the Met

I went up to visit my grandpa in New York this memorial day weekend (it's also his birthday today). There were a few museum exhibitions that had opened up this spring that I wanted to see so we drove into the city (yes, we literally drove instead of taking the metro as I had suggested) on Saturday. I had first read about the Models as a Muse exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the New York Times, but there was also an article on it in this month's edition of Vogue. The exhibit paid homage to the models, the women behind the clothes, who throughout the years have helped in their own way to propel haute couture forward.
A month or so ago I wrote a paper for my English class about the correlation between violence and objectification, asking: is it art? Here is an excerpt:
"Although I’m not sure how much the class appreciated the YouTube clip of the Alexander Mcqueen Spring Summer 1999 Runway Collection that I suggested (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reK0A1XIjKA), I am nevertheless standing by it. The model Shalom Harlow embodies each of Alec’s victims from A Clockwork Orange (the novel we recently read by Anthony Burgess): wearing white she appears pure until tarnished by the black and yellow paint sprayed on her dress by two robotic arms. And if she is not actually hurt, her pride and the dress certainly are. While not as violent as those in the book, the scene, as the audience’s cheering attests, does introduce the concept of violence—or undue altercation as Merriam-Webster defines the term, as a well-received art.
To the fashion world the nineties were defined by the likes of Naomi Cambell, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Stephanie Seymor, and Lindia Evangelista. While Gisele Bundchen and Kate Moss may hold similar statuses today, the supermodel no longer plays such an important role. Instead, runway models are now often said to be clothes hangers, admired not so much for their good looks but for their tall, slender bodies. Is this pattern not tending towards the objectification of the model? Certainly, models are devoid of individuality on the runway. As one model noted in this month issue of Vogue, “Just show the dress, don’t be anybody.”
Was Harlow’s performance received more highly then because she was not a supermodel? Did the audience, or for that matter McQueen himself, need to objectify her, render her a clothes hanger (moving merely in the manner stereotypical and expected of the situation), in order to focus on the dress’s desecration? I wonder, is there a correlation between an individual’s ability to view violence as an art form and his objectification of the victim? I can’t help but think that Naomi Cambell would lash out at her attackers and that for her action I would somehow respect her more. Perhaps then art is a one way street where the artist is content with inflicting violence to create a masterpiece but does not want to be harmed in the process, whereby the artist is forced to objectify his victim—or project his notion of a victim on the actual victim, to ensure himself that the victim won’t in turn engage him in some sort of epic duel. Thus objectification boils down to control—control over yourself and control over the other actors in your life’s performance. And of course, in the midst of violence I would have to think that control is a good thing to have."
So maybe then the real lure of a magazine like Vogue is that in them these models, these creatures are contained: that girl wearing her pajamas flipping through the pages already has control of them because while models may fill the glossy pages, that girl wearing her pajamas isn't confined to a photo frame. And maybe that's why I like the murals in Baltimore so much. I have control over them. I know where to find them (well, most of them), but I can just as easily leave them tucked away on the side of a city building only to re-discover them when I need some sort of inspiration.