fashion should be aestetically pleasant. But the concept itself of "aestetically pleasant" depends on WHO is aestetically pleased. Everbody would admit that each one of us has his own taste. So if, simplifying, i like fatty blondies, maybe you like skinny dark-haired girls... just the same to say i don't like apples and you don't like tomatoes.
So, being that fashion is a big business, how can they make business if there is no way to predict what is going to be liked by people? If i produce a lot of tomatoes it happens that i will make a lot of business if a lot of people like tomatoes. If instead there is more people that like apples, i'd better produce apples. For beauty it's kind of different, because one's own concept of beauty is not that easily defined as it is for taste of tomatoes and apples. So, the easiest way for fashion companies to make so that they sell a lot is to "teach" people that they will like the products they will put on the market.
Allow a digression: I used to live for 30 years of my life without a cellphone (they were not yet invented). And i never missed a thing like that. Now i cannot live without. When they invented cellphones, they firstly put on our brains that we really need such a thing, and then they put it on the market, so that everybody of us just bought it. Actually nowadays my life didn't change a bit from that point of view, but now i cannot live without a cellphone in my pocket.
Same thing for fashion. you don't like apricot-graphitegray. You just believe you like it. They told you you like it because, since you don't have in your wardrobe anything that color, you will buy it.
So, people don't like skinny or fatty models. They just believe they do, because, for marketing reason, fashion teach them they do.
4) i agree that it is a good thing that fashion companies try to push fatty girls beauty in order to figth anorexia. In that way those stupid girls that do everything what fashion dictates them won't stop eating just to appair beautiful. Instead they will try to eat a little more just beacue they want that appearance.
What i want to say is right the opposite. Why should a person be wanting to appear beautiful upon strict paradigmas dictated by fashion world?
My point actually is that fashion pushes a template of beauty that is fake, just because it is a template (you cannot say "apples are good"... i won't ever agree, because i don't like them).
Once the template is given, media help to push it. And girls want to imitate that template to be accepted by others.
The wrong things on this chain, in my opinion, is the following:
1) it's not good that beauty is defined by business
2) it's not good that girls try to imitate instead of enhancing on their own attitudes
3) it's not good that beauty is a value to imitate
4) it's not good that beauty is a value that determines what can be considered acceptable.
Obviously anorexia is only the effect of those "it's not good" things.
If a fashion company tries to push that anorexic girls are not beautiful, yes, it's a good thing, but it desn't solve any of those 4 "it's not good" problems.
Hope it's more clear my point now.
PS: i also know a couple of girls that came out from anorexia for which fashion has nothing to do... Beauty and fashion is not the only cause of anorexia.
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