Our society is one that is obsessed with extremes. Glancing across news titles and news broadcasts it is easy to see how our obsession with gossip, celebrities and outer image plagues the news. This obsession does more harm than good, because it is one of the many facets that contribute to the current raunch culture that Ariel Levy outlines. Recently, on New York Magazine, an article surfaced about Gemma Ward. Discovered at a young age, Gemma Ward was an instant hit on the fashion scene, until recently when Gemma Ward sported her new image. Editors and fashion experts harshly criticized this new “bloated” Gemma. While anyone would agree that Gemma looks average and healthy, the fashion industry is shunning her new image. Although her new image does not necessarily fit into the raunchy-esque women that Levy describes, I think the industry’s reaction to Gemma describes the dichotomy that women are expected to participate in.
On February 11th, New York Magazine posted an article titled the “Fashion Industry’s Disturbing View of Gemma Ward.” The article outlines Gemma’s “fallout” with the industry due to her weight gain. Various designers and editors were disgusted with Gemma’s weight gain, commenting that she looked unrecognizable. One editor speculated she had gained about fifteen pounds and as a result appeared “big, almost bloated.”
"It's an image-driven industry that doesn't take kindly to the girl who bucks the trend. Clients start saying, 'She's fat now, don't book her!' If you want to be cynical about it, looking that way was her job. She doesn't want to do what it takes, she's not going to get work. That's just the way it is."
Gemma’s weight gain, which should be considered normal, is being unnecessarily criticized. When Gemma was discovered, she was fourteen years old, years before puberty would hit and curves would begin to develop. How come the industry has such a negative reaction to natural occurrences?
One of the more interesting aspects about this article is the fact that Gemma’s weight gain is not attributed to her body filling out as it naturally should, but rather the fact that she was once previously romantically linked to Heath Ledger. According to the article, sources are saying that Gemma’s “serious” weight gain is the result of emotional eating after Ledger’s death. “In the aftermath of Ledger's death, Ward retreated further from the fashion world. The supermodel put on a more noticeable amount of weight and gossips began to surmise that his death had been the trigger for her so-called "emotional eating.’” Amy Odell, the writer of the article, seems to pick up on the ridiculousness of this speculation, remarking, “Yes, any model’s weight gain past the old, old age of 18 must be emotional eating or rebellion.” Instead of linking Gemma’s weight gain to growing older, news reporters are overly eager to link her weight gain to her emotional issues over the death of Heath Ledger. Although it would be easy to argue that this linkage makes for “juicier” gossip and speculation, it demonstrates several of the problems we’ve discussed in class. After the death of a rumored lover, of course her weight gain is attributed to her emotional sorrows. Of course a woman cannot simply gain weight without the speculation of a man being one the main reasons.
The speculation behind Gemma’s weight gain highlights several of the old anti-feminist thoughts we learned about in class. Women are highly emotional. Women are unstable. Women are not capable of properly handling their problems. However, one of the better aspects of the article was that Amy Odell realized the absurd claims and countered the attack on Gemma with sarcasm. This reporter is starting to fight the path of least resistance. Instead of writing an article denouncing Gemma, Odell is pointing out the problems of the fashion industry. Holding these young women to such a high standard and extreme of thinness is definitely dangerous. These expectations are the breeding ground for eating disorders and insecurity problems. Young models become consumed with this notion that they have to remain thin in order to be “good enough” for the industry.
Essentially, women are fighting the battle to prove they are “good enough” on several fronts. Women seemed to be faced with two options to prove their femininity. You either flaunt your body and adopt highly sexual behavior or force your body to unnatural standards of thinness to represent the epitome of “woman-ness”. This dilemma is unhealthy on both spectrums: subjecting themselves to sexual objectification and deliberately putting their bodies in harm’s way. On the other hand, men don’t seem to be caught in this position. While women go through drastic measures the fight the aging process, men are considered “sexy” while they age. If a female celebrity does not marry, something must be wrong with her. If a male celebrity never marries, he is added to the list of “hottest bachelors.” These standards that women are held to are indicators that the patriarchal system is still prevalent and still an issue. Instead of embracing the natural aspects of being a woman, the aspects of being a woman are devalued and are being stretched the fit into an extreme spectrum. As Johnson writes, patriarchy is “about the valuing of masculinity and maleness and the devaluing of femininity and femaleness.” Unless the rules of patriarchy change, women will be subjected to these unnatural standards for many years to come. The ideals of fashion industries, for example, should celebrate women’s bodies instead of forcing them to contort to unrealistic shapes. Less emphasis should be placed on how much a model weighs, but rather on her skill of being a model. Considering how much has changed in the fight for feminism during the last one hundred years, it is sad to see such reactions to models like Gemma Ward. Hopefully in the future, attention will be paid to the skill of a model rather than how much she weighs.
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